Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Customers don’t want long—or any—explanations. Simply tell the customer how we will make the situation right.

Another month, another bad experience with customer service. The details are not important. I paid for a service, the provider made a mess of things, I heard dozens of reasons why the situation went wrong. I don’t care about the internal workings of the provider. I only care about one thing:

make it right

I am a provider at work. I work to satisfy a customer 40 hours a week. I better do better.

Simple statements:

• We made a mess.
• This is wrong.
• Here is how we will make this right.

Simple statements. Why are they so hard to state?