I am sure that most of you have been on the receiving end of a complaint call from a customer due to product or service failure. You probably wished you could crawl under your desk and hide. How about the times you have been on the opposite side of that fence? Communication goes along way.

One of my many wonderful responsibilities during the day is to keep the phone system in check! Every blue moon we have a storm and the phone system gets knocked out. Most of the companies that we have used do a horrible job responding to a service request. The true test of phone service is not the price you pay, but the length of time you are down between outages.

The current company that we are using came up with a novel idea for customers during down time. We are given cell phones to use until our system is up and running. Now, this is not earth shattering or Noble Prize material, but, none-the-less, better than previous remedies.

Even though this company came up with a great ideal to keep us up and running, it still has one big problem. We never know when a service tech is dispatched to our location or when a tech will arrive. We sit and wonder where we are in the line-up. The tech does not phone to let us know where he is or how long he will be. As the customer, what is my feeling about the tech? You have a cell phone. Use it. You are a phone company.

The one area that we tend not to think through when solving customer-oriented problems is to stay in contact. Give estimated time of arrivals; give frequent progress reports. Customers want to know where their project sits. Call every twenty minutes if necessary. This allows the customer to let everyone in his or her organization know how the problem is being handled and when the problem will be solved. Allowing your customer to save face among colleagues might be your saving grace.

Remember, your customer does not think twice about calling you numerous times to alert you to system failures. Call them twice as much with up-dates and completion times.

Keep the account manager informed as much as the customer. This helps to keep everyone on your team informed and it communicates the same message.

Communication goes a long way.