Working at Home on the Internet

Reliability in Business

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I am having a Bad personal customer experience at present. Without going into too many details, we had contracted a self-employed handyman with a good reputation to install a Front Door and a Storm Door at our house. Once you take down the old doors, you need to install the new ones That Day.

Last week we had him come in to replace the doors. He took the old ones out and partially installed the Front Door. The door is in and on hinges, it even has locks, but none of the seals are totally installed. We had a Big Thunderstorm the other day and rain came in through the unfinished portions. After calling him, he came in and installed the Storm Door (not fininshing the Front Door).

The Storm Door was finally hung the other day (after the rain) but it won’t close properly since installation. So, now I have two partially installed doors that don’t close or seal correctly. The contractor hasn’t shown up at all for the last two days. It’s not that he can’t do the job, but I can’t depend on him to show up to do it at all. Right now, I am looking for someone to replace one unreliable contractor.

When you work for yourself, whether it is online, off-line, from home, out of your home, or even if you work out of your garage, something a customer will judge you by is Reliability.

A customer will come to you for a reason. They may like your product, your knowledge or how well a job looks when it is done. But what a lot of self-employed people don’t consider is how much a customer may rely on them doing their job. The customer hired you to do a job because (s)he needs it done.

If you don’t consider working for yourself a job, a commitment to doing something you contracted to do, then you shouldn’t be self-employed.

Although you may not have all the time constraints of a deadline, you should always be consistant. Without saying, being consistant doesn’t mean always being late or not fininshing something on time. It means that if you commit to doing something within a certain timeframe, you should make every effort to keep it.

To me, Reliability and Dependibility are the most important things a Business can have. Sometimes Ability can come in third, because there are a lot of people who can do the job, but if they don’t show up, what’s the point in hiring them in the first place?

Have you had any experiences with an Unreliable Business?

July 26th, 2006 at 02:48pm | Posted by Joe | Attitude, Rants, Work at Home | reader remarks | Print This Post