What a joke.
Last Friday, my 3 ½ year old Kenmore refrigerator stopped working. At the time I’m writing this, almost a week later, it’s still not working.
Here’s a recap of this comedy of errors and the lessons you can learn . . .
1. I’m home with my 4 month old and notice the refrigerator makes a loud click, the motor turns on for about 5 seconds, then it clicks again and shuts off. I open it up, and while the contents are still cold, the fridge is not blowing cold air anymore. Realizing time is of the essence, I stuff a 5 week supply of frozen breast milk from the freezer into a cooler and rush it to my wife’s office to store in the freezer there.
Lesson #1: Frozen breast milk is worth more than gold. If you have some stored in your freezer and that supply is put at risk, do whatever it takes to save it. Whatever the solution, it’s a lot less expensive than hiring a psychologist to help your wife recover from the loss. (While I realize this is not a business lesson and most people reading this will never encounter this situation, believe me, if you do, you’ll thank me!).
2. I returned home after successfully delivering the payload before it melted and called Sears to come out to repair the refrigerator. I am pretty much forced to use Sears because the expensive parts of the refrigerator are still under warranty. I’m told they have no service appointments until Monday.
That put us in a real bind. We had medication for the baby and fresh breast milk in the fridge (not to mention food for us). No matter how much I explained the situation and pleaded with them, I was told there was nothing they could do for us.
So faced with having no refrigerator for the weekend, I rush out (cursing Sears along the way) to buy a mini-fridge so we can at least stock the essentials until the repair man comes. I save a few things, but have to toss most of what was in our fridge and freezer.
Lesson #2: If you have a customer in a bind, what can you do to help them? What contingency plans could you put in place to make sure they get the help they need? In this case, could Sears have offered the option of a loaner fridge for the weekend or let me talk with a service technician to see if perhaps there’s an easy or temporary solution to the problem?
One way to turn customers into raving fans that sing your praises from the rooftops is to come up big in their time of need.
3. The technician comes out on Monday and as soon as I describe the problem, he tells me it’s the starter relay – which, of course, is not under warranty.
The good news is that it’s only a $30 part.
The bad news is that labor costs $200 (plus a $10 gas surcharge).
The worst news is that he doesn’t have the part in stock and couldn’t get it and come back until Thursday to make the repair.
The tech is a nice guy and shows me how easy it is to install this myself and tells me where I can order the part online as well as a local store that might have it in stock.
Lesson #3: Be prepared. I explained the problem to the scheduler on Friday and would think it was on the repair ticket. If the repair man knew exactly what the problem was when I described it to him, could he (or someone else in his company) looked at my ticket BEFORE he came out? Then maybe they could have made sure they had the part that would likely fix my problem, saving me and him a wasted service call.
How can you anticipate your customers’ needs and be prepared before you are in front of them and have tell them you can’t give them what they need?
4. I call the local company the tech mentioned, Marcone Appliance Parts Center in St. Louis. It’s a little after 4PM. After being on hold for 54 minutes and hearing over and over again how important my call and customer service is to them, I get disconnected at 5PM when their phones shut off. I vow never to use Marcone – ever!
Lesson #4: Back up your words with action. As a copywriter, I’m acutely aware of the importance of words and the messages they convey. I’m also acutely aware that if you don’t back up your words and messages with action, you lose all credibility. Don’t bullshit your prospects with empty rhetoric or promises, you’ll only piss them off.
5. I order the part online from SearsPartsDirect.com. The site shows the part is in stock and with expedited shipping, I can have it by Wednesday. 24 hours later I check my order status and it now shows the part is backordered. I call SearsPartsDirect.com and they can’t tell me when the part might ship. I tell them I want to cancel the order. They tell me once an order has been placed, they can’t cancel it.
Yes, that’s right. I placed the order on the understanding that it was in stock and would get to me by Wednesday. Now it turns out that not only is that not the case, but they won’t allow me to cancel my order of a backordered part that hasn’t shipped yet! The rep happily lets me know that once I get the part, I can easily return it. I ask if that includes the cost for the expedited shipping I paid for (which cost almost as much as the part itself) and am told the refund would only cover the part itself – not the shipping.
After demanding to speak with a supervisor, I’m transferred a department they actually called “Customer Resolution.” I pitch enough of a fit and am told, as it turns out, they can cancel my order.
Lesson #5: If you tell a customer you can meet their needs, meet them. Deliver the goods as promised in the timeframe you promised it. Bonus points here if you deliver more than expected, faster than they expect it.
Lesson #6: Don’t enact stupid-ass policies that make no sense. If a customer wants to cancel the arrangement before any goods or services are delivered, then make it as easy as possible to do it.
Lesson #7: If you need a department in your company called “Customer Resolution,” that’s a pretty big clue that Customer Service needs a big overhaul.
7. I order the part from an online store (which I found using Google AdWords) and it supposedly will arrive by FedEx Thursday morning. Hopefully, the part number the Sears repairman gave me is the right one and the part works, but at this point I’m making no assumptions. If it doesn’t work, I’m getting rid of our Kenmore refrigerator and buying a new non-Kenmore one from someplace not named Sears.
Lesson #8: Everything you do in your company is marketing. Your customer service, the quality of your product, what customers hear when they are on hold, your billing and cancellation policies, etc.
All these things affect people’s impressions of your company/brand and their decisions to buy from you or not. You can spend millions building a brand and trying to get customers in the door only to have sloppy customer service, shoddy products or service, and dumb policies sabotage it all. This is even more true in the Internet age where pissed off customers can vent their frustrations on message boards, review sites and blogs.
I hope the lessons outlined in this blog are helpful and can make at least some good to come out of this debacle. Oh, one last thing, if you ever need a new refrigerator, I’d recommend staying away from Sears. I know I will.
(Update: Partselect.com and FedEx came through and we now have a working refrigerator!)
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
8 lessons are a lot to learn from one broken refrigerator. You made a lot of great points about customer service. As a member of the Partselect.com team I would like to let you know that we were glad we could help you out in your time of need.
Gwen
BTW, I totally agree with you regarding the frozen breast milk, your quick thinking saved you additional grief from your wife and baby
Lesson one: never buy long established, well entrenched domestic brand name items – They have become such fat cats from reaming the public and so bound up in their own little bureaucracies, they are of service onlt to themselves! The revolution is coming, they will repent, but it will be too late! the imports will have eaten them alive! the same thing happened to GM, Ford and Chrysler, and they are playing catch-up against giants like Toyota, Honda and Hyundai! P.S. When was the last time you saw a new Studebaker for sale?
Awesome. I could not agree with your lessons more. Great post. There is nothing worse than jumping through the aimless, empty promise filled loops of customer service.
Stumbled. Thumbs up!
Would that everyone actually learned a lesson from poor customer service experiences. What I usually hear is “we’re better than most”. REALLY!? And what does “better than most” look like when this is an example of “most.” Customer Service has become the most obvious, and easiest, comptetive area because of the lack of competition and yet most businesses (and I have to say it isn’t just the “fat cat” entrenched brands) don’t even understand what excellent customer service requires. Is it just that we see it so seldom we have no model to base our standards upon? “Nice enough” is now “good enough”? Or is it that we have a geater value for expedience than we do for excellence? Maybe it’s just that most people in this country think they are too good to “serve” when “service” is the thing that adds the most value to any transaction. Whatever it is we are also robbing ourselves of the real joy that comes from serving, from adding value to our transactions and from being the hero that saves the day (and the fresh breast milk.)
Had I been in your situation, I would have blown my top. I really hate it when I need something fixed and customer service tells me they’d “coordinate” with some other department (most often the technical department) regarding my problem, and then a week would pass by and I’m still not getting service. If only we can fix our appliances ourselves! We’d get rid of the useless people we encounter when we supposedly need them.
Anyway, I’m glad things worked in your favor at last, and you don’t have to spend more money for a new fridge.