A couple of years ago I made what I consider to be a somewhat expensive purchase.  Instead of purchasing a vehicle for substantially less, I chose to moderately indulge myself.

Every time I get behind the wheel, I derive a lot of pleasure.  The weather or situation does not diminish my enjoyment one iota.

During the course of the past two years, small issues appear which require the vehicle be serviced.  The dealer couldn’t be better.  They are pleasurable and resolve the issue at hand.  The problem is something else totally unrelated crops up and small items fail to operate properly.  This should not be happening as no one I know has these experiences.

To date this has not ceased my enthusiasm for my vehicle.  Perhaps it is because the dealer’s staff does such a good job of minimizing any inconveniences.

My take-away from this is, at every customer interaction we have the opportunity to renew our customer’s faith in us and remind them why they choose to reward us with their business in the first place, or give them a reason take their business elsewhere.

Within a week of making the decision and attempting to work with the company, it became apparent that this would not be a good fit as it took quite a while to get questions answered.  And we were just at the beginning of the implementation phase.  So I contacted the company to let them know we would not be proceeding.

I had put their system out of my mind until yesterday.  That is when we received a call from the company regarding us terminating the relationship.  This morning I returned the call and spoke with one of their representatives.  She asked why we decided not to continue with the software.  I said this is a perfect example of why we stopped; we canceled in May and it is now almost August and we are just receiving a call asking us why.

I then stated if we were in a situation where a client no longer wished to do business with us we would be on the phone with them in the afternoon, or tomorrow at the latest.

Exceptional customer service needs to be a core believe from the top down and permeate throughout the organization.  Everyone who comes into contact with clients or customers needs to be empowered to do whatever is necessary to make sure that clients and customers are completely satisfied.

This latest interaction with such a large company provides our computer networking and repair; and website development companies, with a good example of what not to emulate.  We can always learn.

This business owner spends a substantial amount of time out of the office and communication with her staff is vitally important.

After listening for a while I suggested a solution  which would save her about 30 minutes per day.  I informed her the change would be seamless and would not require any additional technical time per month.

At first she didn’t want to increase her monthly costs and was reluctant to make the move.  When she realized it amounted to only a few dollars per day, she decided to go ahead.

I spoke with her recently and she is very happy with her decision.  While it hasn’t eliminated all her frustrations, it has dramatically reduced them.