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Have you or has anyone else in your company used that whine from childhood when a business partner let down one of your customers?  Well, you can be certain your customer doesn’t care whose “fault” it is, they just want you to fix the problem–-or at least act as though you care about it.  When you ignore an opportunity to aid a customer, even when you didn’t create the situation, you hand that customer your future to do with as s/he likes…and s/he probably will like to crush you.

I recall clearly a national florist who pulled the old “it’s not my fault” routine on me some years ago.  After rushing a friend to the airport to catch a plane to her father’s funeral, I stopped at the florist to arrange for a fruit basket to be sent to the family.  I was living in New Mexico and the funeral was in a small town in Florida.  The florist didn’t have a shop in that small town, but did belong to an international consortium with member florists there.  I thought instead of flowers, fruit would be appreciated as my friend and other family members all gathered at the widow’s home.  It was springtime and as I selected the fruit basket from a catalog I told the florist (more than once), “Remember, my friend and her family are Jewish and mourning the death of her father, please do not to send an Easter basket.” 

Well, wouldn’t you know, a big, bright basket of fruit was delivered to the widow’s home right after the funeral–-with a colorful Happy Easter pennant sticking out of the top, no less.  I know, because when I called Florida the day after the funeral, my friend was nice enough to tell me about it. 

I called the florist and asked for the person with whom I’d placed the order; the person I had asked face-to-face to make certain the fruit basket was funeral-appropriate.  When she got on the line she immediately began the old I-cannot-control-the-shop-that-actually-does-the-delivery-more-than-a-thousand-miles-away routine.  No “I’m sorry”; certainly no “Let me try to make it up to you.”  Just, “It’s not my fault.”

I was so angry with the way the florist handled–-rather, didn’t handle-–the situation, I made a point of telling everyone I knew about what happened.  Because the florist was a national chain, I told people all over the country.  I told people at the global Fortune 50 company for which I worked.  I told people at the two professional societies I was active in.  I told friends.  I told family.  And, I kept telling people for months.  And, so did my Jewish friend who’d received the Easter basket on the occasion of her father’s funeral; when she learned the florist did nothing about the mix-up, she told her friends, her coworkers, and her family, all over the country.

Eventually the shop closed.  Now, I know I didn’t single-handedly put it out of business.  In fact, I had nothing to do with its failure; the people at that shop earned failure for themselves.  And, the chain itself is still in business, so who knows if any of its other locations even felt a pinch.  But, I am certain I helped a number of people choose a different florist the next time they bought or wired flowers or fruit.  And, I know I will never, ever use that florist again, not anywhere.

So, it might not have been the florist’s fault, but that florist sure as heck paid the price for refusing to care.  What do you suppose your customers would do if your supplier, delivery service, or other business partner messed up something and you just said, “It’s not my fault”?  Can you afford to find out?

This first appeared August 11, 2006 on Kup & Sourcer’s Percolating blog.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 15th, 2009 at 9:53 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.