After Sales Service

30th January 2014

I have been dealing with a company who have really wound me up recently, not because their product is bad, but because everything else around it is, or more specifically their support service.

I suspected that part of it wasn’t working quite as it should be, so I called to get some help and advice. Initially I could only ever get an answer phone, and so after calling a few times I left a message asking for a call back. A day or two passed with no response, so I tried again, and again I left a message. Still no response, so in desperation I sent an e-mail to one person who had at one time been quite helpful in the past. This time it achieved an immediate call back from the technician. He was evidently annoyed at having been made to call me, so was quite aggressive, obstructive and unhelpful. In the end he reluctantly agreed that things may not be quite right, so told me he would get a technical team to look in the following week. My wife stayed in all day to greet them, but they never turned up, and once again the technician who had “arranged” this was not on hand to answer the phone. We finally got a team to have a look today after much chasing and complaining, and I should add, that they have been extremely helpful.

The point is that all of the ill-will and bad feeling I now have for this company could so easily have been avoided. Answering the phone, honouring what you say you are going to do, and being honest and apologetic would all have helped. Sorting out a problem well can create life long fans of your business rather than trying to avoid it, deny it, or blame someone else, which has left me wishing I had never brought from them in the first place. They certainly won’t be getting any referrals from me, and in fact I would actively warn people off them.

So if you ever receive a complaint from a customer, always be quick to acknowledge it, face up to it, and rectify it as soon as possible. Taking an initial small financial hit to sort something is far more likely to pay dividends in the long run.

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