Under-promise and Over-deliver

Telling customers what they want to hear rather than what they should hear is a sure way to lose them. Some employees have a terrible habit of making promises that they or their company can't keep. In a nut shell, they over-promise and then can't deliver on that promise.
There aren't many things that agitate customers more than to be told something will be done and then not have it happen. When this happens, the employee is essentially lying to the customer, or so it is perceived. There are a number of reasons that things don't get handled as promised including an inability to say no or deliver bad news, laziness, an uncaring attitude and lack of information. The first reason is at least understandable while the others are not.

A business must instill an employee discipline to serve customers at a very high level. To do this, customers need to feel that they are being told the truth. When an employee over-promises and under-delivers, the credibility of the employee and the company are negatively impacted.
A motto that some customer-oriented businesses adhere to is "under-promise and over-deliver". Simply put this means that they tell the customer the truth, are conservative in their estimates of when something will happen and work hard to deliver as promised or ahead of schedule. Unfortunately, we don't find many companies that fall into this category.

Developing a culture of this nature requires hiring the right people and instilling in them the need to gather as much information as needed before making promises to customers, to make conservative estimates of when the desired action will be completed and to work very hard to ensure that the action is delivered as promised. This requires follow up and attention to detail as well as an attitude that puts the customer first.

If your business does not have this type of culture, it's time to evaluate where there are problems and to develop a training and accountability framework for customer service performance. Your managers and supervisors must understand how to manage a culture that calls for under-promising and over-delivering. They need to be keenly aware that the life blood of your organization depends on instilling this type of culture.