Note: Lessons from The Overlook is a periodic update on lessons learned from owning a vacation rental property in the Southern California mountain town of Idyllwild. It's a hands-on opportunity to apply some of the techniques I advise my clients to use. You can find past updates here.

Finding a plumber for The Overlook is a struggle.

We've had a slight leak under the kitchen sink for two months. There's just one reliable plumber in town, and he's busy.

Electricians are equally scarce. It took six weeks for the one recommended electrician to fix a light. Another three months for him to complete the repair when the light still wasn't working.

Finding a reliable, competent handyperson is next to impossible. We’ve gone through several who aren’t reliable, aren’t competent, or both. It recently took three months to get a gate fixed.

These experiences prove customers don't always have the clout they think they'd do. The Overlook is in a remote mountain town where having just one option for a variety of services means you can't easily take your business somewhere else.

The uncomfortable reality is great customer service often requires leverage.

All this snow melted before we could get the light above the barn doors fixed.

What is customer service leverage?

Leverage is power. In customer service, it's the power to set the terms of the relationship, such as when a service will be performed, how much it will cost, and whether you have to be nice.

In May 2021, grocers and restaurants struggled to get food because their suppliers faced labor shortages, scarce supplies, and soaring transportation costs. The largest customers, such as Walmart and Sysco, used their leverage to get more deliveries on-time.

Culturally, people assume the customer always has the power (at least in the United States). We live by the terribly misguided and historically inaccurate phrase, "The customer is always right."

The assumption behind this belief system is a customer can take their business to an eager competitor at any time if they aren't treated right. Tell that to the two HVAC repair companies near The Overlook. One of them is owned by a jerk who actively cheats customers, which keeps the other company too busy to respond quickly.

There's another issue with the idea that customers always have leverage: customers often interact with an employee, not the business owner.

An angry customer who threatens to never come back might be a gift to the offending employee. The employee rids themselves of a person they find annoying and unpleasant when an angry customer storms off. Meanwhile, the employee's pay won't be different and they won't suffer a change in job security (at least not in the short term).

How can leverage affect customer service?

Two broad trends are likely to happen when customers lack leverage. The first is a short-term impact, while the other is more long-term.

In the short-term, service suffers.

Customers have to pay more for less. Cable companies had an iron grip on our televisions for years, causing customers to pay steadily increasing fees.

Customers begrudgingly accept poor service. Many travelers have vowed never to fly a certain airline, until they realize that airline offers the only low-cost, direct flights to their destination.

There's also a downstream affect. Many cabins that compete with The Overlook have difficulty keeping up with their maintenance because qualified plumbers, electricians, and handypeople are so scarce. This creates a poor experience for their guests.

In the long-term, the market can change.

Customers alter their habits. People watch far less live television than they did just a few years ago, making streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and Prime a viable alternative to traditional cable.

Competitors eventually enter the market. Southwest Airlines was created to challenge legacy carriers by offering low fares for convenient flights.

Customers might leave the market altogether. We've noticed an uptick in vacation rental cabins for sale in Idyllwild, in part because owners have struggled to keep up.

How can customers overcome a lack of leverage?

We've employed two strategies at The Overlook to overcome our lack of leverage. The first is to build relationships. You can get a lot more done when you're nice.

Normally, we'd get pretty upset if a plumber didn't show up. In this case, we continue to be polite and friendly, knowing the plumber will take care of the leak eventually. Because we're patient now, we also know from past experience that he'll come out right away if we had an emergency.

The other tactic we use is to be easy to do business with. We try to make make having us as a customer advantageous for service providers.

For example, we've started using a contractor to do small jobs, like fix our gate. He normally does much larger projects, such as home remodels, but he's willing to work with us because we're flexible.

Contractors often have small gaps in their workday while waiting for supplies to arrive at the job site or some other delay. A small job at The Overlook allows the contractor to keep his crew busy for a few hours on a day when he'd normally have to send people home early.

So having us as a customer creates an advantage for the contractor.

The lesson is you sometimes have to find your own leverage in a customer service relationship. For us, we’ve often had to put pride aside and re-focus on what matters most: ensuring our guests have a great experience.