Customer Service Failures In Building Materials

Indulge me while I tell my story as an example. Here at FullTilt Marketing, I have my day job taking care of clients, writing copy for press releases, coming up with great angles to help a brand tell its story and concept new campaign ideas. Then I have my second moonlighting job, being the general contractor for our new home build.

First, I’ll tell you, the only really exciting part of building a new home is the part when you decide to do it. Then, it’s all downhill from there. Ask me again when we’re done and maybe I’ll feel differently.

 We’ve had a few problems.

We are building a custom home on our own lot. This isn’t a builder’s home in a cookie cutter subdivision and it’s not a tried and true plan, it’s custom remember. I expect a few things to go wrong, and they do. In March as our rough construction was coming to a close and the windows were in, the last step of rough construction was installing the patio doors (four sets in all). I got a call early in the AM saying the doors were too big, but they had a suggestion for modifying the opening, could I get the inspector to stop by and approve the modifications. Sure no problem. An annoying change, a little more time and some more dollars in labor, but manageable. (P.S. the doors were three inches bigger than what was ordered). They managed to reframe all of the openings and get the two upper sets of doors in that day. I stopped out to look at things that night and discovered that the doors being too large was not the only issue, they also were made wrong. They were not double open French doors, just a center fixed single hinge. (Insert cuss words here).

I immediately called our sales rep

I immediately called our sales rep and he said he’d pull the paperwork and come out in the morning and look at everything. He did and he acknowledged they were wrong and he would go back to the manufacturer and get new ones ordered. Two days later the sales rep tells me new doors have been ordered, they are on a rush order and they will make everything to the size and spec that were ordered. He told me the manufacturer also agreed to pay for the additional labor to reframe and re-install. Two weeks pass, four weeks pass, six weeks pass and no doors. Week seven we get confirmation doors are almost done. I tell our sales agency to give me a delivery date and get us on his install schedule because our rough contractor is now unavailable because he’s on other jobs. I was told they were too busy to help with install (despite the fact that seven weeks earlier he told me they would help if our contractor was unavailable). I’m also told that the manufacturer has now decided they aren’t going to be responsible for any labor charges since they are remaking the doors. (Insert slamming down of phone and more cussing.)

He’s pretty much telling me to shut up and take what I can get

Week eight and I get a call from the owner of the sales company. Now he’s the one that will be dealing with my account instead of my sales rep. And let’s just say by dealing with me, he’s pretty much telling me to shut up and take what I can get, it’s not his problem and then some. Because he doesn’t make the doors and it’s not his fault, etc. (It was truly amazing customer service,insert snarkiness here). But rest assured, my doors would be delivered Monday (week 9). By the way, the doors only took 6 weeks the first time.

On Sunday afternoon I got a text message that the delivery truck was broke down and the doors would be delivered Tuesday and my delivery window was 7 am – 12 pm. I was at the jobsite at 7 am and I sat in my car working until 11:30 with no delivery or sign of life. When I called the sales company they said they didn’t know anything. I got a call from them 30 minutes later saying it would be another 90 minutes. 90 minutes passed and still nothing. I then called them again and demanded to be given the name of the manufacturer and source of delivery to handle things myself. They agreed but said it wouldn’t matter, that I wouldn’t be able to solve the problem. (Clearly they underestimate me.)

So I started making calls.

First, I learned that my sales agency had brokered the doors. They went through a wholesaler to buy from the manufacturer so they were dealing with a wholesaler, not the actual manufacturer. I did call the wholesaler and I learned more in 30 minutes than I had learned in a week, including the fact that the doors had never even been loaded or slotted for delivery that day. Secondly, the sales agency had been horrible to them and they were tired of dealing with them and finally, they were the ones fighting with the manufacturer and trying to resolve the issue. Over the course of the next two hours of working with the wholesaler and their team I did manage to get my doors scheduled for delivery first AM on Wednesday, unwind the fiasco that the sales company had created, and learn that the doors were now made correctly, but still the wrong size. Ugggghhhh, but time being of the essence, we’d do our best to reframe and make them work.

When the doors were delivered and installed that same day (by new contractors I hired), I felt relieved and ready to move on. But because I believe in learning from everything, I reflected on the events and subsequent outcome to see what the takeaway was. What became blatantly clear is the need to manage expectations.

We serve others

In all of our businesses, regardless of what we do – we serve others, and things go wrong. We have a responsibility to communicate with our clients and customers clear expectations and outcomes. What happens more often than not is customer service reps, project managers, sales reps, etc. are fearful of what will happen if they tell the truth. They don’t want to make a customer angry or disappointed or even lose that customer, so they tell them what they think they want to hear.

Back when I was working in sales of perishable products things went wrong, sometimes horrifically wrong. I always assessed the situation, took a deep breath, picked up the phone and told the customer what happened, why and how I was going to fix it and how long it would take. My customers would vent, and I’d let them. When they were done, I’d complete the work I promised to do and keep them up to date. On the other hand, many of my co-workers would take the approach of sugar coating the situation and finding excuses that drug out the outcome but made the customer feel better in the moment until the situation had spiraled so far out of control everyone was mad and they lost the customer. I never lost a customer. In fact, I had one large retailer tell me that he liked to do business with me because I was always honest when there was a problem. He could handle the truth and work with the truth. If he knew what was really going on, he could help solve the problem to prevent larger issues. That feedback stuck with me and was reaffirmed this week when I was dealing with this problem.

Managing expectations applies in every aspect of our lives. It applies to our relationships with friends, family, spouses, etc. It applies to our business dealings with clients and customers. The best form of customer service is managing the expectations.

My sales company failed me when they failed to manage my expectations. They promised me a rush order that was never going to happen. They promised me labor reimbursement that was never going to happen, and they promised me a delivery they didn’t know how to manage or control.  Had they told me on day two that the doors would probably take around eight weeks I would not have been frustrated starting in week three? Had they told me in week one that they had used a wholesaler and not went directly to the manufacturer I would have known that any labor reimbursement was a crap shoot unless I got it directly from the sales agency.

There’s enough second guessing in life and business and enough things that go wrong even under the best of circumstances so don’t let coulda, woulda, shoulda be the outcome because you didn’t manage expectations. Relationships are easy to manage when things go right. You look like a customer service hero when things go right. The difference between good and bad companies is how they manage customer expectations when things go wrong. Just tell people the truth up front and together build a collaborative working partnership that always focuses on the best outcome for everyone.

Written by Melinda Goodman
Managing Partner
Melinda@FullTiltMarketing.net