It doesn’t happen very often in my esthy world, but when it does I always use the experience as a valuable learning lesson.

Here’s what happened…

1. My client was traveling out of the country to see her daughter.

2. The daughter needed products and her mom told her to Facebook message me the order so she could pick it up and take it to her.

This was brought to my attention about a month before my client was leaving on vacation.

3. The daughter emailed the list 5 days before the mom was flying out to see her.

** I did not have 2 of the products so I called the vendor (who didn’t call me back for 2 days, but that’s a different newsletter topic).

4. I called the mom and told her the order would arrive on Friday.

*** In my mind the order would arrive after 1pm (the usual time UPS arrives at my spa), and I was going to call her when the products arrived so she could swing by.

*** In her mind she was coming by early Friday morning…

My bad!

So the mom was at my spa bright and early Friday morn… and the products where stuck in Chicago in a snowstorm.

Not good.

5. She threw a fit and let me have it because she was busy planning a trip and I just caused a major inconvenience in her world.

It was bit overboard in my opinion, but hey I know what a pain LA traffic can be… so I let her unload on me (it was my fault after all).

I apologized, assured that I would take care of her, and had the products hand delivered to her home at 8pm the night before she left – thank you Orley for providing such help in my biz.

What did I learn from this?

1. How very important clear and detailed communication is when you are conducting business. Just because your mind sees something a particular way, it doesn’t mean others are creating the same vision in their mind.

Crystal clear communication is a MUST.

2. The importance of controlling our own business destiny. I could have (and should have) reached out to the daughter as soon as the mom told me she would be sending me a message. This would have given me the perfect amount of time to create a seamless sales transaction.

It’s best to engineer communication, not wait for it.

3. Understand that conducting good customer service includes the awareness that most people are the center of their own universe. This means that you must make them feel very taken care of if you’re in the market to create client loyalty.

Now I am not saying take abuse, but if you mess up… suck it up, apologize and make it right.

Mistakes provide you raw materials to make it better the next time.

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