Supporting our Customers

In February I will enjoy a short break and we planned to go on a ski-trip.  Since the hotel is in Austria and we will go by car we will need to have snow-chains available in the car.  I do not expect to use them but you are expected to have them in your car 'just in case'.

I called a large retailer with a shop near by asking if they where on stock (it seems that my car has a 'difficult' tire-size).  The guy on the phone was enthusiast and told me that he would reserve a pair so I could come to get them during the weekend.  So far so good !

When I went to the shop on Saturday... guess you know what comes next ... the same guy could not remember the call, did not reserve them and so did not have the snow-chains available ...  But he promised to have them reserved in the store later the next week.

Yesterday I visited the store again and ... no reservation no chains .... but luckily (and after asking the ignorant servant) she had one on the shelve.. hooray.    When paying I discovered that the box was broken so I asked for a new box - if looks could kill....

It took me some time and lots of energy but in the end we found a solution by putting the chains in a new box (was that so difficult?) satisfied customer ....  

Driving home I realized that these kind of servants are killing for your image.  You can spend tons of Euro's in advertisement but if you carefully try to ignore service to your customer, its a waist of money..  

Lesson learned - "Servant, you can make or break the image of the company your work for. The least you can do is be polite an do what you promised to your customer. Give it a try - sure it works".  

To end with a quote "Customers come by Foot but leave by Car" in my case I left with my snow-chains

Hans