Are You Doing a Good Job?

I'll bet that you are really good at what you do. You are
conscientious, creative, and hard working. You would never
short-change your customers or give them less than 110 per
cent. Right? RIGHT!

But do your customers know that? Do they know that you are
on schedule, that you gave them something extra, that you
did exactly what they wanted?

"Okay, Dave, what got you started on this one?" you're
probably asking.

We have some friends that hired a pet-sitter to take care of
their two dogs and two cats while they were on vacation.
When they returned, they found no evidence that their
animals had been cared for as instructed. Medications
looked as if they hadn't been touched. The supply of treats
looked virtually the same as it had when they left. True,
the animals were healthy and that's the most important
thing; to paraphrase Roseanne, "The animals were alive [when
my friends got home], so the pet sitters did their job!"

>From a business point of view, though, the pet sitters
didn't do so well. The evidence suggests that they did a
'poor' job. Or was it just a case that there was no
evidence that they did a 'good' job?

Did they give the medications or didn't they? It looked
like they didn't when, in fact, they did, and provided an
extra service by picking up more. Did they give the treats
as requested or didn't they? It looked like they didn't
when, in fact, they did and provided an extra service by
going to the store to buy more.

The word is "perception". You may be doing a great service
for your customers, but leaving them with a different
perception of what you've done.

I learned this lesson the hard way. As a
programmer/consultant at a large medical facility I was
given an important program to write. It was a critical
component of a critical system that was supposed to be
operational by a certain date. I worked on it mostly from
home. My client didn't see me very often, and his
perception was that I was goofing off; procrastinating until
the last moment. As a result, his anxiety level was high,
to put it mildly. In fact, I was doing a GREAT job for him,
putting in extra time and even a few extra features.

My bad. I should have made a point of letting him know what
I was doing so that he would feel comfortable in knowing
what was going on. I could have done this in a number of
ways both subtle and not-so-subtle. Subtle: "While I was
working on this at home last night, I came up with a few
questions." Not-so-subtle: "I know you haven't seen too
much of me lately, but that's because I've been working on
this project at home. I didn't want you to think I was
putting it off".

The point is this: if you're doing a good job for your
customers, make sure they know it!