Customer Relations
Navigating Uncharted Waters
Rich Goldberg
President, Warm Thoughts
Communications, Inc.
We enter the heating season in uncharted waters
with sharks circling. Between the extraordinary
spike in prices, troubling supply issues, lingering
COVID-19 risks impacting your workforce and difficulty
getting drivers and techs, you might be tempted to simply
act on Jimmy Buffet’s advice—It’s five o’clock somewhere.
Warm Thoughts just finished another round of Breakthrough
Groups and drilled into most of these issues. I
wish I had a silver bullet, but it feels like I’m packing
BBs right now. Still, I have some advice to share that
may prove helpful.
Over communicate with your
customers
Everyone’s phones are lighting up, and calls that might
have taken five minutes are now taking 15. You can reduce
that and change the tenor of the conversations (and
increase retention) by emailing/snail-mailing/Facebookposting
more often than normal. You need to work harder
to hold onto customers’ goodwill. They need to know that:
• You are on their side.
• Even if your options are limited, you feel their pain.
• You hate when prices spike and volatility is off the
charts.
• You also think it’s ridiculous that OPEC announced
a production cut, and three days later, your suppliers
have increased their rates by $0.70.
We’ve seen this work time and time again. If you don’t
do it, you are only hurting yourself.
Live to fight another day
You will lose customers this Fall; there is no two ways
about it. Don’t lose your business or work for free.
When prices get this high, people who never bothered to
shop for a lower rate start doing so. If you set your prices
too low, don’t follow the market up quickly or charge too
little for service, you put your business in jeopardy. I
keep seeing examples of this, mostly because business
owners are:
a. listening to their customer service people too much and
b. personally hate charging customers so much. They
start creating reasons for delays, hoping things will return
to normal.
You are already going to see per-household reductions in
gallons because of conservation and ancillary heat sources.
What happens if the Winter is warmer than normal or prices
go even higher? Borrowing costs are higher. Receivables
will slow down. People will want to get 100- or 125-gallon
deliveries. All your wages are higher.
The bottom line is that you have to be a price hawk this
year with oil, service and fees. You can get more customers
by increasing your advertising budget next year. It could
take years to recover from some of the potential financial
disasters lurking behind the corners this year.
Your people are going to get beaten up by
customers
Show them some love and help give them answers to the
hard questions they are being asked. It’s tough for them
to have to hear people’s challenging stories day
after day. Give them a bonus, bring a massage
therapist into the office to give chair massages,
give them extra days off in Spring and Summer,
etc. Work harder to support morale.
Get on the phone quicker with
customers who exceed their credit
terms
Text messages also seem to be more effective
than E-mail in generating responses. Payment
collection will need much more of your
focus this year, but you already knew that.
You are unsung heroes who kill yourselves
to take care of your neighbors but are unfairly
blamed for things far outside your
control. I’ve been at this for over 30 years
and have never been prouder of the people
and companies I work for. Hang in there! ICM
ICM/November/December 2022 23
Photo: Andrea Piacquadio at pexels.com