The powerful importance of scheduling well

Later this morning a truck will roll into my driveway, manned by an individual who will install a new dishwasher in the kitchen of the home my wife and I share.

This is kind of a big deal. For the first time in our more than three decades together, my wife has selected and purchased a major appliance. Until now that was a chore that fit snuggly into the husband category. But she’s growing and expanding her horizons, so this one was all her.

I mention this because I was a couple hours into my daily schedule this morning when I got a call. I was in the car, so I let the car pick it up. The modern convenience of the age we live in amazes me. The voice on the other end of the line didn’t identify himself, but he did let me know he would be at my house in less than an hour to install the dishwasher.

Less than an hour? That’s the lead time we give customers now? I asked the obvious question, since I was a substantial distance from my home when the call came in. “Why didn’t somebody call to schedule a day with me?” The answer was simple and non-responsive: “I’ll be there in less than an hour, okay.”

This is no way to run a service business. The number of cancellations, rescheduled installs, and annoyed customers should give the provider plenty of evidence that it’s time for them to change their ways. Clearly that hasn’t happened yet.

Although there will be an effect on the provider’s bottom line. Inconvenienced customers don’t write glowing reviews on Yelp. Nor do they recommend the offending business to their friends and neighbors.

Word of mouth advertising and marketing is a powerful tool. It cuts both ways, though. Positive recommendations can help make a business successful. Negative reviews, not so much.

This lesson about scheduling and treating the customer with respect is one I learned long ago as a flight instructor. Like the appliance installer, the CFI is a service provider. We’re not selling a product. Our stock in trade is to supply expertise for the benefit of others. We charge the customer a specified dollar amount for that service. If the service is good, customers come back. If the service is lacking, customers tend to go elsewhere.

As service providers we win or lose based on the quality and timeliness of the service we provide.

Even when I worked as an independent contractor for a flight school, I was encouraged to schedule my time in a way that left me ready for the customer when they arrived for their lesson. Perhaps “encouraged” is an inappropriate word to describe the situation. “Required” is closer to the truth. An entirely appropriate standard, I think. It set a tone that has served me well.

Years later I managed a small flight school that employed two flight instructors. Nice folks, both of them. One man, one woman. Both were qualified flight instructors who had everything it takes to be successful — except for one thing. They were horrible at scheduling their flight time slots. Every day they found themselves on time for their first student, then slightly late for their second. By the time they got to their last student of the day they were so out of whack with their written schedule I couldn’t see much purpose in writing things down at all.

Their work habits left them with annoyed clients who waited as much as an hour for their CFI to finish up with the prior student — an issue that rightly spilled over to reflect on the flight school itself.

When I recognized the problem, I sat the two CFIs down and made it clear my expectation was that they would be free and fully available to their clients at the scheduled time, every time. In response I got a lot of excuses about late student arrivals, busy traffic patterns, headwinds, and paperwork requirements. All of which have merit, but none have any real bearing on the issue.

They were in the habit of scheduling two-hour blocks for instructional flights, back-to-back. The first student was scheduled for 8 a.m., the second for 10 a.m., sometimes a third was scheduled for noon. Their prior supervisor had been fine with that. I was not. Because while it all looks good in theory, in practice the CFI would be a few minutes late for the 10 a.m. student. They’d be as much as half an hour late for the student scheduled at noon. And that was if they didn’t take a bathroom break or grab a bite to eat before launching off on their third flight of the day.

This scheduling habit also left precious little time for essential practices like pre-flight briefs and post-flight debriefs. In short, an ingrained scheduling procedure that didn’t work was being continued out of habit, regardless of the negative impact it was having on the students, the business as a whole, and the CFIs themselves.

Change is hard. Anyone who has ever tried to slip 30 minutes of regular exercise into their day knows that. If you’ve ever tried to quit smoking, cut back on your sugar intake, or give up coffee cold turkey you know the truth. Change is challenging. Yet, it is of critical importance to each of us as we go through life for reasons personal and professional.

My advice? Take the time to review how you’re managing your schedule. If you can honestly say you’re serving your customers, your employer, your family, and friends at a high level, then good for you. Carry on. But if you find you are lacking in some aspect of your time management, don’t beat yourself up about it. Change your plans, change your standard practices, and see if things don’t start to get better.

That’s what learning is all about: Experience, learn, modify behavior, evaluate. It’s really not that complicated. But those four steps can really improve our lives and our professional pursuits if we lock into them.

And by the way, I made it home in time to meet the dishwasher installer. Unfortunately, he hasn’t arrived yet. He’s late. Sheesh.