Redefining Customer Care

(Published on 16 May 2006 in 'Women at Work' - W @ W - a supplement of the Daily Mirror, Colombo, Sri Lanka)

I always wondered what made my mother visit a small local grocery store in her neighbourhood rather than the big well stocked air-conditioned supermarket close by. Till I happened to accompany her one day and realised that what made all the difference was just plain customer care. The local grocer greeted her with a warm welcome, offered her a stool to sit on and a glass of water to quench her thirst, repositioned his old fashioned fan to face her, enquired after her arthritis and then fished out the stuff she had not found with him the previous week. All this to be traded for the cold greeting at the supermarket… I had never ever before realised the power of customer care as I did that particular day.

“The single most important thing to remember about any enterprise is that there are no results inside its walls. The result of a business is a satisfied customer.”- Management Guru Peter Drucker

Regardless of what business people are in, they are really in the business of satisfying customers. The degree of customer satisfaction they deliver determines the level of long-term success they will achieve in business. One small bad experience can leave an indelible impression and make a customer swear off some brands. My uncle will not visit a particular restaurant as he felt the manager was curt. My nephew won’t fly a particular airline as they misplaced his baggage. My sister won’t go to a particular salon as they nipped her toe during a pedicure and had not bothered to offer an apology. My friend won’t seek the services of a particular travel agent as they messed up her last holiday. And as for my boss, well the entire office has been made to pledge they will never ever use a particular vendor who failed to get back after a complaint was put in about service standards deteriorating.

It’s not just about making sales. It’s about creating customers - satisfied customers.
Handling customer complaints quickly and with a positive attitude is crucial to preserving a relationship with the complaining customer. Taking on board a customer’s complaint and acting on it immediately – however small or insignificant the complaint may be assures the customer that his satisfaction is foremost in the minds of the service provider. A clients’ complaint should never be underestimated, no matter how trivial it might seem. This real story happened between the customer of a well known motor car company and its customer-care executive.

The complaint received by the motor car company said, "This is the second time I have written to you, and I don't blame you for not answering me, because I sound crazy. We have a tradition in our family of ice cream for dessert after dinner each night. But the kind of ice cream varies so, every night, after we've eaten our dinner, the whole family votes on which kind of ice cream we should have and I drive down to the store to get it in the new motor I purchased from your esteemed company. The problem is that the car won’t start every time I buy a vanilla ice cream when I start back from the store. If I get any other kind of ice cream, the car starts just fine. I want you to know I'm serious about this complain, no matter how silly it sounds. What is there about your car that makes it not start when I get vanilla ice cream, and easy to start whenever I get any other kind?"

“Customers don’t expect you to be perfect. They do expect you to fix things when they go wrong.” - Donald Porter, VP British Airways

The customer-care executive was understandably unconvinced about the complaint, but sent an engineer to check it out anyway. The latter was surprised to be greeted by a well educated man in a decent neighbourhood. He had arranged to meet the customer just after dinner time. The two drove to the ice cream store. It was vanilla ice cream that night and, sure enough, after they came back to the car, it wouldn't start.

The engineer returned for three more nights. The first night, they got chocolate. The car started. The second night, the customer got strawberry. The car started. The third night he ordered vanilla. The car failed to start. The engineer, being a logical man, refused to believe that this customer's car was allergic to vanilla ice cream. He arranged, therefore, to continue his visits to get to the bottom of this problem. And toward this end he began to take notes. He jotted down all sorts of data: time of day, type of gas used, time to drive back and forth etc.In a short time, he had cracked the mystery. The customer took less time to buy vanilla than any other flavour. The answer was in the layout of the store. Vanilla, being the most popular flavour, was in a separate case at the front of the store for quick pickup. All the other flavours were kept in the back of the store at a different counter where it took considerably longer.

Now, the question for the engineer was why the car wouldn't start when it took less time. The engineer quickly came up with the answer – ‘vapour lock’. It was happening every night. But the extra time taken to get the other flavours allowed the engine to cool down sufficiently to restart. When the customer got vanilla, the engine was still too hot for the vapour lock to dissipate. Time was the problem, not the vanilla ice cream.

Even crazy looking problems are sometimes real and all problems seem to be simple only when we find the solution with logical thinking and reasoning. A customer’s complaint should never ever be ignored or considered too trivial.

“There is place in the world for any business that takes care of its customers – after the sale.” - Harvey MacKay