by Jim Hinshaw
So I had surgery last week. Talked to a co-worker who said they had only had two surgeries in the
If entire life, but both were life-threatening. Mine was not life-threatening, but anytime you are put to sleep and then someone removes part of your body with knives, it is serious. I had robotic surgery by the doctor who brought that technology to our state, about 30 years ago. He teaches at UT Southwestern, head of the department. I learned of him when I found out I needed surgery, friend from church had same operation a decade ago, asked me if I wanted to be operated on by the teacher or the student. Easy answer.
But this is not about the surgery, it is about the people involved. From the minute we checked in at the main reception desk, everyone was polite, attentive and seemed to really care. Jeanae was the first we met, she took us up to the staging room, before ya get to surgery. Asked how long we had lived in Dallas, was I still working, usual small talk. I asked her how long she had been working as a nurse, turns out she was a traveling nurse recently assigned that hospital. She brightened up, continued to share about her experience. She wrote her name on the board in the room, and I realize that is common now, but still connects us up emotionally.
My surgeon came in, confirming what I was there for. I have a thing I do for all the doctors and nurses helping me thru medical procedures like this, I give them a book I have written. I tell them I have brought them a gift, I autograph it, tell them it will be worth more when I am gone. Sappy, I know, but I want them to remember me as the guy who gave them a book, not just as a guy in bed 31. So the good doctor begins to look thru my book right by my bed. Happens to find a chapter that had a message in it about why customers leave a relationship. Here is what one study found.
1% Die, not much you can do about that.
3% move away, again, not under your control.
5% buy from a friend. Amazing how many people know someone in our business.
14% dissatisfied with our products or services.
Big news:
68% leave because of an attitude of indifference by your employees. There it is.
The doctor asked if this was a real statistic, I said yes it was, a study done by Sociallyin. He replied that he hires people not only for skills, but attitude as well. His team is trained on how to connect with customers, he told me a solid majority of his surgeries are from referrals (mine was).
And that attitude of caring for me and my stay in the hospital was proof. Everyone was attentive, fully engaged. As I went down to surgery, I shared my concerns with the doctor who was running the anesthesia machine. I told him I had claustrophobic issues when surgery was about to happen. He replied, that will not be a problem. And it wasn’t. When I came out of the surgery he was asking me, what is your pain at? I replied an 8 out of 10, he replied, let’s work on that. When the first dose of pain killer did not help, he said we’ll go to plan B. No idea what plan B was, but shortly I was sleeping with little pain. He thanked me profusely for the book, said no one had ever given him an autographed book before.
Lauren was my nurse in charge of my care after surgery. She introduced me to each nurse who came in to help, told me what they were going to do, and how often. Said she realized people are going to be coming in all night long, just about every hour, but that is really for my benefit, to be sure we didn’t have a problem. Again asked me about what brought us to Dallas and when, asked about family and where they are located, was I still working, and what did I do. I do understand that these conversations all helped to take my mind off of the current situation I was in, and they worked. All of the team seemed genuinely concerned about my well-being, gave me an idea what would happen next, how the recovery would go, what to expect.
My point is this. While your customers for heating/air conditioning/plumbing service work are not facing surgery, but they usually are facing financial issues that they did not plan on, and maybe some time without those services working properly. Have you equipped your team to be empathetic, share compassion to your customers? If the customer says they are having a horrible day, heat went out at 10 pm, could not get any sleep the night before. You could say: that must be frustrating, let me get to work, will get the system back online as soon as possible. What you should not say: I know how you feel, cause you don’t, unless your heat went out at 10 pm the night before.
Your service and installation teams are in homes on a daily basis, and if not careful they can become complacent, just another furnace install, that sort of thing. Except it is not just another install to the family that has had no heat for days, they may have never done anything like this before. The team needs to be open and transparent, here is what will happen, this is what we do on a regular basis, we got this!
It is ok to show empathy, and we should. What is needed is an ability to understand how the comfort issues may be affecting their family, as well as their health and financial situation. Let them know they are not alone, this is what your company does. The world needs more compassion and understanding, be the change needed where you can. Thanks for listening, we’ll talk later.
