Professional Courtesy and why it Matters to the Consumer

When people ask friends and neighbors for referrals on services, they are usually just concerned with the way the company in question treats its customers. They normally don’t question how they act towards their colleagues and competitors. The problem with this logic is that businesses these days are remarkably interdependent. When you work with a real estate agent to purchase or rent a home, he or she will likely have to work with another agent to get the deal done. Likewise, when you contract a moving company for relocation it is quite possible that that business will have to work with others in the field to get that job done. This can include the advertising firms that connect the movers with their customers (as in many of the online moving directories), the sales people/estimators, the dispatchers who are responsible for the logistical details, and even other agents as maybe required for special circumstances.

I bring this up because of a recent experience with a very angry and vulgar mover based out of Vermont. As you can see with our website, we post information about movers in different cities so as to assist our customers in finding local businesses. This way if you are in Florida you can find Florida local movers; if you are in Vermont you can find Vermont local movers, and so forth. One certain Vermont mover, however, was not happy to be listed without a direct link pointing back to his site. He called our office afterhours using the kind of profanity that would make a sailor blush to a female who answered the call. Despite his vulgar insults she explained that while it was not our policy to provide links for all the movers in our listing, she would remove that moving company’s listing if he so desired. His angry rant did not quite end there. She requested the page url, and he proceeded to threaten her and insist she should know it (very difficult when you have over 200,000 pages). She took the verbal abuse in stride and finally coaxed it out of him and removed the listing.

We were certainly not customers of this mover, but this ordeal made me wonder how a company with such a lack of professional courtesy treats its customers. I imagine that if everything goes smooth and the customer does not complain it is possible that everyone will walk away satisfied with the moving experience. However, if the customer does have an issue with something, how will this mover react? It seems as though he is short on patience and temper, and acts on impulse and aggression. While the importance of professional courtesy from the customer’s standpoint is just a theory of mine, I would not want to test it with the man who has all of my belongings in his truck.

Move easy!

P.Harris

http://www.Localmovers.com/