I wasn't mad until....

[pluckyduck]

......

This thread doesn't necessarily belong in the business forum. If subsequent posts take the thread in another direction, we can always move the thread. Tell whatever stories you like.

I, like a lot of people, am a reasonably reasonable human being. I understand that mistakes happen and I can often find humor in them. How someone resolves a problem can make the difference between me being mad or not. Heck, excellent problem resolution can make me like a company or a person more than if there had never been a problem in the first place.

The case of the stinky breast cards

Yesterday, around 9:30 AM, a skid of 50,000 breast self exam shower cards I'd ordered for inventory from a local vinyl manufacturer arrived via their company truck. I went out to the loading dock, inspected a card sample, gave the thumbs up and went back to work.

About 15 minutes later, my warehouse manager came to me and said -- "We've got a problem."

As the 50 boxes of BSE cards sat there, it became apparent that they stunk. I mean stunk. Every minute they sat, the smell (something like cat pee) permeated the air more. It had already filled the loading dock and was making its way into the general warehouse.

Oh yeah, I had a problem. Because our quarters are so cramped, the smell could sicken easily 20 employees and make them unable to work...including me. (Our marketing department is in a makeshift room directly off of the warehouse and shares a venilation system.)

Fortunately, the manufacturer was just 5 minutes from us. I picked up the phone to get hold of our sales rep who has been courting business from me for five years. This was one of his first orders. I didn't get through to him on the first try, but I did get hold of his assistant. I explained the situation, with a sense of humor, and said, I need you to get a truck over here now and get these out of here now.

Sales rep called me back. Again, I kept my sense of humor.... I mean, it was funny, even though I had what was verging on chaos in the warehouse...people walking around with their shirts over their noses, trying to work. Explained the situation, he asked me some questions trying to diagnose the problem and I said, kindly, look diagnose the problem all you like at your place, but you have to get these cards out of here now. Send your truck.

10 minutes later the sales rep calls back again. Now I'm getting mad. I didn't take the phone call. I had my warehouse manager talk to him. Guy had more questions about what the smell was like, yada yada. I told Jim, tell him to get a truck over here now.

By 10:15, I have chaos on my hands. The UPS and Fed Ex deliveries for the building have arrived on the same crowded, stench ridden loading dock. The entire office trots back to pick up their packages.... everybody in the building wants to wretch (and of course they are my BSE cards).

10:30, I get a call to come up front, there is somebody from the plastics factory here to see me. Beyond irritated that the truck driver didn't come back to the loading dock with the truck, I stomp up front. I'm greeted by a man old enough to be my grandfather who hasn't come with a truck... he's come with a box of BSE cards for me to smell. He thinks that I'm going to do a smell comparision between the box in hands and the stuff on the dock!

This would be when I lost it.

I led him back to the dock. I yelled. I said I am not smelling one more thing. You get a truck, you get a truck here now, and you get these cards off of my dock. Now. End of conversation. I stormed off and let my warehouse manager help the old guy find his nitro.

Sales rep calls me back. (We're working on 11:30 now). Controlling my temper I tell him I do not like being put in the position to yell at a guy old enough to be my grandfather. What were you thinking sending him over here to make me smell things? Sales rep says we were just trying to figure out what was wrong. OFCOL. Gary, pick the cards up, get them out of here... you are about to make me have to shut my warehouse down, and possibly the whole building. Figure out what's wrong while the cards are stinking up your place. Okay, says he, I'll send a truck, it will take about two hours to get somebody there.



I wasn't mad that they delivered 50,000 stinky BSE cards to me. In the first conversation, I laid out clearly the solution that would make me, the customer, happy. If they had sent a truck right away like I asked, I'd be praising them for quick problem resolution... instead, I'm still pissed 24 hours later (and I can hold a grudge like nobody's business).

The ending to the story

I got off the phone with the sales rep and told my warehouse manager to take the 50 cartons and put them on the driveway outside the building and to shut the loading dock gate. (This is $10,000 worth of merchandise and I was initially hesitant to just put their stuff out on the road.)

The guy old enough to be my grandfather, incidently, told my warehouse manager that the problem appeared to be the cartons the cards were packed in. The cartons had been stored in an old, musty storage facility and must have had a dead rat or squirrel amongst them.

Blech. I feel like I can still smell it as I type the story out.

The way a business resolves a problem makes the difference between a being a hero or a loser.

I've got a customer service meeting at 9 am and I'm using this story for all it is worth and then some. I want a company full of heroes.

Andrea

[phoenixx]

EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW


Wow.

Not much to say beyond that, except to ask if they ever picked the stinky cards up?

Wow.

Leslie

[taurusmoon]

Originally posted by pluckyduck
......

This thread doesn't necessarily belong in the business forum. If subsequent posts take the thread in another direction, we can always move the thread. Tell whatever stories you like.

Andrea

Well, you did talk about cat pee, as well as dead rats and squirrels.

Perhaps we should move this to the pets forum.



Seriously, that is some story. My oh my. All I can say is that some companies have product that stinks. Others have customer service that stinks.

You happened upon one that has both.

Sara

[conradd]

Originally posted by pluckyduck
......
I wasn't mad that they delivered 50,000 stinky BSE cards to me. In the first conversation, I laid out clearly the solution that would make me, the customer, happy. If they had sent a truck right away like I asked, I'd be praising them for quick problem resolution... instead, I'm still pissed 24 hours later (and I can hold a grudge like nobody's business).

ROFL, Andrea, I can laugh from 2,000 miles away. I don't have to smell them.

The way I see it, you were each solving a separate problem. Your problem was that the boxes were smelling up the joint and you needed them removed immediately. Your rep might have understood this if he'd been standing nose-to-nose with you. Instead, he was trying to figure out why the boxes were smelling up the joint. You were goal-oriented, he was process-oriented.

My question for Gary would be how they packed the stuff in the first place without noticing the aroma. But then, I'm a process-person too.

Deb
thinking they should spring for a nice gift basket filled with potpourri and room freshener

[murasaki]

Well, I did have a good laugh at your expense and I can sympathize to an extent.

On a trip to South Carolina from Virginia, I was in the car with two cats for about 6 hours.

Somewhere along the way, one of them peed in her carrier. Of course, I pulled over, put the offending pad in a plastic bag to wash at my destination (can't tell you how many times I've done that), cleaned the carrier, and drove on. Of course, my nose became desensitized to the cat-piss smell for the rest of the drive.

However, upon getting in the car with my best friend the next day, I could smell it: cat-piss. I kept thinking maybe the cat had directed some through the air holes in her carrier that got on the seat. My friend said she couldn't smell anything. I sniffed most of the seat and floorboard where the carrier had been--nothing specific.

Yet, every time I got in the car, my face wrinkled up and I suddenly wanted to beathe out of my mouth, like the smell was in the air. The entire weekend, I kept wrinkling up my face and saying, "Cat piss!" and growling in a horrible voice at the offending odor. After I got back to Virginia, I didn't notice it anymore. Weird, huh?

--naomi
who feels for ya and doesn't want to go through something like that again herself.

[pluckyduck]

I can't regret this experience... it think it is funny too , now that the cards are off my dock. I really am going to write a business book someday...what a chapter title!

(Memo to Amy: please save the archives from the forums somewhere...don't lose them. I'm a lousy note taker.)

Deb wrote:

The way I see it, you were each solving a separate problem. Your problem was that the boxes were smelling up the joint and you needed them removed immediately. Your rep might have understood this if he'd been standing nose-to-nose with you. Instead, he was trying to figure out why the boxes were smelling up the joint. You were goal-oriented, he was process-oriented.

You're right, that's because he didn't listen. I didn't beat around the bush, I said, very clearly, several times in the first conversation "You must get the cards off the dock immediately. I have people threatening to pass out from the odor. Send your truck now."

You know, every sales book, every sales piece of training you ever read emphasizes listening skills...and I swear it is the hardest thing for sales related folks to catch on to. (I'm no saint in that department, believe me.)

Maybe my book should be entitled Can You Hear Me NOW?

My question for Gary would be how they packed the stuff in the first place without noticing the aroma. But then, I'm a process-person too.

Actually, that's pretty easy for me to figure. The inks and plastics that are used to make this kind of thing are very stinky... and their factory is large, with lots and lots of venilation because of the production fumes. I bet the dead rat smell just combined with the ink and plastic smell and was sucked right out of the place.

Why someone thought it was a good idea to store a quantity of boxes in an old, musty, dead rat filled storage facility was the real mystery. You can get boxes shipped same day from Uline.com with volume discounts based on annual purchases. No reason to box hoard.

Whatever.

Andrea
can you hear her NOW?

[brian_igo]

Originally posted by pluckyduck
Maybe my book should be entitled Can You Hear Me NOW?

Or you can borrow the working title from mine: "Chapter 11 for Morons: How To Fail In Business Without Really Trying"

I don't often stick my head in here, so I apologize in advance if I am reading from Dick and Jane while you guys are working on "The Wealth of Nations".

This sounds a little like something I dealt with in my last job. This was a uniform and walk-off mat rental company, and those in the office with far too much time on their hands kept dreaming up new "programs" to sell our customers on our service. Many abbreviations and acronyms were spun to promote the glory of our shop towels vs. the identical product available from our competition.

Those of us who worked the routes knew our customers did not give a good rats ass about any program of ours that did not involve free beer or a price cut. It was our job to be observant, to have a basic understanding of the customers business needs, to make suggestions when necessisary and to fix any problems before the decision maker has to get involved. Otherwise, ten minutes of their day spent thinking about their uniform program was ten minutes too many.

The point is, the difference between a goal-oriented and a process-focued person is not always a personality difference. Some companies, and there are days where I feel it is my life's mission to work for them all, institute and require process-focused solutions for damn near everything. In my case, requiring a process allowed those back in the office to measure performance in a way that was meaningful to them ("Did Brian tell you about the CARES Program?") regardless of how responsive it was to the needs of the customer.

Was this sales rep working off a script on how to handle problems? This example is so absurd and had to get so far out of control before sanity returned that I'm inclined to think he was. If this guy can tie his own shoes he should be able to deduce that the solution to a warehouse reeking of cat urine is to get in a truck and go check it out-now.

"The way a business resolves a problem makes the difference between a being a hero or a loser. "

Truer words were never spoken. But how the business manages resolving problems can, I believe, determine the outcome before the game begins. If every customer is different in your business, instituting a uniform process to respond to them all is destined to fail. The best examples of customer service I've seen are when good, thoughtful and attentive people are fully empowered to act.


Brian

[pluckyduck]

The best examples of customer service I've seen are when good, thoughtful and attentive people are fully empowered to act.

I agree with that completely. Switching from being a customer to being the selling entity for a moment, nothing is ever easy, though.

My folks are given complete empowerment to do whatever necessary and raised in a culture with just a couple simple rules:


1) Do whatever it takes to make a customer happy.
2) Resolve a dispute in the customer's favor and you can't go wrong.
3) Never, ever, ever utter the words "I have to check with my supervisor." Even if you want to check with your supervisor, don't tell the customer that. Leave the customer knowing that you are the decision maker.

You'll notice that "the customer is always right" is missing from those rules. That's one of the single most absurd lies you can ever try to feed to people who are working with customers. What, am I going to try to get them to buy swampland in Florida next?


That recipe for success worked for us for a number of years until the staff got larger. After a few unpleasant discoveries of situations that were not handled properly, resulting in pissed off customers, we had to put in a Policy with the capital "P".

Any time a customer's expectations are not met for any reason, the sales manager has to be notified immediately. Any peep of disappointment "Gee, I thought the tote bag was going to be larger.", take whatever steps appropriate to take care of the customer, but notify immediately.

Here's what I, on one of my fact finding crusades, had discovered:

Certain otherwise excellent folks on the phones were taking situations with customers personally. It was unwise for us to expect that everyone was going to be able to see the big picture -- or that they would even want to. Armed with back up information that the customer had given instructions for XYZ or had clearly signed off on a proof that included a typo on their phone number or whatever, some of the front line folks would get so wrapped up in what was "fair" and not "fair", that they were missing the big picture.

We actually had to have a meeting a couple of weeks ago to let people vent about how unfair the customers were being.

Gently, really, I kept working folks around to the concept of "winning the battle and losing the war". Our business model rises and falls on repeat business. The cost of acquiring a new customer more than eats up any profit on the first order. If we win the battle, but lose the customer's repeat business, we haven't won anything at all.

As I say, it turns out that the frontline folks aren't, in every situation, the best equipped to be working with the big picture in mind. They have their own set of problems and work related stress.

Nothing is ever simple.

Andrea