The Bell on the Far Bank

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, down at the crossing where the river is too wide to bridge and everybody waits for the same boat.

Two ferrymen work either shore,
Same boat, same tide, same hour or more.
One buys a second boat and crew,
One nails a board up, painted new.
The wait's the same on either side.
Then why did all the trade divide?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two ferrymen on the river below the town I've never named, and their boats, in the old chorus, were equally sound. Same crossing, same fare, and on both sides the same complaint from everybody who used them: the waiting.

The first took the complaint at its word, as any reasonable man would, and set about the obvious cure. He borrowed against the business and bought a second boat and paid a second man, and the average wait on his side of the water fell by about a third.

It cost him a great deal and he never got it back, and the complaints continued. Fewer, but the same in kind, and delivered with the same irritation, which puzzled him considerably given what he had spent.

The second ferryman did four things over one weekend and they cost him about eleven shillings.

He nailed up a board at the top of the lane saying the boat leaves on the hour and the half hour, weather allowing.

He hung a bell on the far bank and told his passengers to ring it when they arrived, so that anybody standing at the top of the lane could hear that the boat had been called and was coming back.

He built a bench under the elm, which had always been the only shelter and had never had anywhere to sit.

And when he was delayed, he sent the boy up the lane to say so, and to say roughly how long.

His crossing was not one minute faster than it had been. And within a season, the trade had moved to his side of the water, and the carriers preferred him, and the complaints simply stopped.

The reason is worth stating exactly, because the first ferryman never worked it out and it ruined him. Nobody minds twenty minutes at the riverside on a fine morning. What people cannot bear is twenty minutes of not knowing whether it will be twenty minutes or an hour and a half, because uncertainty will not let a man sit down. It keeps him standing at the water's edge, looking, unable to fill the time or settle, and it is the standing and the not knowing that he remembers and complains about afterwards, and he will describe all of that to you as the wait being too long.

The second ferryman had not made the wait shorter. He had made it possible to sit down in.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

What people cannot bear is rarely the delay. It is not knowing. Which matters enormously to a small business, because shortening the wait usually means a second boat and a second man, and removing the uncertainty usually means a board, a bell and a bench. The two produce a similar improvement in how your customers feel and differ by a factor of a hundred in what they cost you.

So when a customer complains about time, take it seriously and do not take it literally. Ask what they were actually doing during it. Almost always you will find they were not waiting; they were wondering: whether the order had been received, whether the man was coming today or tomorrow, whether the thing was in hand or forgotten, whether they ought to ring and chase and be a nuisance. That last one is the great hidden cost of silence, since a customer forced to chase you has been made to do work on your behalf and feel awkward while doing it.

The cures are always cheap and always the same three. Say when: a named day or hour, even a generous one, beats a vague soon by a distance, and a customer told a fortnight will wait a fortnight quite happily. Show progress: any sign that the thing is moving, a note that it has begun, a word when it reaches the next stage. And say something when it slips, before they ask, which is the one that people find hardest and which buys more goodwill than anything else on the list.

And note what this does to the trade you can afford to do. The first ferryman answered a psychological problem with money he had to borrow. The second answered it with attention, which is the one thing a small business has more of than a large one. That is why this letter belongs to you rather than to your bigger rivals: you can send the boy up the lane, and they cannot.

Three questions, and think about a real customer waiting on you now:

1. What are your customers uncertain about right now? List the points in a job where somebody is wondering rather than waiting. There will be three or four, and each one is a place where a single sentence from you would do the work of a second boat.
2. Where is your board at the top of the lane? The plain statement of what happens and when, said before anybody has to ask. Written once, it serves every customer you will ever have, which makes it the cheapest thing in this letter.
3. Who tells them when it slips? If the answer is nobody, or the customer finds out by ringing, that is your whole complaints problem in one line. Fix that before you spend a penny on being faster.

The Answer to the Riddle

Why did the trade divide?

Because one man spent a fortune making the wait shorter and the other spent eleven shillings making it bearable, and the second is what the customers had been asking for all along without having the words for it. They said the wait was too long, and they meant that standing at the water's edge not knowing was miserable. A bench, a board and a bell answered the real complaint. A second boat answered the complaint as it had been worded, which is a very expensive way to be told you were listening to the wrong thing.

The verse:

They do not hate the hour they wait.
They hate not knowing when. That's all.
A board, a bell, a bench, a mate
Sent up the lane, will serve them all.

Until next time. Go and find the three points where your customers are wondering rather than waiting, and tell them something at each one.

P.S. This applies to your own quiet spells as much as to your customers'. A trade that knows what its next month looks like will bear a thin one calmly, and the same trade in the dark will panic and start discounting. It is the same lesson pointed inward, and the board at the top of your own lane is the order book you have actually written down.

Also in the archive: The Six Weeks Before Starting, Booked Until March and Unless I Hear Otherwise.