I happened to pick up a call from a particularly irate customer. We had missed our delivery schedule by a huge whopper!
I told him why we have missed the deadline, apologized for the unintentional error and wrapped up the call with how soon we were going to tackle the issue. Inspite of all my assurances, the customer was rude and blamed our entire team for the mishap. His tone, manner and abrasiveness, hurt. I was angry!!
After a recheck, i realized, we had missed the deadline because they hadn’t approved a drawing which we had sent them earlier. To be fair, we didn’t follow up. My immediate thought was to get back to him and tell him in no uncertain terms that the fault lay with his own people and his reaction was unjustified.
But i preferred to defer the call and immediately set about following up with his people about the drawing and set things right again. We dispatched the items and i sent him a note stating that we have done the needful.
He called us and complimented our team and sounded (just sounded but its enough) apologetic about the delayed approval. His juniors had informed him about the little oversight thus putting him in an embarrassing position. We were gracious about the whole matter and empathized about the error.
If i had made that call and participated in a blame game, we would have lost some leverage which i now have with the individual. Also with our ability to quickly perform a damage control, we had won him over.
Eventually the customer faxed more orders within a weeks time.
