I’d do my own laundry, but there’s no laundromat where we live in Mexico City.

Instead, once a week or so, I take the bag of laundry down the street to one of the two family-run laundry services on our block. I weigh the clothes with the washerwoman, I wait to receive my receipt, and then I ask the all-important question: “When can I pick up the clothes?”

At one laundry, the washerwoman assures me that the clothes will be ready tomorrow.

At the other laundry, the washerwoman says she expects that the clothes will be ready in two days, but if it’s Friday or Saturday, they’ll be ready on Monday.

The clothes are NEVER ready tomorrow at Laundry A. I wouldn’t mind if it wasn’t done for two or three days, but she always promises that it will be ready the next day and it never is. There’s always a problem: the electricity was off (true); the washerwoman’s mother-in-law forgot to transfer my clothes from the washer to the dryer (also true); and they had more work than they expected (true, too). All this even though I pay in advance and in full. The washerwoman is nice, she remembers my name, and she even delivers the clothes a half block when they’re ready. The problem is, though, that the laundry is never done when she says it is, and inevitably I stop whatever I’m doing or run back home breathless to pick up my clothes by 6 on the day she said they’d be ready.

The clothes are ALWAYS ready at Laundry B. Maybe there was a problem, but the washerwoman doesn’t make it my problem. If I try to pay in advance, she won’t accept my money. Sometimes she doesn’t have change for a 200 peso bill, and if that’s the case, she makes a note on my receipt and asks me to come back when I have exact change. She remembers my name, too.

Now which laundry do you think I patronize?

And what can we learn from this case study?

The first lesson is to underpromise and overdeliver. If you’ve got a track record of not being able to deliver quickly, that’s fine. Plenty of folks specialize in slowness. But don’t tell your customer what they want to hear. Tell the customer the truth. That way, if you finish faster, the customer will be pleasantly surprised.

The second lesson is to avoid making your problem the customer’s problem. We all already have enough problems, and if we’re paying for a service, we especially don’t want to take on the business owner’s problems.

The third lesson is to develop a relationship of trust with the customer. Nothing is better for developing loyalty.

And the final lesson is to not wait until the last minute to drop off your laundry. Note to self.

Photo: kervinchong