Poor service

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

That's why John Lewis are such a good store to deal with. All the staff are shareholders and nothing is too much trouble (in my experience)

 

However, we demand the lowest price and we get the lowest service.

 

Have had similar experiences of John Lewis.

 

Your second point is one of my Bugbears, and something I come across all too frequently. Nowadays, I'd usually rather pay a little more and have the service.

[XTR2Turbo]

Many don't seem to understand the difference between price and value

[Captain Colonial]

Many don't seem to understand the difference between price and value

 

Truer words rarely spoken.   

 

The definition of a cynic is a person who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

[Stuart]

"The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten". 

 

Possibly Confucius, Benjamin Franklin, Aldo Gucci or others.

[alexander72]

Value for money comes at a price….. 

[Norman Verona]

Stuart, you forgot Bob Dylan.

[iain m]

The worrying aspect of these rubbish service providers is they consider they are "absolutely brilliant". Some years ago  BA were sporting the strap line " The worlds favourite airline, this was arrived at by being the worlds largest airline which we considered would make the M25 the "Worlds favourite motorway"!!!   BA decided rather than pay a huge sum to a promotion company for a new strap line they asked their frequent flyers to send in for a prize their view of BA customer service and how they viewed BA staff. They were shocked and amazed when the ideas came flooding in, in first place by far was a single word "arrogant". I was a BA frequent flyer then ( not from choice ) and saw no obvious improvements implemented.

[Norman Verona]

Iain, I sold my first computer company to a large US corporation. They were ranked the largest in the world in our sector (motor dealer systems). I was ranked 3rd in the UK but much smaller than numbers 1 and 2.

 

The day after the deal went through I was talking to the American who was going to be stationed in Europe and he said that I could now put ourselves out as number 1, therefore we were the best. I pointed out that whilst we thought we were the best, we were still number 3 in the UK, a minnow swimming with the whales.

 

Needless to say they screwed the UK up (not sure about the other European countries). They made real enemies of the customers and had a class action brought against them by those that hadn't gone somewhere else. By this time I was out of it. I took a lot of trouble to look after my customers and do the right thing for them. ADP, the US corporation I sold the business to, just saw the customers as cash cows to extract as much and put in as little.

 

 

On a somewhat different note, I have always run my businesses on the basis of, if I want to sell something to someone then make it as easy as I can for them to buy. That philosophy is one of the main reasons we were so successful in the first business.  We went from start up to number 3 in about 3 years. Our competitors pricing was so complicated no one understood it, then upgrade costs had to be factored in. We had a price list that was easy to understand with no upgrade costs, upgrades were issues monthly. Our first customer had exactly the same software as the newest at no extra cost. That was over a 12 year period.

 

Ah, the good old days, I'm allowed to reminisce on my birthday, aren't I? 

[iain m]

Hi Norman, are you in the over 70s club yet?. I capitulated and sent the Mercedes Benz 10point questionnaire back to the Netherlands 2 days later I receive another questionnaire from Germany this time especially for dissatisfied customers, both of course inform me that these email addresses cannot be replied to!! Now just received an email from the dealer service manager that really did not want my custom informing me my car is overdue for the service he carried out 3 weeks ago. We live in a new age of brilliant communication systems, however there seems to be an ever increasing number of folk that have not quite got the hang of how to use it. 

[Ian Podmore]

An update.....

Front anti roll bar reconnected - great

Excess coolant added by me removed back to impossible to see max level mark - nice touch

Car reversed into a post or other solid object by mechanic. 1 x dented boot and 1 x cracked bumper - wasn't quite expecting that!

The car is equipped with reversing sensors as well.

Accidents happen and it's a company car so just an inconvience, it's the original error I'm not happy with.

[Norman Verona]

Ian, I take the view, as a customer and a supplier, that we all make mistakes. It's the way we put them right that matters. If they dealt with in a professional manner and apologised it's all you can ask for. I've raised complaints at dealesr before and got a load of abuse as if it was my fault. Never got my custom again. That was my car went in for service every 6 weeks so they lost a good customer.

[ralphy]

Ian, I take the view, as a customer and a supplier, that we all make mistakes. It's the way we put them right that matters.

This is so true, yet many organisations fail to do it.  

 

If I take a complaint to a company I want them to: acknowledge it, apologise and then rectify the issue.  Seems simple enough, yet it rarely happens.  Instead it’s more a case of: initially ignore, then dismiss and - finally-  (and grudgingly) do the bare minimum about it.

 

R

[Norman Verona]

It's a long story so just take it as read. I moved back to HO as service director. The workshop was in such a state that if a car went out and didn't come back they had a party. First thing I did was put a spare car on the front with the keys in reception. Second was to give strict instructions that if a customer came back complaining about work they were to say nothing and call me. I would come round, ask what the problem was, then, having heard the problem, I would say "that's terrible, here, take this Blue car on the front (handing over the keys) and I'll ring you when we've looked at it" I would get the work rectified, ring the customer and send his/her car round and collect ours.

 

Worked a treat and they became customers for life.

[jeff oakley]

There is no secret to good service, it is training staff and making sure they understand who pay's their wages. I always explain to staff to look at how they feel when something goes wrong for them and when they do they understand how customers feel.

 

The big issue for me is that accontants, who never meet customers, now dictate how many staff are needed. If you look at John Lewis, there are staff of all levels on the floor, it used to be the same at M&S but when you are next in just see how many there are there.

 

I was dragged shopping with Jeanette and was in M&S and saw such shocking service, not for us, that I wrote to their head office explaining that my pension has M&S shares and maybe this was the reason they were not doing well. The reply was an awful, patronising we know what we are doing reply that did not address the issue I had witnessed.

 

Same day I had to go into Morrisons with Jeanette, it was a Sunday but there was no fruit or veg out, the fish counter was staffed by a yong girl who was scared of touching fish, so I wrote and complained. ( I was in a grumpy mood as I hate shopping).

The next day Marroisons rang and apologised, said they had reviewed the CCTV footage and I was correct the fruit and veg was empty. The manager had spoken to the girl who was not trained on the fish counter but was helping out. They acted with the highest care and sent me £25 in vouchers, which I gave to charity. As Norm said mistakes happen, good companies learn from them and try to avoid a repeat bad ones make out it is all oue fault for having unrealistic expectations.

 

Some say I am wrong, but when I get good service I comment, when I get bad I do the same. The problem is that too many just tut tut and do nothing so the problem gets worse.

[Norman Verona]

Agree, Jeff. The annoying thing for me is that I think it's easier to do it right than wrong.

 

One of the other things I hammered into my receptionists ((at the peak I had 6 workshops all over London) was that if a customer brought a car in with a fault there was something wrong. It may not be quite what the customer described as he/she wasn't the expert, we were. So they should never hand the car back as "no fault found". I got them to understand that there must be something wrong and if they couldn't find it in the workshop then arrange to swap cars for a night and take the car on overnight test so they could find the source of the problem.