Prompted by the tenor of a new discussion “Good products make promises that bad customer service can break” started by Diahann Green in the Customer Service Professionals Group, I have chosen to reproduce a relevant part of the story that I wrote way back in 1999[i], based on my own experience as service manager. The way customer service issues are brought up in various LinkedIn Groups, I suspect the attitude reflected in this story still persists particularly in some B2B companies
A Pune-based[ii] textile processing unit, working on an expansion plan, decided not to take any chances with the ‘quality’ of a boiler needed to meet its process steam requirement. It chose to buy a packaged boiler from a local, highly reputed boiler-maker, at a premium price. Within two weeks of its commissioning, the boiler started malfunctioning. The customer got nervous, made a serious complaint and requested the manufacturer to redress the problem immediately.
The problem landed in the works manager’s lap. Keen to restore the boiler into operation without loss of time he decided to send the boiler test bed engineer to attend to the complaint. The engineer did not take too long to find the technical fault. So, he declared with considerable sense of achievement that the boiler feed water was not ‘treated properly’ and that the customer was entirely responsible for the lapse and therefore, for its consequences. The testing engineer reported the ‘facts’ to the works manager, got a thumping pat on his back and as advised arranged to send to the customer, an offer for replacement of the choked heat exchanger—that constituted almost 50% of the cost of the boiler . Thus, the ball was promptly thrown into the customer’s court, inflicting on him a major unexpected cost to run his processing plant.
It took six months for the company to realise that while the engineer had won a technical argument the company had almost lost the customer to competition when it came to buying a second boiler. That would vindicate the stand that the service manager had taken at the time of the event but had been over-ruled. The ‘expert’ had stoutly defended the boiler as a piece of mechanical equipment. But did he protect the company’s product and its image?
Using this example as a springboard, I mounted a campaign within the company with a slogan that said: Don’t Defend Your Product. Protect it. It resonated strongly within the organisation but more importantly I was finally successful in getting the manufacturing team on my (and customr’s) side.
[i] THE ECONOMIC TIMES, Sunday, 17 January, 1999. http://www.gkgureja.com/published-work/dont-defend-your-product-protect-it/
[ii] Pune is a large industrial town 160 Kms South East of Mumbai (India)