This morning was an interesting one.  It was an extremely windy night last night in metro-Denver.  It was howling, the dog door was opening and closing on it's own.  The trees were creaking and branches from the shrubs were rubbing against the windows.  All in all, a little eerie and quite loud.

I got up this morning to all this noise and started the kettle for a cup of tea.  I sat down at my computer to check email, look at the weather, and read the headlines in the news.  Sitting here, I suddenly heard a cracking sound so loud that I nearly jumped out my skin--it was 7 am.  I was sure that a tree had hit the back of the house.  It was loud enough that my kid woke up yelling, my wife was up like a shot, and the dogs nearly had a conniption.

Outside, I started looking around and found a piece of flashing hanging off the side of the house. It was dangling from a single nail.  I kept looking around for the source of the noise when I looked up slowly and pointed at our roof to my wife.

The wind had peeled about 1/8th of the shingle from the roof and folded it over toward the centre of the roof exposing the underlayment.

We called the insurance company and got in touch with a roofer.  The insurance--at 8 am--assured us that an inspector would contact us by the end of the day.  The roofer said he would be here by afternoon to assess the damage.  The roofer arrived, but no insurance inspector.

This is frustrating and reminds me how important it is to follow through with something when you say it to a client.  There is nothing more maddening to a client when they are promised a call and all they get is a silent phone.  What would it take to make us feel less exposed right now?  Five minutes of, "I'm sorry, there are lots of damaged homes.  I can't talk right now, but how about at x o-clock tomorrow?"

From insurance, to roofers, to software, to hardware, deliveries, and store clerks--follow through with what you say you'll do.  You'll make your customers happy.