Customer Service

Ingersoll Hardware is a chain of two locally owned hardware stores in the western suburbs of Cleveland. For twenty-five years or more the Westlake store has been satisfying my needs for hardware, paint,window glass, tools, lawn fertilizer and more. I am a very loyal customer and I keep buying from this store even though a competing hardware store has opened five minutes closer to my home. My best estimate is that I spend over $1,000 a year at Ingersoll.

Now, yesterday I needed a new gasoline can in order to feed my lawn mower. I buzzed over to Ingersoll, selected a plastic gas container above a label showing a price of $5.95 and proceeded to the checkout, where the computer rang up a price of $14.95. Returning to the shelf and carefully examining the label I saw that $5.95 was for planting soil. The cans had ended up on the wrong shelf. I paid and left for the gas station.

Imagine my dismay when I got home with a full gas can to discover gasoline all over my trunk. The container had a pin-hole leak in the bottom. Furious, I set the container on edge in the driveway to prevent more spill and returned to the hardware store. A friendly young clerk asked how he could help. I explained my predicament – that I needed to replace a defective gas can for a new one but could not return the old one until I replaced the gas from it to the new container. The fellow suggested that I just pick up a new can, leave my name and address with the checkout clerk, and come back with the defective can. Problem nicely solved.

The checkout clerk, however, asked the shift manager how to handle the transaction. The manager said I would need to pay for the new can and then get a refund upon return of the defective one. When I mentioned the solution proposed by the clerk he said, “He is just part time. I’ve been here twenty-five years and I know that the owenrs want.” I offered to provide information from my drivers license for security, but was not going to change the manager’s mind. I was highly upset. It wasn’t about the money. It was about principle and treatment of a long-time customer. It wasn’t as though I were a stranger – all three people have seen me in the store many times.

Further infuriating me was the answer to the question as to how to get rid of the gasoline and odor in my trunk. The manager said he could provide the name of the manucturer and I could go after them for the cost of clean-up!

The young clerk had it right. Help the customer and offer a reasonable solution.

I’m going to have to rethink my loyalty, as well as have a few words with the owner when I return the defective can today.

Will Limkemann
www.siqualtd.com

Customized products and services

I often wonder how much business is lost by companies  not interested or willing to modify standard products or services to meet the desires and needs of their customers. During a time in which many manufacturers are embracing lean techniques and just in time inventory, is it really a stretch to manufacture customized products?

Recently I was in a restaurant with a limited number of specials on the menu, below which in large type was the phrase “No substitutions”. Is it really an imposition on the kitchen to substitute apple sauce for cole slaw? If it is, would not the customer and restaurant be better served by allowing the change at a slight up-charge?

My friend Brooks Hull has a successful company, Bay Corporation, which manufactures medical gas fittings and hoses. Not only can each assembly be custom made, but customers can go onto the web site and configure and price each custom assembly.

Businesses that are going to survive and prosper are going to have to be more and more customer-centric. To a great extent this means delivering the goods and services that the customer wants when the customer wants them.

Will Limkemann
www.siqualtd.com

Customer Driven Business

I was at a breakfast meeting this morning when a gentleman asked the following question: “How do we get our engineering department to make better specifications for our products?”. The leader, a six-sigma master black belt responded, “That is the wrong question. It is always the customers who should be driving the specifications.”.

This got me to thinking about how often businesses don’t really listen to their customers. The entire reason a business exists is to make money, and the only way to make money is to be responsive to customers. How often do sales people try to sell you the latest gadgets, fads, gizmos, or stuff that the company wants to clear out, rather than asking questions about what you really need and want? In my experience it does not happen very often. Those companies that put customers first, really, really put them first, will beat competition every time.

Does your business really listen to customers? Do you really know what they want? Do you design your products and services to satisfy their needs or to satisfy your ego? Do you ask questions of customers when designing a new product or service? Do you ask questions when selling to assure that you are providing the best possible solution to the customer wants? Do you have a process for handling complaints to a) assure that the complaint is handled to the customer’s satisfaction; and b) assure that future customers will not have reason to make the same complaint?

If your business is not 100% customer-centric, it’s time to examine why not, and make the process, management, and cultural changes needed to be so. The payoff to your bottom line will be amazing.

Customer Service (or not)

In mid summer I contracted with a tree service company to trim  branches on one of my oak trees that is brushing against a neighbor’s home, and to fertilize another large oak tree on my property. This was a company I had used before with excellent service and follow-through. They have changed.

For weeks I heard nothing from the company. Then I got a call from their office telling me the crew would be out the next day to do the trimming. Great! They never showed. I never got a call. A week later I called to inquire what happened. After some run-around I was informed that the oak trees would not be trimmed until the temperature cooled down to prevent oak wilt. No apology for not showing up when promised. I accepted the explanation and anxiously awaited the chill of fall. Fall has arrived and still no crew.

On October 30 I received an invoice dated October 29 for fertilizing performed October 28 (which had not happened). On November 3 a man with a truck showed up to fertilize the big oak. I asked about the trimming. The response? “I do what I am told to do and don’t know nothing about the trimming”. He made no attempt to get any further answer or even to take my question back to the shop.

Yesterday morning I called the company to ask about the trimming schedule. The response? “I don’t know. I’ll have to call you back this afternoon”. The afternoon came and went – no response.

Lessons businesses should learn from this experience:

1. Don’t make promises you can’t or won’t keep.
2. Follow up and keep customers informed.
3. Don’t ever send an invoice before service is performed – even if you are at the end of a month!
4. Don’t ever send an invoice with wrong information. By the way, I didn’t tell you that the invoice had a computer generated invoice number that had been scratched out and replaced with a hand-written one.
5. Train your employees that they always are representatives of your business and need to be ever helpful to customers. If they are asked a question they can’t answer, they should promise to have someone in the company provide the answer – and then follow up to make sure it happens.
6. Maintain a master schedule of work to be performed so scheduling questions can be answered.

I’m still waiting!

Will Limkemann
440-871-0976