Come on, admit it: You have at least one story — either your own or one you’ve heard from a friend — about waiting for hours at your house for the cable guy, only to find out at the end of the day he wasn’t going to show up.

Turns out that you’re nowhere close to being alone. Statistics from a survey conducted by Harris Interactive and TOA Technologies finds that many Americans continue to have this problem with field service, highlighted in this month’s Re:Tooling column in CRM magazine, and customer retention is seriously at risk.

Findings include:

• 18 percent have lost wages to wait for field service at their home in the first half of 2009;
• 18 percent refused or canceled a product or service because the field technician was either late or did not show up;
• 29 percent of respondents have left their home in frustration — costing their service provider more money in rescheduling, customer service, and operations costs — due to lateness or a no-show;
• 63 percent wait two or more days each year in their homes for service or deliveries;
• 57 percent believe the company providing the service is at fault — not the actual field technician; and
• 37 percent of consumers believe the standard wait window is four to eight hours because companies “take advantage of the fact that people will most likely wait for the service/delivery because they want or need it.”

Pretty damning stats — if you provide field service, do these numbers surprise you?

Losing nearly 20 percent of customers due to showing up late or not at all is a large number, especially in today’s economy when organizations say they are doing all they can to keep their consumers loyal.

What are you doing to try and improve the punctuality your field technicians have when they’re going on customer calls?