Recently there have been a couple of posts concerning great customer service from Fantastic Fan and also from TST....yet you see many, many posts about poor customer service.
Read the "Hot Line" in Motorhome Magazine and/or the "Action Line" in Highways Magazine and see how retailers will only respond in the customer's favor when threatened with thousands of readers seeing how inept they are. Nine out of ten retailers will respond with gratitude to Motorhome Hot Line for bringing this problem to their attention when in fact they've already responded to the customer with a negative result. But when faced with the possibility that their name will show up badly in the magazine, they'll jump through their doody dondies to now provide a positive result. Why don't they understand that customers who receive a positive action to their problem, will pass that info on to their friends?
Everybody who reads rv.net forums know that Fantastic Fan and TST provide great customer service and will keep them in mind when a purchase of their products is probable.
I think I'll start me a list of all retailers I hear about here on rv.net and the magazines. It will have two columns: one positive and one negative. Any future dealings I require will only be with those in the positive column.
Ron
Ron & Sandie
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Good idea.
Get them all jumping through their doody dondies...whatever that is.
I think part of the problem is, a lot of people don't report the good customer service, just the bad. It would be nice to have a site that lists all the comments on customer service, pro and con.
Sounds good to me. With the instant feedback we have today, vendors with poor customer service will soon find themselves without customers. Fair enough?
2008 Dodge 3500 With a Really Strong Tractor Motor...........
LB, SRW, 4X4, 6-Speed Auto, 3.73, Prodigy P3, Blue Ox Sway Pro........
2007 Komfort 212 on 225 75R 15E Maxxis 8008 Tires.........
However, on the other hand, if a company treats 10 people rioght, one of them will pass that info. on, but if one person is treated wrong, they will tell at least ten other people. There is no excuse for bad service, though.
Jim
If a company doesn't want to deal with their products problems, their CS people (are instructed?) to make it difficult for the customer.
The more people who give up, the fewer items they have to fix.
Every happy customer only tells 2 people.
But, every unhappy customer tells 10.
Still, there is no reason for intentionally shoddy merchandise.
lanerd wrote: ...A couple of posts concerning great customer service ....Yet you see many, many posts about poor customer service.
Don't they understand that customers who receive a positive action to their problem, will pass that info on to their friends?
The reason companies give poor customer service is because the public has allowed it to happen over the years.
Years ago if your service was bad you would not have customers. Today that is not true because over the years we have grown used to this type of service.
Yes we complain about it, but we go back to the business or store and continue to buy.
There was a show on TV here in Canada about the big box stores with the reputation for the worst customer service and guess who was number 1.
A lot of us park there.
But even though the service is bad we go back.
I think it boils down to training and hiring. Most retailers WANT to provide great customer service. HOwever, they mostly are hiring untrained people who are the face of their company, and if those people do not have innate customer service skills, they are not going to care how well they take care of the customer.
With the economy the way it is now, it is getting even worse (when you would think it should be getting better as retaining customers is more important than ever) because hiring and training costs money and companies are cutting those corners. They don't realize, however, that poor hiring decisions cost them far more with turnover, lost customers due to poor service, etc. in the long run. With the low rate of pay most customer service agents make, if they don't already have an innate desire to go above and beyond they are going to basically give shoddy service, because they simply don't care and don't feel compensated to do anymore than 'just enough to not get fired'.
I have been a manager in the business of hiring, and it is very difficult to train a person who has no innate customer service skills to be friendly and go the extra mile. They need to hire the folks who have that trait already, even if it isn't refined yet. You can train a 'cant do who will' but hiring a "can do who won't" is never going to work out.
The companies who are "doing it right" take the time to hire the right people for the job. They don't hire the first applicant that walks in, and they also have better training programs. It really makes a difference.
www.evservicereviews.com is one place to check. The problem is very few want to take the time to do so. If everyone would it would be an exelent reference for all of us.
Harold and Linda
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