I travel a reasonable amount for work. I live 25 miles from London's Heathrow airport and 20 miles from London's Gatwick airport and neither is conveniently accessible to me using public transportation. As a result, I regularly need to use a taxi company to deliver me to and pick me up from the requisite terminal.
I have been using the same company for a couple of years now. For almost every single journey, they have been good enough that I would have given them a "completely satisfactory" rating. They were always on time to pick me up from my house, the were always waiting for me a little sign bearing my name when I came through the arrivals door with even when my flight was delayed, and their cars were always clean and comfortable.
Note that I said "almost" in the last paragraph.
There have been 3 occasions lately when they let me down. All three were for early pick-ups at my house (usually at 4:30am) for day trips to Dublin.
The first time, no car had arrived by 4:40am, so I called the company. The dispatcher called me right back and told me that the driver had gone to Bayseed Road instead of Hayseed Road (where I actually live). This seemed reasonable until I used Windows Live Local to discover that there wasn't a Bayseed Road within 200 miles of where I live; a little white lie to save face with the customer. He arrived at my house at 4:50, and I got to the airport with plenty of time to spare, so I let it go.
The second time, once again I had to call the company at about 4:40am. Again, the dispatcher called me back. "Sorry, the driver overslept, he's just getting ready and will be with you in 15 minutes". At least they were honest this time. Once again, he arrived at about 5am and I just made my flight (although I didn't get the decent breakfast I wanted). Being a fairly easy going guy, and given the continued excellent service the rest of the time, I let it go.
Yesterday, I had another 4:30am pick-up. At 4:35am, when the car didn't show, I called the office. No answer. And there was no answer the following 15 times I called between 4:35am and 5:00am. A no-show, and no explanation. At this point I had to take my own car, leaving my wife without it for the day; she had plans so this was pretty inconvenient. I called the office later on, and spoke to the owner of the company - he was very apologetic. He told me he would call back with the reason for the no-show. He didn't call me back.
Three strikes, they are out. I am now looking for other taxi companies to do business with, and the original company have lost business to the tune of £80 for every single trip I make. Despite a very high satisfaction rate for most of the journeys I made with them, just three failures were enough to make me "fire" them.
So how can you apply this story to your development team? For me, this was all about trust, about making a commitment and sticking to it. The taxi company was providing me a service, one that had potentially difficult consequences for me if it wasn't provided to a satisfactory level. Despite providing a good enough service most of the time, the few times they failed completely killed any trust I had in them. I would feel 0% confident about booking another 4:30am taxi from them. Also, I had to chase them for status updates in each case, and for that last incident I couldn't get an answer. If the drivers were running late, someone should have called and reset my expectations. For that matter, someone should have called the drivers to make sure they weren't running late in the first place.
Once your team makes a commitment, they MUST do whatever it takes to keep that commitment. If they cannot meet the commitment, then they MUST communicate as early as possible with their customer to understand the ramifications of missing the commitment, as well as collaborating on what an alternative delivery might look like. Even though the trust between your team and your customer will be eroded a little, proactively facing negative news will help maintain a "win-win" attitude between the two parties.
