How do you handle scheduling conflicts or last-minute changes in your business?
It happens! But when it does, do you have a process in place to handle these situations?
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This happened more this Summer than at any other point in my career. The only way I made it out the other side was transparently communicating what was happening to my clients, who were all more understanding than I would have expected 😎
I just text or call them depending on the situation. If their service is still 3+ days out, I'll text them. If it's less than that, I'll call, leave a VM then text. Depending on who the client is and if it's going to really mess things up for them, I may give them a discount or an upgrade to their service for free. I try to lean towards finding a super inexpensive service I offer as a bonus before giving a discount. Honesty and taking responsibility for the occurrence I think is very important in this kind of situation.
Your process is pretty solid! I like how you focus on offering a bonus service instead of defaulting to a discount–it feels more intentional and you're adding personal value. Have you found that offering upgrades or bonuses helps maintain strong client relationships when those last-minute changes come up?
Thank you Julie! Yea, my clients have been very understanding and I have not received any negative feedback or reviews.
It happens , Our customers ssome are very flexible, just a phone call about the changes in the scheduling and we are good,
That's great that your customers are so flexible! Do you have any tips for handling situations where a customer might not be as understanding about last-minute changes?
Majority of our work is regular lawn services (lawn mowing). So we make sure that we'll have access to the property if no one is home, and operate a floating schedule so we can move visits as needed. This helps to work around rain delays and other uncontrollable delays. And also helps make it easier to deal with staff sick days, equipment damage/repairs etc. It just comes back to communication with the customer, we basically let them know that we'll manage the scheduled and keep things on track, and that we aim to keep visits scheduled on the same weekday, but that may be adjusted during the season.
For us for grass, I keep all grass on Monday's. Then the grass team can work off of the monday list so the route stays the same.
Does that mean your team operate using list view? That doesn't ever create issues? I guess they can still use job timers and log dates and times on the job correctly... You don't have any customers with set days/times for visits?
Oo, like the floating schedule approach. Sounds like a smart way to keep things running smoothly, even with unpredictable delays. Seems like clear communication is really key to making it work.
Yes! Systems and processes for everything. It's also best to have this in an SOP or Employee Handbook, too.
Hard yes to an SOP or Employee Handbook 👏
Doesn't happen to me that often, but when it does I am always transparent with all of my clients and tell them right away that we might have a problem, apologize and see on how we can fix any issues that have come up.
