Helping people vs. getting credit for helping people or why you can't always reach the person you want instantly

So yesterday I spent 3 hours on the phone with a French treadmill manufacturer to figure out why we got the wrong part for a client who has been to the emergency room 3 times in the last month with heart arrhythmia, which  meant at least one customer couldn't reach me for an extended period.

Fortunately, she's experienced two other lackluster company's performance and do-nothing "repairmen" who told her nothing was wrong with her machine before we got there and did the delicate, difficult job of adjusting it so it would be quiet during use, so she knows we care about her and genuinely want to help her as we do all our customers, and so assumed there was a good reason we weren't calling back immediately.

That kind of patience and understanding puts her at the tippy top of our list of favorite people...

And keeps her off the list of people we decline as clients. People don't usually get more reasonable, so if they start off that way, it's a very real possibility we'll decline them as clients at the first phone call.

So if you call and can't reach the person you spoke with last time, or can't get through to someone immediately, AND don't get a call back within an hour, it's usually because; you didn't leave us your phone # or email or whatever, or it didn't reach us, or you have a bad cell phone or bad connection and the message you left is garbled / unintelligible, (right up there with death and taxes, the other thing were sure of is that EEEEEEVERYTHING breaks down, including our high tech phone system, we know this all too well) or we don't have a useful answer from the manufacturer about when that part will be here, or (very often) we're currently on the phone trying to solve your problem already.

We can't fix the fact that the world is an imperfect place, that backorders happen, that manufacturers are unresponsive or out of business, but we do our best to help you every day, including when we basically ask you not to give us money by honestly assessing how much it will cost to repair your equipment and often recommending buying a new one if you can, and doing our best to fix it affordably if you can't.

The good news is we're honest treadmill repairmen who love helping people. The bad news is the world still isn't perfect.