Adventures in Customer Service - the Grim Death Experience

Tuesday, June 1, 2010
It seems like here lately that I've been inundated with "Adventures in Customer Service." Some have been positive, but most have been negative. Coupled with my worse-than-usual insomnia, it was really just starting to piss me the hell off.

But what I've realized, just this morning, is that there are companies out there that value customer service. There are probably more that don't, but I'm glad to have a few positive experiences to offset the negative.

Consider:

Last week, we had new floors installed in our kitchen and bathrooms. We're really pleased with the way they turned out, and our experience with the installers was so AWESOME I just have to share it.

We bought the project from Empire Today, as they had the material we were interested in. The sales person was competent, although their sales tactics made me roll my eyes a little - I'm in sales myownself, buddy. I know that your sales funnel will not be irreversibly compromised if we install this project on Wednesday instead of Tuesday when it's the middle of the month. You're not fooling anyone with your artificial metrics.

However, the installers that Empire subcontracted with - they were the cat's pajamas. They're a little company named "Abba Floors," and Andre and Lucas, the family team that came out to do our project were made of Awesome. With Awesome Sauce. They were communicative, courteous, on-time, friendly, and (most important) liked my dog. Noting that I'm a complete ignoramus when it comes to things like home improvement projects and floor installation techniques, they still treated me with respect, and explained everything about the project ahead of time. And here's the kicker: After they were done, and I had accepted and signed off on the project, the Smart Man came home and noticed a tiny piece of quarter round in the kitchen that was the wrong color. I called them the next day, explained what happened, and since they were under no obligation to come back after I accepted the job, I offered to pay them a trip charge to come back out and fix the issue. Well, they were out within four hours, and fixed the issue with no trouble - and would not accept a trip charge. They made it clear to me that customer service is vitally important to them, and it showed.

They do not have a website, so if anyone in the Denver area needs some labor for flooring, send me a note and I'll send their contact information along.

And:

When the fabulous Jeri was here a couple of weeks ago, the Smart Man, me, Stacey, JR and the Incomparable Anne™ went to our very first favorite Japanese sushi restaurant here in Parker, Junz.We've been going to Junz for years and years, and it's really our favorite restaurant in our part of town. So imagine our surprise when the service was inattentive and sloppy, and the sushi ordered by half of our party took over an hour to prepare, while other patrons who arrived after us received their sushi before us.

Well.

I realize I have no personal relationship with these people. It's not like we hang out. But we do have a professional relationship. Junz has been our "go-to" restaurant for date-night, special occasions and sushi with friends. We've never had a bad meal there, and never had poor service. So I felt a little betrayed by their behavior, and ended up feeling like I needed to apologize to my friends for the poor service they received.

Not being one to suffer in silence, I wrote a letter to the executive chef, explaining my concerns and describing our experience. And lo and behold, the manager called less than a week later, explaining that they had called a meeting immediately upon receiving my letter to determine what happened, and to come up with a plan to ensure it wouldn't happen again. He ended up expressing his hope that we would give them another chance, as they didn't want to lose a loyal customer.

I can't tell you how happy I was that they responded to my note - I really love that restaurant, and I didn't want to drop them like a hot rock for letting their customer service go to shit.

So in spite of feeling a bit put upon in regards to poor customer service in the last month, there actually are companies out there that care about how they treat their customers, and aren't afraid to share that feeling. Unfortunately, I think they may be in the minority. Which means when I do find a company that feels that way, I'll be holding on like grim death.

4 comments:

Anne C. said...

Glad Junz responded so well to your letter. It shows how vitally important communication is. So often I get bad (or not to my taste) service and I never go back. That's not very helpful to anyone.

Steve Buchheit said...

It's one of the reasons I gladly accepted the position I did. Their website talks about "you can fix it in the field yourself with materials you probably have on hand, we'll send you the kit, or we'll come out and fix it for you, whatever your decision is" (or something like that). Also during the interview it was made very clear to me that whomever someone in the field gets in contact with, that person sees their issue to completion, including if the CEO himself grabs a glowplug off the assembly line, and sticks it in a mailer he addresses himself, it gets done.

It's that kind of dedication to customer service I appreciate. I learned early that the customer is not often right, but the customer is always the customer. Especially with the product we will be making, the whole company knows the importance of making sure the customer is satisfied so they can keep their attention to where it belongs.

nzforme said...

I'm glad you had such a good experience with your floor installers. I bought some carpet at Expo some time ago, and the company they subbed the installation out to did a really shoddy job. Made me want to stay away from big box stores for anything that will require installation, as you have no idea who they're going to send to your house and (and this is the key) they'll take NO RESPONSIBILITY for them. (i.e. "That's the installer's mistake; take it up with them.") I'm trying to stick to smaller companies now -- ones that have their own people for the installation and other grunt work -- in the hopes that they'll take responsibility for the job being right from beginning to end.

Stacey said...

I'm so happy Junz responded positively. I'd be happy to go back and test their word :)
I'm more likely to say something than nothing if I get bad service as I can't spend my entire life keeping a list of the places I'm not going to. Eventually, there wouldn't be any left. Everyone, even me (so I've heard) has an off day, so it's only fair to give someone a chance to rectify.