Customer Service Issue - Would like your opinion...
 

I have an issue with a customer. I know that "the customer is always right" however, this one really pushed my buttons for some reason.

The customer purchased a set of axles at a competitor because they were cheaper than us. He then sent us an email with the following question:

This customer called up one of our salesreps, and our salesrep tried to his best knowledge figure out the answer to his question. Now, I've written a few books on Porsches, and I personally would have difficulty figuring out exactly what this customer needed. Our salesrep tried to help the customer to the best of his abilities. In the end, the customer was sent the wrong parts and was unhappy with this.

This customer's chief complaint has been the fact that some email sent to our customer support line either wasn't received by us or him. We're actually getting rid of all email for CSR issues, as it is very frustrating when messages get blocked by spam, etc (happens ALL THE TIME). I am working on this particular problem - I have someone very good on email right now, but they have no control over whether or not email gets delivered.

I basically told the customer that I was irritated that he was asking me what parts were included with a set of axles that were purchased elsewhere, and which parts were needed? I told him that he should have asked the vendor that he bought the axles from.

The customer has been a good customer in the past, but this exchange really pushed a button for me. It really irks me to have the customer admittedly purchase $250 worth of parts elsewhere, then come to me for support and the $20 worth of hardware to install them.

What do you think? Am I reacting irrationally when I'm irritated by this?

-Wayne

Legit gripe. Tell 'em to go to hell.

The customer needs to go to where he purchased the axles from. Its their support issue not yours. If he wants to order the small stuff from you then he should know already know what he needs since he already has the parts in front of him. If he wanted your support then he should have purchased everything from PP.

It's irritating.

But he bought the bolts from you, and then got sent the wrong ones, right? If he's been a good customer in the past, I think you've got to act as though he'll be a good customer in the future -- and answer whatever questions he has about parts he's buying from you. In the piece of the message you quoted, I would answer the question about the bolt lengths, and refer him back to his other vendor for questions about what parts were included with his axles.

I agree with Jack. Even though customers can be irritating at times, you can't afford to tick them off or you may lose them for good. If he doesn't do this often, I'd just accept it as one of the occasional headaches of running a business.

I'd cordially remind him that parts were not purchased at Pelican, and it is not your policy to support outside purchases. Still, because he has been a good customer, you offered to help. Straighten out the parts mix-up, get him what he ordered, but make very clear going forward that he must contact original vendor either to complete orders made from them or to resolve technical questions related to orders from them.

Do the best you can, noting that "there's no guarantee it's the right one since you didn't sell him the axles" and if installed and it blows up it's not Pelican's fault. Standard disclaimer. I wouldn't offer too much in terms of advice with this one, you're creating liability for yourself and also a "the other guy said" type of scenario. Politely tell him it's probably "best to stick with the guy who sold 'em - he could tell you what you need"

Eat the return and send him on the way.

If he persists, and has money in hand well then send something else - however you can't keep wasting your time servicing this. It's becoming obvious he didn't feel like dealing with who sold 'em the pieces due to inconvience.

The customer is right UNTIL THEY BREAK THE STORE POLICY. THEN THE CUSTOMER IS WRONG....Don't expect honor from most- They'll rob you blind if you let them.

Sad but true.

rjp

Hmm, you guys seem to have a point here. Perhaps I did over-react on my response to the customer on this one. I'm usually pretty good and try to be "PC" to just about everyone, but I guess I must have been having a bad day here, and forgot the "cordially" part.

It's a bit frustrating at times - I feel that people expect me to be perfect, correct, and proper 100% of the time. I don't always live up to that.

I will send an followup apology to the customer, along with a free Porsche model.

-Wayne

Wayne,

Maybe you ought to think about sending him a copy of the post you made here? It shows you want his business, and are working to get it..."but hey man, gimme a break!" (and he's not embarrassed for his behavior, oh contrair, you're expected to! maybe that's why you're pissed?)

Dave Cate

I sent him a link to the post right after I posted it - before there were any replies...

-Wayne

Wayne:

I say this with all due respect....I think you overreacted. Business is slow, people are discussing purchases from competitors on YOUR board, and you're generally p!ssed off at the way things are going at the moment (or so it would appear).

Yes, the customer should have purchased the axles from PP. Yes he has big brass ones for buying $20 worth of parts from PP instead of the $250 axles -- and then complaining about the way he was handled. But, he's been a good customer in the past, and one would think you'd want him to remain a customer in the future. So, in this case, even though he's wrong for not sourcing the entire project from PP, you should just take a deep breath and let this one pass. It's not worth your headache.

The fact that you're sending him an apology and a model show's not just that you're a smart businessman, it shows you're a class act. And in the end, that's what it's all about. Well done!

Jack has it right. Since he has been a good customer in the past, he may well be again. I will admit to usually looking for the best price around. Perhaps the place he bought the axles from was having a huge sale and he just couldn't pass it up. Be courteous, but don't bend over backwards.

Also, the customer IS NOT ALWAYS RIGHT! That attitude is bad for the morale of your employees. If someone is completely a dickwad and unreasonable, make it clear that you don't want their business and why. The almighty dollar is not worth prostituting your integrity for.

Just my .02...

ianc

I'm in Jack's camp too. Sorry.

There is no harm in customers shopping for the best deal, however perhaps he lacks a little decorum expecting "service" on items he didn't purchase from you. The bolts on the other hand he did see fit to buy from you. You could see this "affair' as constructive feedback for Pelican :)

I suspect that he is realizing that the "best deal" isn't necessarily measured by cost, but also the back-up service and information to be found on the board that you provide.

He found himself in strife and saw fit to contact you... You could see that as a compliment.

I think his question is very obnoxious - I would never have the gall to do that after I purchased the expensive parts somewhere else.

But I suppose from a running-the-business perspective, it makes sense to smooth things over.

Yes, that's so. My roommate owns a shop, but if he can't get me a part at cost, or I can't find it used locally, I'll always come here simply out of loyalty for the invaluable (and much appreciated) service you provide our community. Thanks for that...

ianc

Edit: Wayne, don't get rid of email for CSR. It can be a hassle, but it is much more efficient than phone time even if imbeciles lose your response. You may have a very good mail guy, but he can't cure this, as you suggest. Just make sure you have a good means of documenting and reviewing CSR mail transactions for both your satisfaction and your customer's. At the very least, your reps should be archiving their email for backup. At best, it would be contained in a central repository, like an Exchange server, that you could review at will. Can't step backward man; meet the challenge...

I'd want to know why he didn't buy from you in the first place and fix that problem.

i personally think that he was taking the p*ss asking you to advise and sell him bolts - at that point you should have referred him to his vendor. but you sold him the "wrong" bolts at which point he became a customer for that transaction.

Email is going away, but will be replaced with a system similar to this BBS with private messaging (this is what I'm working on integrating right now: www.perldesk.com)

-Wayne

kettles soo black!
 

I do not think customer issues should be dragged out on the forumn. Did you try contacting the customer first? Have you waited for over a Month for payment?
Just kidding...
Do an exchange on parts, maybe he will buy one of those new nitros setups you are going to start selling next Month. ;)

Check the price. Exchange could do all this and more for your company. If it's cheap and does what you want it to, fine, but look at enterprise-class solutions as well; if your company continues to scale, you'll be glad you did...

ianc

Wayne,

I got into CSR on the ground level as a busboy in a fine restaurant, I worked my way up to server, bartender, maitre'd and eventually chef before leaving that industry. Along the way I was fortunate to befriend many multi-millionaires most of whom where self made. A common theme I learned is that the customer is usually wrong but a good salesman can make them feel as if they were right. In this case it was up to PP to prove the customer made the right deicsion by calling PP for the needed parts, in the end they would realize they should have just called PP for the axles as well. I've been a bad PP customer, never needed anything other than tune up stuff which I've bought local paying more for convience but I do have a big list of stuff for the track car I'm working on and all of the parts offered by PP will be purchased from PP mainly due to this board. Any other parts I've needed or need are not supplied by PP so I feel no shame in going elsewhere for them but I do know that I no longer post on rennlist because of the forum offered here as well as what seems to be very good customer service. Example, I'll need a 911 trans rebuild kit next month and PP will be my supplier, after that I'll need proper door and window seals for a '66 912 and again you'll be my supplier. I've even thought of giving you first crack at marketing a certain tool I make as well as some CNC parts when I get them finished all because I've developed a certain trust in your business. The real point I'm trying to make is do you best to take care of all customers, large and small. The customer in question has obviously realized that the better "price" he got elsewhere has become a larger headache than it was worth. Let's say you sold him the axles and the hardware you believed he needed, would you have any problem exchanging if the hardware was incorrect? From what I've read I doubt it. As a CSR as well as a buyer for my small business I really know the value of customer service and frequently place my orders with the companies who charge more but can bail me out when I'm in trouble beit their fault or mine. These are my "goto" guys and thier service has won my companies business. Recently I had a customer who needed a whole 5 gallons of specialized adhesive. This meant purchasing very small quantities of the necessary ingredients, guess who came through with overnight delivery of pails of chemicals when their usual minimum is 55 gallon drums? Guess who I just today ordered drums of these chemicals from when my same customer placed an order for 5 drums of this adhesive as $8.50/lb? That's right good customer service helped me land a 20K plus order and I'll be damned if I'll go to the next guy for a few cents extra profit. BTW those drums will be on my dock friday, 2 weeks sooner than any of the other needed chemicals. This whole scenario really played to my advantage to my boss who just last week ripped me for not finding better raw materials pricing, suffice it to say I handily won that argument after today's order. Sure the other guys might have saved me $30-50 but I doubt I've have landed the customer, it's worse in the instant gratification world of hobbyists. We what our parts yerterday, they had better fit and we ***** when they don't. Why? well it's our hobby, our wifes, GF's or jobs only give us limited time to work on our cars and when Sat rolls around the right parts had better be in the box. In the end this customer made a bad decision to call someone esle for parts and it was up to PP to prove he made the right decision buy calling you guys to bail him out because if you did you'd be the hero and likely not forgotten.

Respectfully...

I already use Exchange. The PerlDesk stuff is highly modified to be integrated with our ordering system = cool.

-Wayne

This is a really good point.

On Wayne's initial irritation -- I think the average customer in almost any field is a pain to deal with, but they are the bread and butter. I have never fired a client, though I want to daily. As a customer, I notice when someone bends over backwards to serve me. I think you're right to be irritated Wayne, but you gotta keep bending over backwards -- but not bending over forwards! If the amount of work it would take you to get that $20 sale is completely not worth it, I think it's fair to THINK about not going the extra mile. All said and done, I'd err on the side of going the extra mile.

I have a friend who sells eye glasses. He is not a big chain, just a small one store bussiness. Glasses, especially progressive bifocals can get quite expensive, and he is not the cheapest in town.

BUT, he is always willing to adjust your glasses and help you with them (at no charge), even if you bought them from the competitor down the street and paid them 1K. People come to appreciate his knowledge and dependability and he tells me that these folks are ultimately his largest source of new sales.

Dealing with the public can be difficult, but we should all strive for what my friend is able to do. It makes us feel good to solve other peoples problems, and in the long run it helps our bussiness.

Just my $.02

Jack is spot on. No one's perfect. That goes for vendors as well as customers. I've bought most, if not all of my Porsche parts from Pelican because it's convenient, the price seems fair, and the customer service has been very good. Maybe too good, as one might conclude because the customer in question felt comfortable enough to contact you regarding parts that you did not supply. Or-maybe he's one of those guys that thinks you owe it to him for past business. Either way-I would work with him to ensure his future business-which sounds like exactly what you're doing.

dealing with vender part #'s is a pain in the butt. have him call gkn, they have a really good tech staff. they can answer all the questions about their product

Read what charlesbahn wrote. There is alot of subtle business wisdom there and it is said well.

Who was it? Let's beat him up.

I buy parts from Pelican because I trust Pelican. I trust that I'm getting the highest quality from Pelican in spite of the 15% restocking charge I occasionally get hit with.
Wayne, helping that guy is paying forward for his business. It's the right thing to do. He'll figure out that he screwed up by not doing one stop shopping on his own.
If you ever find yourself in a situation again with a customer where you want to go off on him, pass the contact along to someone else in your organization who may be more objective.

Wayne,
You are correct in your frustration with someone who buys from a competitor then comes to the supplier with the knowledge and experience when there is a problem.
Some people just don't understand how the real world works.
Keep up the good work!
drums

I'd tell him to drill out his new axles to fit your bolts! Obviously, the bolts are correct. He just bought the wrong axles from some dumba$$ competitor! ;)

Realistically though, I'll use Discount Tire as an example: They fix flats for free. Doesn't matter where you bought the tires, they treat you like you just spent $1000 with them. Over time, they have become the automatic "go to" company when I need anything related to tires. I have 5 vehicles in my company fleet and between those and personal vehicles, I purchase at least 3-4 sets of tires per year. I don't even know who their competitors are at this point! Nor do I care.

Yes, do the best you can to answer questions. Try to avoid the sour grapes problem (ah' the heck with you since you bought from a competitor), but also, you simply cannot answer questions about what parts a competitor may have included, or excluded, with that order. By the time you are done, the customer (assuming he or she has as much intelligence as a Steve Weiner chip) will understand that there is a limit to the information you can provide because of the fact that his questions related to an order you did not fill. He should also get a sense that his life is more complicated now that he is involving two vendors.

Certainly a difficult business decision.

You should only feel obliged to provide support for the parts you actually sold, such as the bolts. Of course that's tricky if you select the bolts based on the year of the car and the customer might have bought a different set of drive shafts and does not tell you about it (or probably has no clue about it). He can't really blame you for that. And to ask you about parts he bought somewhere else is clearly a nono.

On the other hand you can argue to help the customer as far as possible and hope he learns a lesson and stops buying where he might save a buck, but can not get any support. I guess it depends how often something like this happens. If it just happens once in a while and does not take away too much time from your sales reps, I would just swallow it and see it as an opportunity.
:)

Wayne we keep hearing this about your E-mail system.

"This customer's chief complaint has been the fact that some email sent to our customer support line either wasn't received by us or him"

Fix the system or get a new one, being an online business e-mail is everything all the players in online businesses deal with E-mail, it's your ONLINE business tool that you need, it's like you have a sign on your front door pointing to a black hole and you have no explanation of why your customers are not coming in the door and why they complain about the sign that points to the black hole. Don't blame your customers for following your sign that leads them to the black hole, it's your sign (E-mail system fix it)

Online Focused business tools:
1)Website
2)Phone
3)E-mail
4)This great BBS
5)Storefront door.

Neighborhood business:
1)Storefront with door
2)Phone
3)Website
4)E-mail

One of your top 5 business tools are broken, would you not fix your website if it was down? Or if your front door was locked would you not unlock the door. This is not the first thread talking about E-mail that get lost or unanswered.

As far as acting irrationally. Yes you are read your own post you stated two things:

"The customer is always right!"
"The customer has been a good customer in the past"

Why ask the question are you acting irrationally?

Your best bet would be answer your GOOD customers questions, and don't air your dirty laundry to all your clients Your not always going to get every order on every part.


You have a wonderful business model, an excellent site, I have ordered hundreds of dollars in parts from Pelican Parts, but these posts about business being slow and am I acting irrationally are puzzling, your a better business man than that, keep up the good business practices that you truely know, and stop second guessing yourself.

Well my .02 is that maybe Wayne has done such a good job at providing Tech. info and support, people see sales as the second side of the business. The internet allows individuals that know what they want to find it at the best price. The problem is, you can probably go to a local parts store and order an axle but will they know what size bolts you need? Will they even try to find out? 10 to 1 they will tell you to call a Porsche dealer. I understand Wayne's frustration, unless he can charge $100 a bolt to account for the time he spends, how does he make money? Sure "future sales"-maybe, but if a person is surfing for best price now, that person will do the same next time and the time after. Maybe I haven't had enough coffee, but I don't see buyers as being "loyal" these days. Sure some will will direct most business to a source but if you had the choice to save money most will do it. That's why this site is so popular, else we would all bring our cars to repair shops to be fixed and buy our parts new rather than risking being ripped off by dead-beats from Arizona named Chris Briggs. No real answer for you Wayne other than if I git ***** from someone, unless desperate, that would be how much of my money they would get. I need more coffee.

As Wayne pointed out he is sending emails, which means they are being passed out onto the Internet, but they aren't getting through. An "Email System" for sending email has a number of pieces: A client to send the message; An SMTP server provided by your ISP to forward the email; The "Internet" provided by random acts of commerce and god knows who but controlled by no one; The receiving domain's MX mail relay system which can contain an amazing number of unknown bizarre filters and rules; The recipients mail client; And finally the recipients antivirus, firewall, and spam blocker.

I not sure how you would propose that Wayne fix the system as it encompasses the entire Internet but if you will explain it I will go out and get rich because it would mean that you would have solved the basic spam problem that no one has any idea of how to fix.

Daily I see delivery problems with official court notices with originating IPs, domains, addresses, and return addresses that come from "@usdoj.gov". How easy is it for anyone to see these messages aren't spam?

The fact is that if you go read the RFCs for the various parts of the MX mail system you will see that the system wasn't designed to be a reliable delivery system. It was designed to be "as good as we can get it" system. To be reliable it would have to have a protocol that establishes a connection from the sending point to the receiving point.

BTW- Wayne, I wouldn't completely scrap the email but I would make it very clear that it is secondary to a PM system so the customer is induced to check for PMs.

Wayne

I would hope that the SMTP server is Wayne's very own and not provided by an ISP if it is, then true he has no control over the spam filters that may be dumping E-mail. Let me better explain that if E-mail is not working as your method of internet communication being a online biz use something that does work and from reading Wayne's posts he is looking into his options. We could all argue about E-mail reliablity pop3 versus imap, but with proper tools and management E-mail works just fine. If my CEO, missed more than one E-mail from the same person they would be screaming at us IT guys to fix the problem as most won't understand all the things that could go wrong with E-mail. Nevertheless my company and most if you took away E-mail would have a melt down. It's rates right up there with the phone as a way to communicate in the business world.

If it was me, I'd be very flattered that Wayne took the time to write about it and try to get other people's opinions on the matter.

What other company CEO out there actually does that?

Wayne.... eliminate standard email (its passe).. why dont you just set up a text box (JUST LIKE THIS ONE THAT i AM TYPING INTO NOW) in which your customers can type in a question...

The question then gets forwarded to a special spam free email address that you set up within your company...