Stay a While and You'll Get It

Today, my topic is customer service at the industrial distributor. I’m going to share a short anecdote based on personal experience.

But before I do that, I’m going to illustrate customer service in the context of that oh-so-precious time we know as . . . vacation. A timeout when we want everything just perfect because we’ve worked so hard to make that escape. (Even if some of us are still working while we’re there.)

Have I mentioned I’m a fan of Airbnb? Strange as it may sound, I need a kitchen when I’m on vacation. Cooking is what I do to relax, so the concept of renting a house at my desired destination has appealed to me for a long time. However, renting a vacay house can have its share of shortcomings.

Take my recent jaunt to a Southeastern coast – a beautiful thing to a Midwestern girl in February. We had a great house with ocean views and space galore. The pictures told a lovely story, but invariably stuff happens. You know, like no hot water (or water pressure) in the 10-foot walk-in shower, the wobbly faucet handles, the coat hook that doesn’t support the weight of an actual coat, the absence of a corkscrew, or the wafer-thin Walmart towels in a “luxury” accommodation.

Things have a way of piling up and then you’re faced with: “Can we send our handyman over tomorrow morning?” And you’re thinking, “Um, why didn’t you have this place in order before you dinged my credit card?”

I was in that unhappy bubble, thinking about customer service when my husband uttered an oracle: “If they stayed here once in a while, they’d get it.” He was right, of course. If you experience things through your customer’s eyes sometimes, you “get” the subtle problems with your customer service and can thus defuse tension or even avert a defection.

Now for the distributor anecdote I promised. In fact, it’s a twofer. I was calling to speak to executives at a few multimillion-dollar distributors not long ago. In one case, a complex automated phone system successfully prevented me from speaking to a human and ultimately hung up on me. In another instance, a terse female answered my call without warmth. As we talked, I got the vibe she was quickly tiring of me because I wasn’t a guy – and therefore could not be important. Gentlemen, sometimes we just know. Ladies, if you’ve been there, just nod.

Here’s my point. Do you know who’s greeting your customers and whether they treat every caller with consistent kindness? Has every customer-facing employee received intentional training to your specific standards? Have you experienced your company’s phone answering system first hand? After decades in the distribution space, I still sometimes get the feeling that leading a distribution company doesn’t always mean you know where the leaks and creaks are. In a world where everyone’s talking about labor shortage, I hope no one is overlooking or excusing customer service deficiencies, because I’m pretty sure some customers won’t.

Thanks for reading!