I hate bad service. No, I mean REALLY hate it. There is little that makes me angrier than paying for goods or services only to be abused or ignored by the person doling out said good or service.
I have had a few radically differing service experiences lately — none really connected to our industry, but I still think they make an important point.
First, I had a major appliance just stop working. It was, of course, a couple of months out of the warranty period. I called the repair line for the brand, and we made an appointment for the next day with a three hour window. I made arrangements to work from home for the morning and set up a couple of meetings for the afternoon. About 20 minutes before the end of that window, I got a call from the tech saying he was a little behind but would be there shortly. He finally arrived almost five hours after the agreed-upon time window. Then he ran a few tests and told me that the repair cost was roughly double the cost of a similar brand new unit. Then he "did me a favor" and did not charge me for the service call that he was five hours late for. On the flip side, a guitar that I bought a couple of years ago stopped working (as in no output signal). It has an active pre-amp, so I figured it was the battery. Long story short, it ended up that the battery had spilled and it was pretty much impossible to get out.
I called the customer service line, explained the problem, and we tried a couple of quick fixes while I was on the phone. No dice. So the rep tells me I am going to need a new power supply unit. I braced myself for the cost of a major part on this expensive guitar and almost fell on the floor when he said they would send one out no charge and even walk me through installing it over the phone.
Two very different experiences and two very different outcomes. On the first, I ended up doing a bit of research and finding the email address for the head of investor relations, the head PR person and the CEO, and wrote a note telling them how disappointed I was. I got a call the next day from the executive offices offering to fix it gratis. Which they did, although it took a month and three appointments to make that happen. On the second, well, let's just say that I am a Taylor customer for life.
I have had a few such experiences over the years. Since I started writing and editing magazines for the pro audio and MI markets, it has become difficult to know if good service is just good service or a reaction to the fact that I write for a magazine that covers a company's business and reaches their customers. But prior to that career move, I had a couple of memorably good service experiences with audio gear. I remember a customer service person at Peavey who went to engineering and found a prototype of a part that they no longer made and had it shipped to me. When I had an issue — not a quality issue but a problem that was due purely to changing technology — with a piece of Digitech gear, founder John Johnson actually called me on the phone to make it right. Both of those instances were more than 10 years ago, but I still remember and think about them when I buy gear.
In the past few months I have heard many stories from sound guys about their experiences both good and bad. I have heard about promises made and broken and gear that failed but was replaced with a higher-end, more expensive unit right away. Ironically, some of the experiences on opposite ends of the spectrum involved the same company.
Like me and my service experiences, I know people in this industry who make purchasing decisions heavily influenced by past service experiences. Guess what? So do your customers — like the producers of the Rock Boat, which is profiled in this issue. They have grown in size by a factor of about 11 in seven years, and they still use the same regional soundco that they did when they were small because they know that they can count on this soundco to give them great service.
Loyalty, when it so rarely rears its head, is not borne of price or the label on your gear. It grows out of the confidence the client feels when they get great service. And that is something that we all have to remember if we want to avoid having to use the phrase in the headline up there.
Send Bill your story of loyalty at bevans@fohonline.com.
