What To Say When You Fail To Meet Customer Expectations

An HVAC Contractor in Wisconsin asked:

What should we do when we can’t meet the customers’ expectations?

EGIA faculty member Drew Cameron started by drawing a contrasting line between consistently not meeeting expectations and not meeting expectations with an individual customer.

Cameron stated that if there was ever a consistent trend of upsetting the customer or failing to perform good quality service, the best course of action would be to enroll in business coaching or bring in experts to help right the ship, because there would most likely be larger problems to be fixed than just customer complaints.

Setting those problems aside, Cameron also raised the point that sometimes, with some customers, there is simply no satisfying their expectations no matter how hard you try. “We’ve had situations where we just go to them very honorably and say, ‘listen, we don’t think we’re ever going to be able fully meet your expectations,’ and frankly they were just unreasonable people,” said Cameron.

“At some point you need to know when to say when, even if you’re in the right,” he continued. “There’s an old saying, ‘you can be right or you can be dead right.’ Even if you’re right, you don’t want to go out and try to prove that you’re right.”

Drew Cameron is America’s Most Sought-After Sales & Marketing Strategy and Success Advisor to Home Services Contractors and is president of Flow Odyssey (formerly HVAC Sellutions) and Energy Design Systems, LLC; the premier industry alliance.

Our faculty members have also answered questions on other topics related to sales in the contracting world, including Customer Complaint Management and Customer Objections Over Price.

Hear more from our “Ask The Experts” faculty members on “Cracking The Code,” our weekly web series.

Contractor University members can click here to log in to their member dashboard and submit a question through the Ask the Expert portal.