Re: OT: To make or not to make my mechanic mad at me.

Posted by NCWayne on February 13, 2013 at 11:10:19 from (69.40.232.132):

In Reply to: OT: To make or not to make my mechanic mad at me. posted by Ralph Bauer on February 13, 2013 at 07:02:19:

As a mechanic I tend to stay on the other side of the story, so I can speak from experience here. Heck I just got a 3000 Ford in the shop that has been setting here since around November of 2012, and just went on another call this morning for a guy that has been waiting since around the same time, and I've still got a tiller sitting there from last summer.

With my business I do mainly field work on heavy equipment but I'll take on smaller stuff as rainy day projects to work on at a little cheaper rate. For me, regardless of wether it's a rainy day project of not, I have to look at multiple things as to how I get everything worked into my schedule. Like any business my long time customers tend to get pushed to the front of the line the majority of the time. At the same time these same guys also understand that when anyone, them included, has an emergency that it becomes the number one priority, and everything else drops back a notch, at least temporarily. On top of that I also have to look at things like customer A has one tractor down but has 4 other tractors and is still working while customer B only has one tractor and it's broke, so he's not able to work at all.

In the end trying to keep ALL of your customers happy isn't as easy as it may sound. As a result sometimes the decision as to what gets done all comes down to the old saying, "The squeaky wheel gets the grease". The guy I went to work for this morning has a few minor issues, but wasn't broken down, and had asked me to get to it when I had a chance. Unfortunately for him, fortunately for me, I've been busy as heck and simply hadn't had time to get over his way. But, when he called me yesterday afternoon and said he had some free time today, if I was available, I decided to go ahead and get him knocked out this morning vs working on the machine I've got in the shop. Both jobs were inside (it's raining today), both have been waiting awhile for me to get to their equipment, so doing it this way I got one taken care of and I can start back on the other one here in a little bit, and work on it this evening now that I'm back at the shop.

With all of that said, I've been on both sides of the equation so I do know both sides. For me, it would never hurt my feelings if someone came to me and said, "Hey, I really need my machine back by (whenever), if you can get it done fine, if not I'll have to take it somewhere else." As far as I'm concerned if I say I can do it I will do it, if I can't I'd be more than happy to help the customer load it and do my best to recommend someone else that could get it done for them in time to meet their needs. The way I see it if I don't do either one or the other I'm not providing my customer with true customer service, as insuring they are taken care of, wether it's me or someone else doing it, is what true customer service is all about. Over the yars there have been a few occasions when someone wanted something done that I simply could not get done in the time frame they required and I told them so. In every case I lost out on that one job, but still maintained a satisfied customer who continues to bring me all of their other work.

In the end honesty is the best policy, and it should either get him motivated to get the job done for you, or show you his true deemener. If he gets pi$$ed off, etc then low priced or not I'd be taking my stuff to someone else next time just because of his attitude. Just my .02 for what it's worth........

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