Of all the challenges a service organization faces, completing the “Last Mile” is easily where most fail in their engagements:

• You spend hours running hundreds of feet of cable, but don’t terminate the end point. Net effect dead in the water.
• You spend thousands of dollars on infrastructure, but don’t charge classroom devices overnight, making lesson plans useless for the day. Net effect: dead in the water.
• You do all the work to correct a service call, but don’t communicate what what you did, or that you are finished, to a customer. Net effect: dead in the water; or, might as well be.

No one will remember the regular season the Mets had this year; only, how they finished. No one will remember “Deflategate” – but they will remember all the Superbowls that the Patriots won.

The same is true for those of us in service occupations – customers are interested only in how well you finished, not the herculean effort you expended to get there. 

To finish strong, one must complete all the last mile work. This makes all the difference in how successful – or unsuccessful – you will be perceived.

Because if you don’t finish the last mile, you may as well not begin the journey at all.