We just moved house. You can probably empathise—so many logistics to arrange and tiny details to keep in your head, no matter how much help you have.

By 3pm on moving day we had Internet (no mean feat). At about 9pm we realised there was no hot water. Too late to contact anyone of course, so it was cold showers all round. But hey, we had Internet. Day two involved trying to reset the boiler and finding the contact details of the guy who had installed it. Two calls, some over the phone instructions later and we were up and running.

While I was standing in that cold shower it struck me that it would be very easy for the real estate agent who sells a property to add value to the transaction for both buyer and seller, by thinking about what the customer is about to do next. The agent could create a simple fill-in-the-blanks pro-forma inviting the seller to list contact details of tradespeople who have worked on or maintained the property, anyone from the window cleaner to the company who installed the security system. The agent would also avoid having to pick up enquires about these things in the weeks following the sale.

Our customer service often stops at the point of sale or delivery, when we think the transaction has ended. It doesn’t have to. Imagine a world where little boys were happier on Christmas day because people were reminded to buy batteries for the remote control car they ordered. A place where no new lamp arrived without a light bulb and nobody had a cold shower on moving day.

What is your customer about to do next and help him to do it?

Image by Kelly Polizzi.