#100DAYPROJECT Day 18 (makeup)
Yesterday I spent three hours on the tramac at Sea-Tac airport. After a bus ride to the aircraft, a long loading process and considerable time in the queue, we had he dreaded u-turn back to the terminal to address a maintenance issue. On flights to San Francisco I'm 0/2 recently and have spent considerable time trapped in my seat on the tarmac or sitting at a gate. The delay updates were infrequent and it was my Tripit app, no the crew, that notified me there was a delay while I was sitting on the airplane. That surprised me. (The shadow photo below is our aircraft landing, so I did eventually make it.)
It highlights a topic I'm passionate about related to customer service. Certainty and transparency are two things that customers value most. When certainty can't be guaranteed, like when you don't know how long something will take to fix, transparency becomes even more essential. How much are you communicating and through what channels? Are you working on it? When will you know more? Are you telling me everything I should no? Managing expectations through uncertainty when certainty cannot be provided is essential.
This theme emerged also in our home building experience. We had done two renovations before, one a full gut-job for a one bedroom condo and in a different condo we renovated a bathroom. From our experience, we knew there would be ups and downs, but the greatest points of frustration through all three renovation experiences was a lack of transparency when uncertainty was presented. We developed a firm fixed contact, but what was included in that? How do you know what questions to ask? I think this should be easier. I'm going to put together some homeowner materials to help you know what questions to ask.
Have you undergone your own projects? Are you thinking about it? What do you now know or what do you wish you had known when you started? You can drop me a note here.
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