Views from the Hills by R. E. Stevens, GENESIS II
(The
Second Beginning) E-Mail views@aol.com
It's the Personal Side (or is it?)
The past three weeks were devoted to a lot of reflection. Three
weeks
ago my old 25mhz computer gave up its ghost after 14 years of perfect
service.
What to do? All ny "Views from the Hills of Kentucky" were on the
computer
along with all my lectures. You are right, I did not back up my files.
Unfortunately
the fax software along with all the distribution files were also on the
dead
computer. Was this to be the end of my retirement hobby? I could not
fix
it and neither could the computer repair shop that kept it for two
weeks.
During this terrible two weeks, I resorted to what I always do during a
depressing
time, I clean out my files. In one of my files, a yellowing news paper
article
from 1994 fell out. It was an article by a young fellow by the name of
Tom
Peters, the famous management consultant. the article is titled
"Attention
to the customer a business' greatest service." In the
article
Mr. Peters discusses a restaurant experience where despite the
management
actions were headed for a disaster. But along comes a knowledgeable
waitress
who knows how to soothe the feathers of an unhappy customer. With a
polite
conversation, Mr. Peters left the restaurant after a poor meal feeling
good
about the establishment.
The real story was further into the article, it was about a research
project
conducted by the Forum Corporation. This company analyzed business
customers
lost by 14 major manufacturing and service companies. These were lost
customers.
Fifteen percent of those who switched to a competitor did so because
they
"found a better product." - by a technical measure of quality. Another
fifteen
percent changed suppliers because they found a "cheaper product"
elsewhere.
Twenty percent high tailed it because of the "lack of contact and
individual
attention" from the prior supplier and 49 percent left because "contact
from
the old supplier's personnel was poor in quality." Note: The last two
categories,
20% & 49%, defected because they didn't like the human side
of
doing business with the previous provider.
I wonder what the same study would reveal today with all the
out-sourcing,
and answering machines. Would the numbers change? More importantly, is
personal
service really important today? By the actions of our major companies,
it
looks as if it is not considered very important.
Back to my problem. I doubt if I will ever use the repair shop again
that
held my old computer for two weeks with no positive results. A friend,
Charlie
Zitnik of the Kroger Company, took my broken down computer home for one
night
and fixed it. Or should I say fixed my problem. He took out the hard
drive
and bought an old 486 IBM for $20, and installed the hard drive from my
broken
computer into the IBM and I'm back in business. He would not take any
compensation
for his efforts. So Charlie, his wife Debbie, and my wife and I had a
three
hour Chinese Dinner at a local restaurant. Our meal was much better
than
Mr. Peters'.
In today's culture, do you feel that service is over rated? Do your
customers
agree with you?
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Portland,
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