A phone call about a campsite turned into the clearest customer-service lesson I have had in a while.
We booked a campsite for the 4th of July weekend. Somewhere in the chaos I called to ask if we could check in early, just to get a jump on the weekend.
The woman called me back, and before we even got to my actual question, she said, “Well, you booked online, so that just puts you anywhere. You’re probably going to need an extra fifty feet of electrical cable and fifty feet of water hose.”
I paused. “Okay. Did that say that anywhere in the emails we got from you?”
Her answer: somewhere in one of the emails, buried in the terms, it says you may need it. Because booking online does not assign you a specific spot, it just drops you in an area, so you will probably need the extra length.
Here is where my brain snagged. “Might need it” and “definitely need it” are two completely different things. If booking online genuinely changes what I need to show up with, why is that tucked into a “may”? And if it matters that much, why let people book online at all without a quick heads up, or a call, to make sure they are actually prepared?
For the record, I did get my early check-in. Anytime after 9am, which was the whole reason I called.
I look at everything through a business owner lens now
My husband can confirm. I cannot un-see this stuff. And sitting with that campsite conversation, all I could think was, they set zero expectations with us. We booked, we paid, and that was it. The only mention was a “may need it” hidden in the fine print, with nothing about online booking being any different.
We happen to be fine. We are not new to camping, so we have an extra cable and an extra hose in the garage. No big deal. But a first-time camper renting from that same campground would show up on a holiday weekend, forty or fifty feet short of their hookups, with no idea why. Because the campground does not know you from Adam. They have no idea if you are a seasoned camper or someone doing this for the very first time.
If you don’t set the expectation, your client sets it for you
This part applies to every one of us, whether you sell house cleaning, massage, landscaping, or pest control.
When you leave things to chance, you hand your client a blank space, and their mind fills it in. If you never explain what “done” looks like, or what is and is not included, they decide for themselves, and then they measure you against a standard you never actually agreed to.
Here is a real one from my world. We do not include window washing in our cleans. It is a professional trade, with different training and different tools, and our technicians do not carry that equipment. But if I do not tell the homeowner that, and we show up and the windows are not done, in her mind we skipped part of the job. Now she is upset, and my technicians walked into a bad situation that was never their fault. That is not a cleaning failure. That is an expectations failure, and it started with me.
It works the same everywhere:
- Pest control: do they need to be home to let you in, or do you prefer they are not home? Say so.
- Lawn care: are you pruning the trees? Raking the leaves? Weeding the flower beds? If the answer is no, say so before you show up, not after.
Set the expectation, and you get far fewer complaints, far fewer one-star reviews, and much happier clients, because they know exactly what they are getting.
Questions worth asking yourself
Think about your own sales call:
- What questions are you actually asking?
- What are your non-negotiables, and do you say them out loud?
- Do you have a non-refundable deposit? A cancellation window? A cancellation fee?
- Are you communicating all of that with the client before you hang up, or are you hoping they read the fine print?
Because “it was in the email” is not the same as “we made sure you knew.” I learned that one from the customer’s seat this week, standing in a campsite I almost showed up to unprepared.
Setting expectations is a whole section in my sales training, because it is one of the fastest ways to cut complaints and protect your team. If you want it, it is a one-time purchase, not a subscription (I am as sick of those as you are). You buy it once, it is yours for good, and every future update is free.