Why the fence was backward

David Sneed //December 9, 2013//

Why the fence was backward

David Sneed //December 9, 2013//

We had a real nice customer last week … and put her fence in backward. She wanted the smooth side in to the yard, but we reversed it.

Ugh.

It was entirely my fault. She and I had talked (over the phone) about which way to face the darn thing; but when I asked, “Pickets out?” and she agreed, we pictured different outcomes.

You see, I’m in the business. I know fences and fence-speak. She’s a nurse, and doesn’t know a knot from an owl hole. Of course I don’t know what a ligament is either. Not really. It’s probably the same as a tendon, or a fallopian whatever.

Usually, I meet the customer at the start of a job to review the details. This particular lady couldn’t meet, though, so we skipped the stage where I point to something nearby and say, “Like that.” 

Now, you might suppose this’ll turn into an observation on handling angry customers, but it won’t. Why would I say she’s nice? Here’s how she complained:  “The fence is beautiful. I love it. Also, it’s in the wrong way.”

There’s a good and a bad way to nit-pick with a contractor, and she knows the good way; the one that ends in a swift and happy conclusion.

So now we have an article about jargon about shop-talk when dealing with clients.

Don’t.

It’s the guaranteed path to an expectation you won’t be able to meet. Maybe your company (like mine) could use a dictionary page; A sort of cheat-sheet that publicly defines ‘terms of art’ as you use them. You could attach some diagrams if you need to, and then, when Sellie meets a customer, they hand over a copy.

Problem solved.

I’m planning mine. I’ll probably have a whole page on the website devoted to it, too.  And if you read my last column, you’ll know why that stuns two hippie protesters with one Taser. It’ll be a webpage organically crammed with keywords (for SEO’s sake) while promoting clarity of communication between the customers and us.

And Google PR eats that up. So will your customers.