Editor's note

always wrong

When it started raining in my dining room, I hit a new low in what I’ll euphemistically call my adventures in moving. Only now can I write about the experience, it was that morale-busting.

But as all things in a journalist’s career, life equals copy, so I’ll share what I learned the hard way about customer service. I’ll call it the life-saving, the meh and the deplorable. I suggest all business owners could benefit from a similar reality tour of their companies.

By selling our commercial-grade snow blower last December, right before putting our house up for sale, we woke the snow gods. They laughed. Then they walloped Minneapolis/St. Paul with the snowpocalypse.

Our hand-shoveled sidewalks dwindled to a four-inch path flanked by six-foot-high rock-hard drifts. The Grounds Guys franchisees in the Twin Cities were no longer in business. Several independent services said they didn’t shovel public sidewalks in Minneapolis. (Huh?)

Finally an app called Lawn Love with a North Carolina phone line sent two young men to shovel one Saturday morning. Finding a shoveling service in January was harder than buying a swimsuit in July, which seems to me like an opportunity.

Next came the water pouring into my dining room, as mentioned above, in March, as the snow on the roof began to thaw. I called a half-dozen companies at 6:30 a.m., including the Ice Dam Guys. That owner called me back in 20 minutes (the others had a full inbox or never called at all), had a technician on my roof by 9:30 and the problem solved by mid-afternoon.

Mold and asbestos came next, at least the suspicion of it. The local Advanta- Clean office had a sophisticated call center with prompt responses, which I found was not the norm with many companies. But the estimator was overly alarmist and under-certified. I would need to hire a second, separate person to check for asbestos in the ceiling tiles a third to test for mold before and after.

Instead, ShelterTech promptly sent over a technician to estimate and bid the whole job and then brought in a crew large enough to do the mitigation in one day. The lesson for home restoration firms: Beef up your call centers with knowledgeable, friendly people and add certifications so customers can get related problems done in one swoop.

Next came moving. Though I’d been warned against hiring a broker, when an actual human called me back to give a bid, I went with Cross Country Movers because everyone else responded with robo-calls. The initial bid ultimately more than doubled, which the driver for Xpress Professional Movers said was typical— bids over the phone are never accurate. I should have gone with Two Men and a Truck, which will bid jobs in person, or another such firm.

Finally there was the cleaning service I hired, Dynamic Duo Cleaning, which turned the old customer service adage on its head.

First I balked at leaving a pile of cash for the cleaners when I checked my bank account and saw the fee had already been debited. Then I complained when photos from my realtor showed only two rooms had been cleaned.

One of the co-owners called the condition of my house “deplorable,” said it was my fault she had estimated the job too low, and completed the trifecta of insults with this: “You were a problem customer at the time of payment and you’re a problem customer now.” In this case, the customer was always wrong.

The bottom line: all businesses talk about caring for customers, but only a few follow through. To them I am grateful. Would yours pass a reality check?

Beth Ewen Editor and co-founder Upsize Minnesota bewen@upsizemag.com