Customer Service on the Back Burner-Part 1

In today’s market conditions the power of Customer Service is often overlooked. It is a trend that is a sign of the times. Everyone is busy trying to survive or claw back into their market. Many say it’s a time issue. Really?

It is not often in the consulting business where we deal in a lot of second opinions and vast number of survey results, as well as some face to face realities in other people’s businesses, the we get to witness the power of Customer Service and the power of the Business Owner and the effect that Brand Name products (warranty) can have on the outcome of another business owner. Such is the very recent happening with a business that bought a building out of a bank’s portfolio only to find out there were some plumbing and electrical aesthetic issues. Sometimes “due diligence” fails to look at the basic aesthetics and this was one of those cases.

Part 1.
“What’s wrong with the electrical designer switches?” Some business owners will pay a private building inspector to perform a building inspection prior to buying a building, regardless of the price in relationship to the market value. Such is the case with the situation where a private building inspector gave the total building a “thumbs up” for all the mechanical and electrical in the building. There were the usual minor items such as paint, hardware and air filters. The two items that the inspector completely missed were:

• The designer switches in all the rooms, while working, gave off the appearance that they had been pushed so hard that they looked and acted as if they were broken.
• The corroded drain estuation in three of the four bathrooms looked like they had several years of black goop on them and this was a building that was only 1-1/2 years old.

The contractor’s installer said that he would check back with the distributor’s sales person and get back to us.

Almost a month went by and the installer showed back up, unannounced and replaced all the designer switches, preceded to leave the ‘old’ switches in a box in the lunch /coffee room and said he would have someone from the distributor pick them up. No date or contact information was mentioned. The general attitude was of “okay we’ll replace the product, but we’ll do it grudgingly.”

As of this posting, those switches have not been picked up and we have not heard from the distributor, nor the manufacturer’s reps for the manufacturer who originally manufactured the switches. And yes we know who the distributor and the manufacturer is.

Do you think that given another opportunity that we would remotely involve the same same contractor, distributor or manufacturer’s product. I don’t think so.