I hear Ray Charles in the background ......... “that’s what I say” I’ve been at this for around 40 years now. I’m not all that excited about making a living around people that aren’t capable of keeping their personal schedules. I get a nasty taste in my mouth when someone asks me to remind them the day of or the day before. I may be in the service business but I’m not their servant and I won’t accept being treated like one. Reluctantly, I put an additional note in the upper margin of my appointment book to help me help them with their schedule. The notation includes the phone number. As I set out to do calls that day I make the call. A database full of no shows is more expensive to maintain than one with responsible customers that know how to find their way home (after saving everyone else from the ravages of alcoholism) for their mutually agreed appointments. The natural flow of things in the universe helps to keep the database clear of CRAP. I don’t send reminder cards to these people. It’s a waste of trees and postage. With the cost of fuel the way it is these days, I don’t hesitate to purge a no show from the database after one event, especially if they don’t call afterwards and no, I’m not desperate ......... I don’t follow up with a call a day later. I leave a message the day of, 15 minutes past the appointment time. IF they call and have a good explanation like sudden loss of family, or car parts fell off during their dash back home, or they were randomly hit with a TV camera falling from a newschannel helicopter, I’ll forgive them. OK so I reschedule with no penalties if they call and totally admit to being irresponsible and untalented. So, in summation, here’s the event schedule I follow. * Be righteously punctual. Know your routes, traffic and all the other variables. Show up within 15 minutes of the scheduled appointment time or call ahead when you know you’ll be late. Schedule your day with this knowledge and plan for the unexpected using all the logic you can muster. I’ve pulled over to the curb, set my alarm on my phone and taken naps because I was too early. I really enjoy hearing the customer’s grandfather clock sounding off as I ring the doorbell. I know, it’s a cheap thrill. After this many years of doing calls, small things entertain. * If after ringing the doorbell and knocking and there’s no answer, call the customer and see if you can roust them that way. If no luck, wait in the car for 15 minutes. It’s another chance to take a nap. I’ve gotten really good at closing my eyes for about 15 minutes exactly. At this point I make another call and knock on the door and if there’s still no answer, I fill out a doorknob hanger. They’re available from NEBS. I’ve been tempted to get a rubber stamp with profanities on it but I haven’t quite done that yet. On the front of this card is a preprinted message that says something in the order of “Sorry we missed you” and then there’s boxes to check by the selections of, “we will call again on ...” or “please call ....” or some such thing. I write on the front, “see msg on back”. On the back I write the date and time of my arrival and departure with the words, “no one answers door” or “unable to gain entry”. * After all this I leave in a really bad mood for a few miles reminding myself of how such customers are expensive to service and add to the expense of doing business. I calm myself with thoughts of handing a three year old the aforementioned rubber stamp .............. Repeat offenders get charged a full tuning. In one case, the guy always had a trophy girl at his side whenever I tuned his piano. He promised me many times he’d pay me for my troubles every time he missed his appointments ....... and never did. The last time I heard from him, I scheduled an appointment with him with out opening my appointment book or even picking up a pencil ....... and then promptly went about my day. I haven’t heard from him now for over 5 years. I miss the pretty girls. One rather creative tech I visited with on this subject suggested calling the customer posing as a psychiatrist specializing in memory loss, reminding the customer of how they missed their group session. While doing calls in Wyoming I was called to do a tuning in an outlying area with fairly nice houses. About 20 miles or so outside the city limits I drove on a windy day to a place that matched the address and rang the doorbell. I was visited by a rather annoyed dog that simply came to check me out and then expressed his displeasure of how the wind was blowing the fur over to the leeward side of his body and the air borne granite was filling his eyes with more junk than usual. He returned to his place under the house around back. I went back to my car and took my usual 15 minute nap as the wind gently rocked my car. We didn’t have cell phones back then and to find a pay phone meant driving all the way back to town. I got back out of the car ......... holding on to the door firmly as I opened it, rang the doorbell one more time, knocked good and hard, and got the same response as before. Totally annoyed I got back in my car and positioned my vehicle to cut a nice cookie in what they called their front yard. The dog came back out of his protected area, one eye squinting and his head tilted a bit as the wind caused him to stagger around as if he’d had a drink or three. It was a nice day after all. After completing the 360 and spraying the dog and the house with granite grit I aimed for the road using a most unconventional path, flower beds be damned, and went back home feeling quite pleased with myself. I never heard from them again. Ok so that’s not the professional thing to do. It was Wyoming. I was 35 years younger. Guns, horses, Merle Haggard, chicken fried steak, and the barking dog in the back of a pick up truck with a gun rack are all more important than getting the damn piano tuned. LarBear -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20110201/cddd560a/attachment.htm>
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