Quality is more than just the product

Quality is more than just the product. Here, two customers

describe their experience of how they were treated when the
product they bought failed.
Example 1: Obodex Computers Limited
I bought an Obodex laptop computer and was very pleased with its
performance. After a few weeks, however, the screen failed. I rang the
company and was put straight through to their service manager, who
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apologized profusely for the failure and, after a few questions, identified
what he thought was the fault. He asked if it was convenient for me to
drop the machine into their service centre and said that he would
ensure that it was dealt with while I waited. Given the possibility of
having my computer up and running again so quickly, I agreed. When I
arrived at the centre, I was shown to a waiting area and supplied with
a cup of coffee while the laptop was taken away. As I handed it over, the
technician asked, ‘Would you like me to make a small upgrade on it
while I am working on it, at no charge?’ This sounded too good an offer
to pass up, and so I agreed. Thirty minutes later, I was walking out of
the centre with my repaired and upgraded machine. You would not
believe the number of people who I knew who then bought Obodex
when they heard of the service that I had received.
Example 2: Car dealers
We bought a brand new car for our family business. It was needed to
go and visit customers and so reliability was vital to us. If we could not
keep appointments with customers, this reflected on our business and
customers would buy elsewhere. We had had it for 10 days when the
power steering failed. This made the car undriveable. It happened at
the weekend and so I rang the dealer where we had bought the car first
thing on the Monday morning, asking them to come and get the car at
the earliest opportunity, as we needed it for several important trips
that week. The response was pathetic. They said that they were far too
busy and initially offered to look at the car, if we could get it to them,
the following Thursday – 11 days later. I complained, but was told that
‘You are not our only customer!’. This made me very angry, and so I
called the manufacturer direct. Their customer service people were far
more helpful, and eventually agreed to arrange for the car to be
collected later that day. It was collected by the same garage that I had
called first. I wasted nearly 3 hours on the telephone trying to sort this
problem. I will never do business with that dealer again, which probably
means we will never buy another car from that company. This is a
shame, as it wasn’t a bad car.
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Discussion questions
1 Compare the two cases in terms of how each firm looked after their
customers.
2 What is the influence of apostles (customers who tell others how
good your service is) and terrorists (customers who tell others how
bad your service is) on a business?
3 How might customer complaints actually be an opportunity for
gaining greater loyalty to an organization?