There is a caveat to this title. Let’s examine that …
Back in the 80’s, I was the sales manager for a local office equipment company. They had a policy that, if you were under a maintenance agreement and we were not able to respond within 24 hours, you would receive a $25 credit to your account. Not a lot of money, but a nice touch regardless. This gave the customer an extra layer of confidence.
The interesting part was that the company would occasionally choose to not respond within the allotted time. They might be late a few hours and then issue that credit. Why? This demonstrated that they kept their promises. I’m not even sure if, at the time, I fully comprehended this dynamic.
During my career I was a tremendous procrastinator and particularly when it came to delivering bad news to my clients. I trembled in fear as to what their response would be. Generally, the longer I put it off … the worse the response. God forbid that they should find out about it before I could bring it to their attention.
Of course, we would correct the issue but, to this day, I can’t figure out how I managed to hold onto those accounts. One in particular was huge for us. Over $1,000,000 in new signage business every year.
In 2006 I secured a deal with a regional bank that was going to be rapidly expanding in S.W. Idaho. Our very first job was about 150 miles away in a resort community. It wasn’t a large job, but the bank had huge potential. It also required installing some sandblasted marble signs that were being provided by another vendor.
Well, transporting those signs to the job site resulted in breaking every damn one of them. Each had been placed securely in a wooden crate. Some elements of the company wanted to blame this breakage on the vendor. I ask if they had been inspected. They had not.
Next it turned out that we had transported them laying down flat on s trailer vs. standing up on their sides. Have you ever seen glass being moved? Always on their sides, never flat. Prevents breakage. The same thing holds true for sandblasted marble signs.
I stood my ground and said that we needed to accept responsibility and make it right. Management agreed. It also turned out that we could remake these signs on our own. I did not realize that we even had that capability and that is exactly what we did.
The customer was ecstatic. These signs looked as good as, if not better, than the signs they were buying from the other vendor and we could do them for less money. The result … we secured all of their future business including their sandblasted signs.
It was then that I had an epiphany. No company is perfect. To err is human. If you quickly own up to your mistakes and if you quickly correct them, you will have created a stronger customer relationship than you would have had if the error had never occurred in the first place. There’s your caveat.
You have answered the lingering question in every buyer’s mind … “I got a good deal on this and it looks and works great but, what happens when it breaks?”. Everything breaks at some point. Now I know what will happen when it does and … this company stands by their products so why would I buy elsewhere?
On the other hand, if we had not acted in the way that we had, this customer would have been lost and we did about another $750,000 worth of business with this client. That original deal, as I recall, was about $25,000. Our next deal was well over $100,000 dollars. I made 13% commission on every deal.
Amazon has learned this lesson. I spend a ton of money with them every month. I joke that they should be putting a warehouse in my subdivision. Occasionally I have to return an item and, sometimes, I myself have purchased something in error. Regardless, returns are never an issue and the Amazon truck continues to grace my residence.
In my teens I worked for a department store. They would accept any return. I vividly remember a customer coming in with a pair of Levi’s that I swear had been run over with a gas lawn mower. We gave them another pair. I was floored! In my 20’s, the store I worked for would issue credits for products bought at another store even if we did not carry that item.
Lessons learned!
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Craig M. Jamieson
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