Improvement Insights Blog
Doggo and Jose on Customer Service
What can two landscaping guys teach us about customer service?
“I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“Last year I needed some yard work done and one of my tech support guys, Nick, said, “Oh, I’ve got a guy for you.” He gave me Doggo’s number, and I called up Doggo. Doggo showed up that afternoon. The thing I wanted him to do was take out a bunch of buffalo grass and put in rock; I’m trying to get rid of all the green stuff so we don’t use as much water.
“Anyway, Doggo showed up that afternoon and the next week he gathered a crew, came in, ripped out all the buffalo grass, put down all the rock and stuff and was done. What?
“Then this year, I wanted to plant a couple of plum trees and I sent Doggo a text. He said “Can I come by after 5?” Yes; Doggo came by after 5… and guess what? The next day my trees were planted. What?
“And then he also had brought on a guy named Jose who did sprinkler stuff and my sprinkler was leaking or something like that. I sent Jose a text and he said, “Can I come by after 5:30?” Yes. So after he had done other stuff he came over to do this stuff and they fixed it right then! They found where the leak was, fixed everything, checked everything out. What?
“So I want you to get this idea this is the idea of customer service I can get behind, right? Let’s respond, let’s help people now! Do I want to recommend those people to other people? I do! The guy across the street has an unfinished wall he was going to do until he broke his foot or something. I recommended Doggo to him.
“I want you to get this idea that speed is the healing app… speed is the healing app. Can I get to you right now? I always try, I don’t always succeed, but I try, right?
“Lately I’ve been I’ve been getting emails when people send me a request and I answer them quickly and they say “Thank you for the quick response.” A lot of people don’t respond, right? They just don’t respond. We know from sales technology that if you wait 24 hours to respond to something you’re less likely to make a sale than if you respond immediately.
“So that’s my Improvement Insight for this week: Let’s be more responsive. It doesn’t take that much effort. Let’s go out and improve something this this week… like response time.”
