Customer Satisfaction Is Like Watching Paint Dry

(I work for a repair shop that has quite a good reputation for fixing cars that have been in accidents. We have a customer who needs to get one of her doors replaced. When you order a new door, it doesn’t come painted, so we need to do that in the shop. The colour is a pretty standard, darker colour and there is not much to mess up with that, especially because my coworkers are highly skilled and specifically trained for paint jobs. The customer, however, is not satisfied at all when she comes to pick up her car.)

Customer: “Have you even looked at the car? It looks horrible! The door is much darker than the rest of the car! You need to redo that. This is unacceptable!”

(One of my other coworkers and I go out to see for ourselves while the customer waits inside.)

Me: “I honestly don’t see anything wrong with that, do you?”

Coworker: “No. It was painted nicely. I guess it seems darker to her because of the bad weather today. Also, the new door is clean, whereas the rest of the car is a bit dusty.”

(I have to mention that we usually wash the customers’ cars before we return them, but you shouldn’t do that to a freshly-painted car.)

Coworker: *after a bit of thinking* “Tell her we’ll fix it. She can come back tomorrow to pick it up.”

(The next day, we had someone hand wash the car. To our delight, the sun came out, and we placed the car with the painted side facing the sun. When the customer came to pick it up, everything was fine, but she didn’t leave without the classic, “Why was that so hard?”. We had a good laugh afterward.)