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How To Flunk Your Customer Service Surveys
I felt clean and refreshed after my shower, until I went into the kitchen for a glass of water – and saw water dripping from the ceiling onto my brand new kitchen floor! This was the opening round in an agonizing saga that went on for several long and weary weeks.
The sight of water leaking from my shower into the kitchen below was not a new one. Less than eight weeks before, I hired a company to repair our plumbing problem. After several weeks of mess and frustration, our plumbing was “fixed”. I then hired the same company to completely redo my kitchen. Total cost of all this: $6500. We enjoyed the new kitchen for only five days before the water began leaking again!
The company who supposedly fixed the plumbing offers a one year guarantee. I ignorantly assumed there would be no problem once they understood their job was defective. Wrongo!
After three weeks of stalling, I finally informed them - in writing - that I was going to hire an attorney if this problem was not fixed by a certain deadline. Finally, grudgingly, they redid the earlier plumbing job and everything was fixed, except for a hole in our kitchen ceiling. The contractor told us he couldn’t fix the ceiling that day because it had to dry and requested that we sign a work order so that he would get paid for what he had already done. That seemed fair, so we agreed.
We waited, and waited, and waited for the ceiling repair. After 10 days, I began calling again. There began another lengthy wait of three weeks of ignored messages, promises and excuses, until finally the owner flatly refused to repair our ceiling since we had signed a work order.
The bottom line: it’s not worth a lawyer and the company knows it because repairing the ceiling will cost $50-$100. The cost for a lawyer? Ahhhhhh … considerably more, let’s say.
The moral to the story: we have been customers of this company for four or five years. We have spent thousands of dollars with them. Granted, we weren’t happy when the first repair job was botched. BUT … if the owner had promptly assumed all responsibility and told us that he do whatever was necessary to make us happy, we would have remained customers!
Let’s see … he saved a hundred dollars or less – and lost thousands that we would have spent plus the occasional referrals we formerly sent his way.
Smart business? Hardly. I wonder how many times I have lost business for equally stupid reasons? How about you? Large companies can get by with shoddy customer service - at least for a while. A small business can’t.
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