How Grunder Landscaping Co. Fixed Mistakes

What do you do when your crew, or your sales team, messes up?

Mistakes happen, I make them often myself, and I think more important than anything is the way that you handle it after the mistake. Just so you know I'm telling the truth just within the last week at Grunder Landscaping Co., we:

Mowed a Property Badly
One of our clients called us because last week's mow job was uneven and some edges were missed. We didn't get excited, we didn't lose our temper with our team, and we apologized to the client and let them know we'd be back out the next day to fix it. 

Then on Thursday, the Group Leader overseeing the crew met the team on that property to go back over the basics of mowing to make sure we don't run into this issue again. 

What's important:

• We communicated with the client on how we would make this issue right, and we thanked them for letting us know. Feedback is a gift; it lets us save the relationship. 
• We asked questions of our team. It's possible the mower blade was bent, or there was some other issue that caused this outside of human error.
• When we diagnosed that the issue was just inexperience, we did on-the-job training to prevent the issue from repeating itself.

Left One of Our Racks on the Delivery Truck
We had 12 racks of floral that should've been delivered but realized after the delivery truck left that only 11 racks made it off the truck. Unfortunately, we couldn't get the truck back to us in time to stick to our schedule, and we had to reschedule the floral installation for one of our clients. 

What's important:

• This was a very fixable problem, but it COULD BE a big deal to our client, and therefore, we need to make it a big deal to us too. 
• The salesperson on this account was on vacation, so Seth Pflum, our COO, called this client to let her know what happened as soon as we realized we would have to reschedule. Normally, the salesperson would call the client.
• We didn't throw anyone under the bus or blame our vendor. We just explained to the client that we had a mix-up in the yard, that we're sorry, and that we had a plan to make it right.

Mistakes are part of life, and they're part of business too. What's important is how you handle it when they happen, both within your team and with your clients. It can be the key to maintaining a positive company culture and relationships with clients who will stick with your company for years to come. 

The Russell Team will detail their own process for managing issues and mistakes to keep relationships with their clients strong during our visit to their operation on June 6-7 as part of our Field Trip in partnership with NALP. Or, join us at one of our Grunder Landscaping Co. Field Trips this fall to see how our team operates, and how we avoid the mistakes we can and fix the ones we can't. 

I can't wait to learn from what they do and bring some new ideas back to Grunder Landscaping Co. Our slogan is Where Service is ALWAYS in Season^©, so whatever we can do to delight our clients, even when a mistake gets made, is a win for our company strategy. 

Happy Memorial Day Weekend, I'll talk to you next week!

Marty Grunder
President & CEO
The Grow Group & Grunder Landscaping Co. 

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