Proprietary Information

You work hard every day to ensure that your business survives during the slow times and thrives when your services are in high demand. You’re pulled one way by employees who constantly want more without providing more value, and another by bureaucratic requirements that lessen your ability to increase employee compensation. The last thing you need is to alienate your customers … the glue holding the whole thing together. Monday morning: The phones start ringing, it’s the usual organized chaos and during it all a nice man calls asking about an invoice. He has the invoice number but says he can’t quite decipher the scribbled dollar amount at the bottom. I’ve talked to the guys and stressed the importance of providing a clean, clearly written invoice but sometimes it just doesn’t happen. So no problem, I punch the invoice number into the computer and give him what he’s asking for and go back to work. Three days later: This time the phone call is from one of my repair shop customers, it’s the owner and he’s not happy. He says that someone at my place of business gave one of his customers information about an invoice that was charged to him … it was the original dollar amount from that invoice. As usual he’d added a modest mark-up to the invoice and his customer was calling to ask, “Why was the repair shop trying to rip him off?” If you’re in business you don’t stay in business long if you don’t charge more than what you pay for your products and services. But some customers don’t understand that … maybe they don’t get the math or just don’t care. Whatever it was, this guy wasn’t interested in building relationships; he wanted to squeeze every last dime he could get from the transaction. I assured the repair-shop owner that no one here would ever do that. “We don’t give out that type of information. It’s proprietary,” I said, and told him that I would ask everyone to be sure it didn’t happen. The next 30 minutes were spent talking to the employees. I was on a quest to learn if anyone had given out information they shouldn’t have. I grilled everyone with no success. They didn’t know what the heck I was talking about. So I decided to go to the source; I called the guy who claimed we gave out the information. One of two things was going to happen: I was either going to find out who leaked the information, or I was going to expose this guy as a liar. Neither one happened. Instead, you guessed it—I had been taken, duped from the get-go. As the conversation began, I recognized his voice and realized that I was the dolt who had given him the information. The nice man I’d spoken to earlier in the week was actually the cheapskate trying to get a deal. Somehow he’d gotten a copy of the invoice and deceived me into giving him the information he wanted. Hanging my head in shame, I first apologized to everyone at our place and then called the repair shop to apologize, saying, “I wouldn’t blame you if you never call us again.” This time it wasn’t an employee, or a bureaucrat causing the problem. It was me. But how do you solve this problem? How do you stop something like this from happening again? Do you ask for a photo ID before you’ll release any information? Require a retina scan and a copy of their dental records before they get the info they’re looking for? No I don’t think that’s necessary; I’ll just be a little more careful next time and learn some tricks of my own. Don Archer lives and works in Jefferson City, Mo., where he and his wife, Brenda, own and operate Broadway Wrecker, a 12-truck operation that’s been in business since the 1950s.