Judgement Call

Everything was fine until one of our clients called.

"Hi Amy. I want to confirm my appointment today with Megan at 1:00 at the Northwest office." I scan the calendar. Not there.
"I'm sorry, Jim...you aren't in the calendar for today..."
"Well I made this appointment months ago, back when we were scheduling for several dates at one time."
"Let me see...do you remember who you were talking to about his appointment?" I was stalling and sifting through emails, trying to make sure that this was in fact our mistake.
"I think it was [so-and-so],"  he said. I continued to look while he talked."This is the second time there's been a screw-up," he sighed.
"Let me see what I can do..."
I put him on hold and sure enough. There was the email. He had scheduled the appointment back in September. There was his request and it wasn't put in, and now someone else was in his slot. When we no-show on someone, policy is to give them a free treatment. Loss of income. Not good.

Megan, his therapist, came into the room then. She's a very up-beat, smiley person so I let her talk to him while I tried to coordinate something... she's at location A for one hour...needs travel time...he wants an hour and a half...she could be there at 3:30...two and a half hours later than scheduled, but she can do it... With Megan talking, he seemed to be more flexible and we put him into a later slot. She hung up the phone but the job wasn't done. If I were him, this is what I'd be thinking come payment time:
"You messed up my treatment appointments twice and now I'm taking one today at a later time than I had originally scheduled...and you want me to pay full price even though I was inconvenienced...again. Why should I book with you if I can't be sure I'm actually going to get a massage when I ask for one?"Jim's a nice a guy and he never said any of that, but even nice people get frustrated if they don't get the service they're paying for.

Of course the owner was not around and left me to exercise judgement. I went back and forth weighing monetary gain and loss with client satisfaction gain and loss, trying to find a balance between the two. I realized in the short-term that I could skip the discount and hope Megan would smooth things over. She's good at that. We'd get paid for a full treatment, but he would not entirely trust us the next time he did. OR I could give him a discount, maybe get an irritated reaction from my superior when she came in, but the client would walk away happy. This would be so much easier if my boss were predictable - I would at least know the consequences of my actions.

I thought everything over several times. The bottom line, though, was doing whatever would restore the client's trust with us. Trust is an intangible entity that you can't quantify into numbers, but it's that thing that gives you numbers (brings people in) in the first place. So I gave him a fair (and pretty nice) discount.

A few hours after I left work, I checked in with Megan, asking if Jim was satisfied with his treatment.
"Very," she said. "He said we are great. He was very surprised."
"Oh good. I'm so glad. Thank you." Client saved.
"Thank you for helping me with this. I really appreciate it." She added.
"Helping take care of the client?" I was confused...why would she thank me? This is what I do.
"Yes, ma'am."
"You're welcome...but it is my job."
"Not everyone does their job. You are wonderful at what you do and you are appreciated for it."

This was one of those moments when I felt accomplishment in my work and I sensed a turning point in my own confidence in my level of responsibility. At the end of the day, I'm glad I made the judgement call I did...and I felt I could defend it. The best part, though, was being recognized for the risk I took and being recognized for putting a person above money. That doesn't always happen, so I definitely appreciated it.