Lessons from Heating an Old House

I have a friend – let’s call him Joe Landlord, who owns and lives in an old house that is separated into several apartments. As any new business owner, Joe is busy learning lessons the hard way. He told me a story about a couple of lessons he learned, or more accurately re-learned, recently about customer service and knowledge management.

The house and apartments are heated by a hot water radiator system that is huge and complex and as finicky as a fat cat. One night recently, Joe’s new tenants called and said they were cold and the radiators were, too. So, he went to see his tenants and promptly made his two mistakes. Joe confidently told his tenants not to worry, he’d have them flooded with warmth in no time at all and then he opened the valves to all the radiators in their apartment.

When he checked in a few hours later, the radiators hadn’t warmed a degree and Joe noticed that his tenants’ faces seemed kind of cold, too. No longer confident, Joe started thinking more carefully.

It didn’t take long before he remembered some advice a heating technician had given him: it is a good idea to warm up this huge radiator system gradually, one radiator at a time. If you open too many radiators too soon you ask the boiler to warm an awful lot of water all at once. In his haste to provide his tenants with warmth, he had asked the system to do something that just wouldn’t be done soon.

Joe ran to see the tenants with his new news. “Warmth is coming,” he promised! Do you blame the chilly tenants for not really believing him? They didn’t, and they went to bed cold. Happily, the apartment finally warmed up in the night.

Lesson learned? Joe tells me he is going to remember the basic customer service lesson to not over-promise, which can lead customers to have higher than reasonable expectations and certain disappointment. Secondly, Joe wants to make sure he doesn’t have to re-learn this lesson again. He is making a checklist to remind himself of things to remember each season. This simple, but good idea is a perfect example managing knowledge on a small scale.
-Marc