Business lessons from a paper route: Getting the job done and keeping the customers happy

I was a paperboy. I had about 35 customers in a suburban town in New Jersey. After school each day, I stopped by the train station where the truck from the Bergen Record dropped off bundles of papers for the five or six boys that delivered in my part of town. I would either load the papers into baskets on my bicycle, or I would carry them in a big canvas bag.

The papers had to be delivered in time before all of the fathers arrived home from their jobs in New York City so they could read the paper before dinner. That usually was not very difficult. School was out by 3:15. If I started my route by 4:00, I could finish by 5:00 on a good day. Saturday and Sunday papers had to be delivered by 8:00. The Sunday paper took longer because it was always delivered in several sections, and it took extra time to assemble the paper before we delivered it.

All of this was a great experience for a not yet teenage boy, especially when the papers were small and the weather was good. The US Postal Service may not have adopted the words inscribed on the New York post office, “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds,” as a motto, but they surely applied to the paper boys in Glen Rock, NJ. The papers were not always very small either. Large papers were difficult because they took extra time to assemble and because paperboys had limited carrying capacity. Large papers frequently meant that a route that could be walked or biked in half an hour could take as long as an hour and a half or more because the carriers had to make several trips.

You should be getting the idea that there were days that it just was not fun to be a paperboy. It always seemed as if it rained or snowed on the days when the paper was the largest. Those were the days that as I walked in the door after finishing the route, hungry because I was later for dinner, my mother would say, “Mrs. C called, and the paper was wet,” or “The Mr. M called and wanted to know why his paper was late.” I did not realize it at the time, but this was an important lesson, and it was good experience for later in life. I might have been cold and wet and hungry because I was late, but that did not matter. The papers were also wet and late. My customers expected me to deliver their papers on time and in readable condition. The weather did not matter. The size of the paper did not matter. Nothing mattered except that the paper was delivered as promised.

I hope it does not sound as if I had unbearable customers. My customers were fabulous, and they liked having me as their paperboy. They were generous with tips when I collected, and when they saw me in town, they always had a kind word for me.

The lesson from the paper route was simple. When I began my route, I agreed to deliver papers. My customers, who paid me for my service, expected me to deliver. It was not always easy, but that was our agreement. If that lesson seems too simple consider how many times service providers don’t deliver. The idea that getting job done means happy customers was a big lesson for a young businessman. It was a lesson from my paper route that I remember today.

Excellent Customer Service

I’ve been an examiner for a fairly well known quality award, the Texas Award for Performance Excellence by the Quality Texas Foundation.  It is a Texas version of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. I also worked for a dozen years in the planning and research group for a major professional association. I’ve had a lot of experience trying to understand quality and what it means to deliver excellent customer service. I have decided that the thing that makes the “best in class” better than everybody else is the willingness to go beyond the expected.

I received an interesting letter in the mail today. It was from Ellis and Salazar, the body shop that repaired my car last year after I ran into a deer while driving home from work. I was not sure what to expect when I saw the letter in the mailbox. The letter turned out to be a reminder that the warranty period was about to expire. They were writing to ask me to go over my car thoroughly and to make sure that I was still satisfied with the work that they had done, and they were asking me to bring the car in if there were any unresolved issues. That was a surprise.

If you have ever been in a car accident of any type, then you know that getting a car repaired is not a pleasant experience. It starts bad, and it gets worse. You probably have heard the stories. Finding something to drive while your car is in the shop is a hassle. The shop is not able to do the work for what the insurance company will pay. It takes longer than promised. The paint does not match. The new windows leak. The list goes on and on.

I picked Ellis and Salazar because they were on my insurer’s list and because they had done satisfactory work for people I know. As I write this, there are 16 reviews on http://www.yelp.com/ and they have a good rating. That is probably a difficult accomplishment because most customers at a repair shop of any kind are already not happy with their situations. Taking a car to a body shop is not nearly as much fun as going to an ice cream shop. It is a challenge to provide customer value in this type of situation. It does not take much to push an already unhappy person into the category of very unhappy customer.

So what’s with the letter? I vaguely remember something about a warranty. I think it is probably going beyond what body shop customers expect to write a letter encouraging them to go over their cars and look for problems. Most people probably want to forget their accident and everything that went along with it. That includes the warranty. If something comes loose or the paint peels, most people figure that is just part of the game. This sort of follow up is not common. When I shop for goods or services, I expect things to work and for services to be performed as promised. I consider these things to be the minimum that a business should do.

Unfortunately, most businesses seem to be happy with the minimum. Maybe their customers don’t care. I do care, and I do business with firms that don’t do the minimum. Ellis and Salazar finished the job when they said they would, and my Prius looked like new. I expected that. Now a year later, they have taken the time to check on me. I did not expect that. I hope I never need body work done on a car again, but if I do, then I will take my car to Ellis and Salazar.

So what is the point? Am I simply writing an endorsement for a body shop? No. I’m trying to illustrate that excellent customer service is as simple as doing the expected and then just a little more. It does not even have to cost much. The reminder letter I received cost less than a dollar to mail, and it is probably done automatically. Even so, it made me feel important as a customer. That is willingness to go the extra step, and that is excellent customer service.