Today's story is a great one for me to share, because it's about a time when I made some mistakes and thought I had lost a client forever, only to have them give me a second chance to redeem myself. In our business we more often have trouble with customer service than we do with the satisfaction in our actual work, but obviously we strive for both of these things to be top notch.
Last September Charlie and I shot our first solo wedding together as Have Heart Photography for a couple of friends from our church. The pictures were fabulous and we were happy to have them as friends. A few months later the bride e-mailed me to ask if we would be available to shoot her companies Holiday Gala that December. She works for a financial consulting company, and most of their clients are wealthy business owners. She specified that they would like individual portraits of each family as they arrived at the gala, and that they would like to send out the photo's in a paper frame to each family with their Christmas cards. The event was on a Saturday evening, and she said they would like to have the prints and frames all ready to send out by the following Wednesday.
We were excited to shoot the event as we had never done anything like it before. Our inexperience would prove a challenging obstacle, but what is your first time if not a learning experience? We rented a single strobe light that ended up not being enough lighting for the extremely dark corner we were placed in. This forced me to spend extra time editing each photo to lift the shadows to where they needed to be.
But here is where my real mistake took place. We did not know how many families to expect, so we held off on ordering the frames until after the gala. Our photo printing lab consistently ships prints in one day, so we knew that as long as we placed the order by Monday, there would be no problem. It was not the same case for the frames, however. The shipping costs for two day shipping were outrageous, over $100. I let our client know that even at that price, the frames were not guaranteed to be there by Wednesday. She stated that they really needed to send them out by the end of the week, and were willing to pay extra to do so. The company ended up paying an extra shipping fee, but the frames did not arrive until Friday.
I felt so awful that I did not deliver what I had promised that I ended up giving them a large discount on what they owed us. I was sure that I had left a poor impression in their minds and that I had possibly burned a bridge with a repeat client.
Imagine my shock when a few months ago, the same client contacted us to shoot their gala again this year. I was thrilled to have a chance at redemption! She said they wanted the same things as last year, and she didn't even mention the mishap.
The event took place last Saturday and I was so much less stressed out than the previous year. We rented two lights and I barely had to edit the family portraits. I ordered the frames last week, and since we didn't have an official headcount, I ordered plenty extra. On Sunday night I ordered all of the family pictures and sent them to our printing lab and had them shipped directly to my clients and they arrived Tuesday afternoon. I finished up the rest of the pictures that night, and I dropped off the frames and DVD on Wednesday. Because of my planning, it didn't even feel rushed or hard to pull off.
This may not seem like a huge mistake in your eyes, but in my opinion, great customer service is doing what you say you're going to do, and beyond. Not only did I not follow through last year on what I said I would do, but I inconvenienced by clients because of my poor planning. This is a great example of how you not only produce better work over time, but you also learn how to give your clients a better experience and manage your business more efficiently.
Merry Christmas!
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