Our philosophy, when it comes to taking care of customers, is to be simply outrageous in what we are willing to do to accomodate them.

Example: customer receives a proof marked please check carefully for accuracy in about 4 billion places, signs proof, faxes it back...and only after receiving the order discovers that there was a mistake in the phone number. Oh, I didn't look at the proof, I just signed it. Even though we are "covered" by the signature, we'll still reprint the order at our cost (sometimes a big chunk of money), if we find that the original mistake came on our end, or even if we don't but the customer insists that it did. Cost of doing business, I figure, and I like the attitude that it conveys to our customer service people. When the company puts chunks of money behind making customers happy, and not just lip service, the people on the front line get the message.



And then there was this order

We got an order from a hospital for $4000 worth of baby lap tees. These are the close fitting, slightly ribbed tees that you ordinarily buy in 3 packs in the baby section of the store. The brand we use is Gerber, and they come in the sizes, 6 months, 9 months and 12 months. The contact at the hospital ordered 1500, size 6 months, with a three color imprint, and gave us a faxed purchase order for same.

The shirts turned out beautifully. Absolutely stunning.

Imagine our surprise when the customer called and demanded to return the order because, she tried the shirt on a 6 month old and it didn't fit.

This left us with many questions, some of which we couldn't ask directly:

1) Why would you care if a shirt fit a 6 month old when this is for your newborn program?

2) Define "fit". You didn't order loose tshirts, we have those, you ordered lap tees which are supposed to cling to the body.

3) What, are you freakin' stupid? Everybody who has ever bought clothing for infants and toddlers knows that the sizes are stated in months, but can't correspond to the actual months of a child's life since babies grow at very different rates. My first baby was wearing size 18 months at 6 months of age!

4) Have you ever heard of the name Gerber? These are Gerber shirts. We didn't sew them in the basement here. This is the same shirt that Mr. Gerber packs up and sells across the land as size 6 months. What makes you think we're in a position to dictate how Mr. Gerber sizes things?



When the issue came to my attention, people found me finally willing to draw a line. (The customer service folks were rabid and didn't want to do anything for the lady. They are used to me saying, suck it up and give the person X.) I felt pretty strongly that there was some other reason she was trying to give the shirts back, and that the sizing thing was just an excuse. (Taking the shirts back would be a complete loss for us since I can't return imprinted shirts to Mr. Gerber.)

The gentleman who runs the front lines for me is empowered to do what he needs to do to solve a situation, and in the end, ended up giving the lady a 15% discount to make her stop calling. (She was calling a couple of times a day.)

I've mandated that we never sell an order of these shirts again without a customer signing off on a physical sample, and added a disclaimer to the catalog - Please request a sample of shirt so you can ensure the sizing is correct for your needs.

Sigh.

Okay, what would you have done?

Andrea

It used to be that you should never write a checkthat your ass can't cash.

Translation Give what you sell, and let the buyer beware. If they make a mistake, stick to the return policy.

Sales people now write checks that Engineering can't provide the cash for and let Support make up the difference.

Translation: Sales people never get blamed for poor sales technique and promising things that can't or won't get delivered. They make wild claims, sell them, and then try to skimp on what gets delievered. Maybe the product doesn't do that or doesn't really come with those features for free. So the support people end up explaining it tothese rightfully angry suckers.

When it's a stupid customer trying to blame their own mistakes on the company that sold them what they asked for, well, I don't care about the claims that the customer is always right or that there is such thing as a good customer based o nthe money they spend in your store. If they're an idiot, they're an idiot. You don't need to deal with idiots.

If some greed-ball claims that it doesn't matter who you sell to, as long as the money is green, I claim that the cost of mollyifying a "backfire" like this one ends up costing more than taking the effort to just blow them off and never deal with them again.

Is $4000 a big order for you? If so, then yeah bend over backwards to keep the customer happy. If it's a pissant order, I'd say, "Here's our return policy, and this doesn't fit, sorry."

You have to look at each situation differently, I'm afraid. And yeah, the person with the most money is going to win, and the "little guy" won't. But that's the business of doing business.

Quote:Originally posted by poseidon
Is $4000 a big order for you? If so, then yeah bend over backwards to keep the customer happy. If it's a pissant order, I'd say, "Here's our return policy, and this doesn't fit, sorry."

You have to look at each situation differently, I'm afraid. And yeah, the person with the most money is going to win, and the "little guy" won't. But that's the business of doing business.

Good question, Jeff, that's important info.

$4000 is a very good order. Our average order size is about $750. While it isn't unusual to get a $4000 order, anyone who places same jumps to the top of our kiss-ass list.

Truly stupid or weasely customers lose me money, however, no matter what size order they place. I've already pulled her off our list for continued solicitation and put warnings on her account. I would take another order from her, but she's going to have sign a bunch of proofs, paper and product, before we deliver another order to her again, no matter what size her next order might be.

Andrea

Quote:You have to look at each situation differently, I'm afraid. And yeah, the person with the most money is going to win, and the "little guy" won't. But that's the business of doing business.

FWIW, I enjoy being a Business Person with Ethics. <---- what a saint!

I've drummed, repeatedly, into my front line folks that every order matters. The little guy who orders 300 Bic Clic Stics from us ($125 order) for a certain event cares every bit as much about that order arriving on time as the Big Guy who orders 30,000. I figure giving that little order the same kind of care and attention gives me Good Business Kharma that will be redeemed at a later date. (I truly believe what goes around comes around in life and in business.)

Our level of care and service, though, is really too expensive for the small orders, so I go out of my way not to get them in the first place by only soliciting people who can give me bigger orders. If the little orders come our way, it's my intention that they be treated with respect and care, but I do try to avoid them....I just don't tell my people that I'm trying to avoid them.

Andrea

I like your policy of sending the actual sample rather than a proof.

At some point, though, the customer does something wrong, and the company has to decide whether the customer is always right. A revolution swept through customer care about 15 years ago - The Customer Isn't Always Right. The management issue boils down to: What are you going to do when they're wrong?

By way of illustration, I have a customer who accounted for 5% of gross revenues 6 years ago. They got anything they wanted even when they were horribly wrong - and we could prove it. You just don 't jeopardize that kind of revenue stream to make a point or be short-term profitable on a project.

Now, though, they account for 1.1% of gross. Do they still get great treatment? Absolutely. But their power diminished somewhat. And the group of customers I have who account for 0.0000017% of revenue? We try to give them the benefit of the doubt once, explain that they're getting the benefit of the doubt, and document. If they come back again in a year with the same story and they haven't changed their purchase behavior, we remind them of the previous event and typically hold firm.

I've had customer care in one shade or another in the groups I manage for (sigh) 17 years now. My code has evolved over time to now be: "If the customer spins me a good story and the difference isn't material to overall profitability, then give it to them.

I guess I must be an exceptional customer then.

I've had pens with the wrong phone number; catalogs with mis-spellings on the cover; wrong paper, wrong sizes, wrong logos, etc. on lots of things. I've rarely made a fuss over anything. I've called and pointed it out -- sometimes I've been given a discount, sometimes not. I think the only time I really got upset was when an advertisement was run in the newspaper without my approval with our old logo the day after a major press release and splash had been done about our new logo.

Had the advertisement had my approval, that would have been one thing. But I never confirmed the advert (this was a once every-other month publication, and I had agreed to run in four out of six of them, but they were to call for confirmation before each issue for advert copy and approval -- they didn't get that on the issue in question).

Other than that, things have been pretty smooth on my end. I just brush it off and go on. There will be more pens, more publications, more advertisements soon. No one will remember these things (that's my general philosophy; of course, I don't invest so much in any one thing that my overall scheme is dependent upon any one piece).

Joubert wrote:

Quote:I like your policy of sending the actual sample rather than a proof.

Yeah, well, that should happen more often. :angry: That could have avoided this whole problem in the first place...one of the things I am trying to drum into my people.

A product proof typically costs us about $50, a cost that we absorb entirely into the order with no charge to the customer. I find it curious that my front line people get worried about charges like that, when it has no affect on them personally whatsoever. :confused: I tell them repeatedly that product proofs are good. They are an insurance policy that the customer is getting what they really want and not what they think they want (often two different things).

The time that a product proof adds to an order (about two weeks), means that a good chunk of our orders can't be product proofed since customer deadlines are often very, very tight. It's up to the rep to identify the orders that are time enabled and to then make the call to add the product proof step. I've given the general guideline of dollar value $1000 and above..but...sigh, I find that I have to go through orders myself and remind people to do a product proof on individual ones.

It's not that my people don't care, they do, they really do care...it's just that they aren't enough in the habit of making it happen. (I ask a lot of them, I do.)


Joubert wrote:

Quote:At some point, though, the customer does something wrong, and the company has to decide whether the customer is always right. A revolution swept through customer care about 15 years ago - The Customer Isn't Always Right. The management issue boils down to: What are you going to do when they're wrong?

Here's the way I try to handle it:

The customer is often wrong, very very wrong.

If I don't start with that philosophy, it is too demoralizing for my folks on the front lines.

I'd probably be shot or lose my workforce, if I tried to get my people to swallow that Jane Smythe, Director of Marketing from Hell, who blithely ignored all of our warnings about X and signed off without reading Y, is still right when she calls to bitch about a problem that she caused in the first place.

That's not fair to my good person who has worked her tush off and still has a complaining shrew on the line.

So, yeah, put Jane on hold, concur that she is the Bitch from Hell, and then the rep gets back on the phone with her and calmly solves her problem, sometimes at our expense, and always in a friendly, cooperative fashion.

What I won't tolerate, and I mean won't, is reps who get in pissing contests with customers. We can be right all we like, but right doesn't pay anybody's salary, the next order does.

At some point, and only with a small, teensy, handful of our customers, someone in mangement or I will decide that the customer is just plain trouble, and we run the risk of losing money every time we take an order. At that point, we'll draw a line in the sand. I've "fired" customers on occasion, with a very nice communication that told them we doubted we'd ever be able to make them happy, and here's the phone number of our competitor.

Fr. Kurt wrote:

Quote:I guess I must be an exceptional customer then.

Honestly, padre, if you were exceptional, I'd be flipping burgers at McDonalds. Most of our customers are reasonable, sane human beings.

My "bend over backwards" policy isn't there just to try to keep Jane Smythe, Marketing Director Bitch from Hell, as a customer. I can afford to lose her. My policy is there to steep my people in the attitude of taking care of the customer no matter what, so that the decent folks, the majority of our business, are assured to have excellent service.

I've learned it is really, really hard to accomplish things through a group of people. I can't talk to customers anymore, it's not like the old days. I have to find ways to have the attitude that I want to represent us come through anyway. You can't legistlate or regulate attitude. Plaques on the wall, feh. You have to find ways to make it crystal clear that this is the way we are.

And yeah, I learned a lot from Nordstroms.



Andrea

I'm like padre, in a sense. Not on a business ordering scale, but just as a general customer.

No matter what happens, I try to let the manager of the business know if something has happened, good or bad. It might something as trivial as going out to dinner and getting the wrong meal or having something made incorrectly, or something about exceptional service. But, I try to tell them about it, so that management can be made aware.

This holds true in any type of business I deal with. If there is something exceptionally good or something wrong, I will try to bring it to the attention of someone in the company, in a polite way.

*To bring up a question to the business gurus in the forum: when you receive a letter, or call, from a customer that is just advising you about something like good service or bad products, whatnot, regardless the size of the customer, do you take the time to address the correspondene? Or, do you just file the details away, and not respond?

I have written letters to companies that I have dealt with in the past, and mentioned something that concerned me, or something that impressed me. I didn't ask for anything in return, but I expected maybe a generic card or letter saying, "thanks for brining it to our attention".

Is acknowledging the customer a thing of the past? I wouldn't have even minded a generic postcard saying thanks for letting us know. But, nothing concerns me, especially if it is something that is bad.

Your thoughts?

I think both customers and merchants have to come to an agreement to meet each other half-way.

Everybody complains about everything these days (including myself)!

If a merchant wants to agree to have a "No questions asked money back guarantee," they'd better realize some customers are going to take advantage of that. If a business wants to institute an "All Sales Final" policy, they'd also better realize they will get many a hoot and hollar from customers, unless prices are kept very low, which will eat into merchants profits.

I, as a customer, had better realize that if I, and my friends, keep complaining ad-nauseum, even about little things, customer service in this country is only going to get worse. I, as a customer had better start seeing the glass as half-full and not drive merchants crazy with my ranting and raving!

So, buyers (me), and sellers had better cooperate with eachother more otherwise we will have a total customer service nightmare on our hands.

Pisces -

I really appreciate your post...reminds me that I want to start a thread here sometime soon on "partnering" with vendors. I think of those things, usually, in terms of business/business, but I wonder how much applies consumer/business as well.

Anyway, I see way too much oppositional behavior on both sides of the fence. Both customers and business representatives (customer service reps, store clerks, whatever) have a really hard time saying:


I was wrong. I goofed.

You know what even hard hearted people are willing to do for you when you say, "I was wrong."??? It's so rare! I love telling vendors "Geeze, I goofed. Can you cover my butt here?" They run to help me out!

I wonder if the "Customer is always right" movement didn't do us more harm than good. Does the customer have it in his/her head that she/he is always right? Do I feel that way when I tromp into CVS and am pissy because my hair gel is not stocked again? Is there some kind of huge chain reaction happening when I'm pissy because I want my damn hair gel and I want it now and I can't believe they run an operation like that and I'm pissy all over the clerk which now sets up an oppositional transaction between us which then makes her defensive with the next customer?

Just thinking.

Andrea

This reminds me something what happened in my office last year. An accountant of one of our clients (then it came to sign the final cheque) has decided that we overcharged them for shipping (our policy is FOB and quotes must be approved before PO is issued).

Well in his view $1,500 was plenty to cover a truck and decided to keep the change. He was even quite upset, how come we billed them over $62,000!

On paper everything was covered. We could take it to court and win but in the process we would loose the customer. We decided to reason with him…

It took three months to settle very simple fact that 100 ton piece of equipment going across many state-lines with police escort is not a crate of bananas...

Just to show you how easy is to change someone’s mind than it comes to money.

Quote:He was even quite upset, how come we billed them over $62,000!

$62,000 in freight? I'd try to impress you with what it costs to send 1000 squeeze bottles via overnight air (they DIM! they DIM! dimensional weight!), but, I can't come close to $62,000, so you win.

Magik1 wrote:

Quote:*To bring up a question to the business gurus in the forum: when you receive a letter, or call, from a customer that is just advising you about something like good service or bad products, whatnot, regardless the size of the customer, do you take the time to address the correspondene? Or, do you just file the details away, and not respond?

The short answer is, any complaint is going to be responded to and quickly. I guess it is more of a no brainer in a business/business situation than a consumer/business situation, but it shouldn't be.

I think some business/consumer companies are set up much better than others to handle complaints. I guarantee, unless the company is a total loser, somebody in the organization cares that you are disastified and would respond to you....does the complaint reach that far though?

If you want to make sure that the complaint is heard, when in doubt, find a way to get your problem addressed to the president of the company, not just customer service. The customer service person who receives your complaint may be the very person interested in burying it.

Andrea

Quote:If you want to make sure that the complaint is heard, when in doubt, find a way to get your problem addressed to the president of the company, not just customer service. The customer service person who receives your complaint may be the very person interested in burying it.

Andrea [/b]

I know that I can tell when a person, writing in to our company with a complaint, has put a lot of research into their complaint.

For example, if someone has taken the time to either address their concerns to the Department Manger, CEO, or VP-Director of the department, I know they mean business.

Those that just say to whom it may concern, are a bit mad at a situation, but didn't put enough research into it to show me they really mean business. (That's not to say that I don't direct the letters to the appropriate people, or respond to them.)

But, the reason I posed the question, was because I have written about 5 letters in the last year, ranging from telling a business about the good service I received to a letter telling a business that I, as a consumer, had 5 occassions where my order was not filled correctly.

I have yet to receive a response, regardless of the type of response, to any of those letters. Makes me wonder why. Customers are so important to our businesses, and there is so much competition out there, businesses should listen, regardless who's writing them about something they felt important enough to sit down, type up a message and mail it to the company!

Quote:But, the reason I posed the question, was because I have written about 5 letters in the last year, ranging from telling a business about the good service I received to a letter telling a business that I, as a consumer, had 5 occassions where my order was not filled correctly.

Well, , I'm humilated to confess that I don't always answer letters of compliment. The irony is, we make a huge deal about them. We parade them around, post them, pat the person who handled the order on the head...they mean the world to us.

I just don't necessarily tell the person who wrote them that. The person who handled that customer's order usually does, but I can't tell you that I have a policy in place to ensure that happens 100 percent of the time.

Andrea
off to make a policy....

I do write letters of compliment. I've never heard back from any of them.

I've never written a letter of complaint.

Hey, plucky -- send me your catalog. I'm a good customer!