{"id":368,"date":"2011-02-14T18:06:13","date_gmt":"2011-02-14T18:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.forestsoftware.co.uk\/blog\/?p=368"},"modified":"2016-03-31T13:01:35","modified_gmt":"2016-03-31T12:01:35","slug":"dont-be-afraid-to-say-no","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.forestsoftware.co.uk\/blog\/2011\/02\/dont-be-afraid-to-say-no\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t Be Afraid To Say No"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading Time: <\/span> 3<\/span> minutes : <\/span><\/span>

Why, as a small business, you shouldn’t be afraid to say no to a customer.<\/p>\n

\"Don'tRecently I needed to find a garage to carry out an MOT and oil & filter change for my car (and I thought a new tyre) so, being new to the area I looked online to find a garage –\u00a0 as you might expect there were many listed, in fact having driven through the nearest town I could remember seeing at least 5 garages \/ MOT places.<\/p>\n

Not having anything to go on I decided to pick one at random and rang them to book the service and the MOT.\u00a0 I got through to an answerphone and left a message saying what was needed (and when by) and leaving my phone number for them to call me back.\u00a0 Having waited for a few hours I decided to ring again and this time I got hold of someone that said that the boss was out on an errand and would be back in 30 minutes, “could they ring me back?”.\u00a0 So I waited…\u00a0 Eventually the following day I rang again to be told by the boss that he was just dealing with a customer and would ring me back as soon as he could.<\/p>\n

Needless to say, as you may have guessed, no-one rang back so – being a sucker for punishment – I tried ringing again.\u00a0 Yet again I got through and was told that someone would ring me back.\u00a0 Yet again no one did so I did what any prospective customer would do – I decided to go elsewhere.<\/p>\n

This time I ignored the Internet listings and drove the 3 miles into the local town, pulled up at one of the other garages and was able to book the service and MOT for the following Monday – at the same time I got someone to look at the tyres and they agreed that one of them was worn (not illegal but when all you have in contact with the road is maybe 6 square inches of tyre on each wheel I believe in making sure that there is plenty of tread and grip left) so I ordered a tyre from them as well.\u00a0 The following Monday arrived and the car was MOT’d, serviced and the new tyre was fitted.<\/p>\n

The moral of my story is that if you are busy or don’t want to take on a particular piece of work (maybe you don’t have the stock, skills or it’s not profitable enough) then don’t be afraid to say no to a customer.\u00a0 I would much rather have been told no by the first garage for several reasons.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. I would not have wasted time chasing them over the next couple of days<\/li>\n
  2. I could have booked the work in at the 2nd garage much earlier<\/li>\n
  3. I don’t like (as do many people) being left waiting for people to contact me<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    When all is said and done, there is not much chance of me going to the first garage that I tried to use, while the 2nd one is much more likely to get my business in the future, and although I have deliberately not mentioned any names in this blog posting many other would-be customers may well tell their friends and workmates about the lack of service or use social media to complain<\/a> to the world at large.\u00a0 There is a saying “bad news travels fast” – do you want the bad news to be about your service or would you rather nip it in the bud by saying “no” to a prospect?<\/p>\n

    Another garage related customer service story is at my story about Formula One Autocentre in Peterborough<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    (Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Reading Time: <\/span> 3<\/span> minutes : <\/span><\/span>Why, as a small business, you shouldn’t be afraid to say no to a customer. Recently I needed to find a garage to carry out an MOT and oil & filter change for my car (and I thought a new tyre) so, being new to the area I looked online to find a garage –\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-advice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.forestsoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.forestsoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.forestsoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.forestsoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.forestsoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.forestsoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.forestsoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.forestsoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.forestsoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}