Supples’ Pub

The proper way to treat customers has been a hot topic lately. Mark and I discussed it regarding our customers recently, and he discusses the “Customer Service Hook” over at markitude.

As you all know I’m a car nut and especially so with my GTO. As such, I interact with vendors on the LS1GTO.com Forums quite a lot. The vendors pay for advertising space on there, in the form of a very small banner ad on the left column as well as the right to advertise products and sales. The good vendors interact with their community by answering questions and making recommendations. The “good” vendors who do interact then seem to make a seemingly limitless number of poor decisions when it comes to serving their customers.

The “bad” choices are always more interesting, so we’ll start with those. Let me start with an example fresh on my mind. I contact the only vendor on the forum selling GM OEM parts through his dealership. Having had good contact with this vendor before, I e-mail him for some power seat parts for the Camaro Project. A little longer than usual delay in response, two days (perfectly reasonable), and he asks for the VIN to look it up. I write back explaining I couldn’t wait and had to order the parts elsewhere. I also explained that the poor OEM parts catalog wouldn’t load a picture showing the location of the part, thus necessitating me contacting him for clarification; I always try to give vendors or companies tips on how to make my experience better, so I will continue to give them my money. All is well here right? Well, then he replies to me and says only the following:

Let me know when stuff like that happens so I’m not wasting my time.

I’m sorry, did you just tell a customer they’re wasting your time? Yes, whatever searching he did for me was wasted; but it was a marginal amount of time. I replied very politely and mentioned that it was a poor way to treat a customer, so he comes back defending how it wasn’t inappropriate. Yadayadayada, in the end he was quite cordial, but didn’t seem to understand that saying things like that to a customer was a bad idea. At least he served the purpose of an illustration here.

Example #2: A suspension parts vendor who offers a complete range of parts specifically designed for these cars, something no one company offers and thus they have quite a bit of a stranglehold on the market. Some of their parts include instructions when specifically needed, otherwise it is assumed to simply be replaced as the OEM part was. Someone asks that the company provide instructions with all of their parts, partially because more often than not there is a particular detail to installation with the aftermarket parts that makes install easier or the part perform better. While these tidbits are available through searching the forum, as a vendor some feel it is their responsibility to provide instructions directly. What opportunity does the vendor have here? Improve relations with your customer base even further, at little sacrifice to yourself. How do they respond? By saying none of the competitors offer instructions, that tips & tricks from other users are available on the forum, and to get the part installed by one of their dealers if you are unsure. To their credit, they do explain that with purchase of any product you can call any dealer for questions on installation. They also generally warranty their products and service quite well. But the main representative for the company gets quite agitated and down-right refuses to provide instructions, citing that few if any other auto parts come with instructions. Eventually he sideways apologizes to the community and it appears they may work on instructions in the future, but how hard is it to at least consider what your customers want right off the bat?

I’ll try not to elaborate further, you get the picture. Too often lately I see businesses take their customers for granted in one major way or another. If a sizeable portion of one’s user base wants something, you owe it to your business to at least consider what they are asking for, particularly if they are a vocal portion. The proper response to people wanting instructions would have been “That’s a great idea. Let me look into how we can best implement that and I’ll share our plans with the community in the future.” Simple response, problem defused, image maintained/improved. A customer “wastes” your time by asking for information and not purchasing based on it: you thank them for their inquiry and let them know to call on you for any future needs.

I do not know if I just happen to witness people’s decisions when they “missed snack time” as McDonald’s commercials assert or if the just need a Snickers bar (another TV commercial assertion), but I see too many (mostly small) businesses trying to shoot themselves in their own damn foot. If something isn’t cost effective, explain that to your customers. If there’s a practical reason behind why something won’t work/is a bad idea, explain that to your customers. In case it isn’t clear: communicate with your customers. Even large businesses have this issue, particularly those entrenched in the “old world” thinking where press takes a while to report and the reach of a particular complaint or naysayer is generally limited. Today any loudmouth with a computer can publish something that gets picked up by Google and anyone who searches for “yourcompany SUCKS” will see what bonehead mistake you made.

This shouldn’t be news to most of the people who I know read my drivel, but there are far too many people out there who don’t get it, thus I felt the need to put it in writing for them. LISTEN TO YOUR CUSTOMERS