by Saeed Khan
It’s only the 3rd day of the year, and I already have a great customer experience story that I want to share.
I have to say, that barring any changes in the policies of this particular vendor, they’ve got a customer for life in me.
So what do I want as a customer or purchaser of products? Simple – three things:
- Products (or services) that work as advertised or expected.
- Honesty and competence from the vendor’s employees.
- Post sale service that treats me fairly and efficiently.
Now how hard is this for companies to understand and implement?
Many times, I’ve had the opposite experience of the 3 points above. I’ve blogged about my horrible experience with Future Shop (a large Canadian retailer) here. They pretty much violated #2 and #3 above right from the get go.
On the flip side, one of my first posts on this blog — back in 2007 — was about the Dyson vacuum cleaner I had bought.
During the almost 5 years that I’ve had it, it’s continued to work well. We had a problem early on with a small plastic clip that broke. I called up Dyson — via the toll free # very conveniently visible on the front of the unit — and spoke to a customer service rep. He verified the problem over the phone and shipped me a replacement clip free of charge. Nice.
But now I have another problem with the unit. The telescoping hose — a feature I really appreciate in the unit — is wearing out. It tore sometime last year, and we patched it with some duct tape. But, over the holidays, the hose got to the point where tape was no longer a solution.
So this morning I called up Dyson intent on buying a replacement hose. What’s actually very neat about the Dyson machines is that they come apart and snap together very easily, and virtually every part except the electrical bits can be easily removed and replaced by the owner. I could write a whole post on the implications of this, but I’ll save that for later.
So, I called up their toll-free line, waited a few minutes in the queue until a service rep answered the call. He verified which model of vacuum I had, confirmed that I was still at the same address, and listened to my problem. And before I could ask him how much a replacement hose would be, he said he’d ship a replacement hose to me — NO CHARGE!!!
Yes, 5 years after I bought the unit, replacement parts are shipped FREE– no cost for the part, no cost for shipping. And he added, once I get the part, if I have any problems in replacing the hose, I could simply call them back and someone would step me through it over the phone. Awesome!
As long as Dyson doesn’t change their policies or their level of service, they have a customer for life in me for their vacuums.
When I bought the vacuum several years ago, I did it mainly due to a VERY positive recommendation from a friend of mine. His wife had bought one a year earlier, yet he said he loved using it. Doesn’t get better than that. I wondered if the premium price of the unit — at $500, it was about 2X the price of other competitive models — was worth it.
Well, without a doubt the answer is yes. So how do you create a customer for life? Let me modify the 3 bullets I started with at the top of this article just a bit:
- Products (or services) that work as advertised or expected AND do it better than the competition.
- Honesty and competence from vendor’s employees REGARDLESS of who you speak with.
- Post sale service that
is so far ABOVE THE NORM, I’d be a fool to switch brands.
How does your company rack up against these three traits?
Saeed
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