Thank you for trying to do business with Verizon...

 "Thank you for trying to do business with Verizon."

That is what the support tech said when we ended our call. I had to laugh, it had been a long call and the support guy couldn't help. Since it was a weekend there was no one he could elevate the issue to. This was my third attempt in a week to help a customer of mine and it needed to be addressed by Verizon. They had not completed the installation on the line and there was nothing more I, or the support tech, could do.

In my business, calling tech support usually means getting to talk to people all over the world. By the way, always be nice to support people, they have all the power to help ... or not to help. I talk to India a lot. Mexico too. This time I got someone from right here in the US and it was refreshing to hear the simply stated truth for a change. He couldn't help. End of story. Time to move on and go on with our lives instead of acting out some charade that help is coming when it isn't. Yes, that is common these days in technical support.

The end result for Verizon in this case was that the customer stopped trying to do business with Verizon and went back to their old provider. Just a blip on the radar for Verizon, I'm sure. No big deal. They have plenty of other customers and now one less installation to complete.

It did get me thinking though. For us small business owners we can't afford to lose customers. I started asking myself, is there anything in my business that would end up with us saying "thank you for trying to do business with us"? Our goal is to satisfy every customer that wants to do business with us and pay us for the service. If we don't, they will find someone that will.

Every now and then I get a call for a project that seems like it could be more difficult than most. Some jobs you know will just be more time consuming than others. Even so, I don't want my customers ever saying "I tried to do business with them but couldn't". Instead, I try to express a "Thank you for doing business with us!" attitude whenever I can.

Are there any obstacles to doing with business with you that you have in your business that need to come down? It's worth thinking about, and correcting.