Grate Customer Service

How often are you pleasantly surprised by great customer service? If you’re like me, then sadly not very often. But things changed on Monday.

You see, last Winter I had a fire grate made. For $170 I got what appeared to be a solid piece of craftsmanship. But after only twenty fires, it started to lose shape, bend in the middle and generally stop functioning.

After tossing up for a couple of weeks as to whether or not to take it back (I avoid conflict at all costs you see!), I finally decided I should. I was of course expecting the worse – “Sorry mate, our guarantee only extends to 14-days” or “Sorry but you shouldn’t have kept using it.”

To my astonishment the fellow who made it 1) apologised, 2) offered to fix it and / or replace it and 3) advised it would be all done within two days. The end result was that it was fixed same day, at no charge and now works better than ever. And he didn’t even refer to me as “Mate”. (As a side issue, I think the referring to a customer in this way is mighty unprofessional…My favoured approach is to use their first name. That’s another article in itself.)

Now, back to my fire grate. OK, so maybe the problem shouldn’t have arisen in the first place – maybe they should pay more attention to their craftsmanship…but hey, mistakes do happen. From a business owners perspective, the learning here is how you handle customer complaints. I could almost guarantee the fire grate fellow has had no training in customer service, he just did what seemed right – Listened to the customer, made a judgment that what the customer was requesting was reasonable and then over-delivered. In fact he under-promised and over-delivered…Even better!

This doesn’t mean giving in to every customer’s request…of course there are times when they (we) are simply unreasonable. But it does mean being sensible and mature about your options.

Customer complaints are an opportunity to promote your business. Handled well, they are a great way to generate word-of-mouth. That said, I’d buy another fire grate tomorrow from Flash Weld in Mornington, Victoria

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