The Power of great customer service

Great customer service makes up for a lot of problems. Maybe this is obvious, but I think in some cases an entire business model is based on it. I had an experience recently that drove this home to me.

My wife and I are catalog/web buyers for things I think are probably better purchased in person – like furniture. However, the lack of time and the high-stress/low-success of shopping with small children in tow have driven us to it.

You’ve got to accept a certain level of risk to buy furniture in this manner. There’s the risk that the item will really look like it does in the picture, and there’s the risk that the item will arrive in one piece. It helps if you’re a bit laid back in these areas. You can’t go crazy when a color doesn’t match exactly the way you thought, and you can’t be heartbroken when there’s a nick in the wood here or there from shipping. Otherwise you’ll never make it.

So with our expectations set and the realities fully understood, we click "Proceed to Checkout" with hope that all will be well. Usually it is, but there is a certain merchant that we often turn to for furniture that seems to have perhaps more than their fair share of problems. For example, a dresser was shipped with a broken drawer, returned, the replacement was damaged in transit, and then the third time was a charm. And then more recently, a dining table arrived with a warped leaf (with a replacement leaf sent but damaged in transit), and they missed sending an entire box containing components required for assembly of the table itself.

So with those kinds of problems, will we ever do business with them again? Yes, I’m sure we will, and their customer service is the reason. When the dresser arrived damaged (twice), a simple phone call took care of it. Then without me asking, they removed the shipping charge. And then on the most recent series of problems with the dining table, the fix was a phone call away (and my phone calls to them are always on weekends or nights). They even shipped out the missing parts overnight at my request. There was never any approval required from anybody’s manager. Every rep I spoke to had the power to replace my missing or damaged merchandise. The service was quick, efficient, and never frustrating.

I really think this is part of their business model. They know their products are going to have the daylights beat out of them during shipment once in awhile, and they have designed and empowered customer service to handle the problems that arise from this. Perhaps this is easier/cheaper than taking extra steps to get the products shipped in tact in the first place – shipping is door-to-door with no setup and is priced accordingly. Or maybe damage like this is just the nature of the business (I’m no shipping expert but the products look like they were packed carefully).

I’m not saying sloppy order fulfillment is ok as long as you have good customer service. But when a business has inherent problems that are impossible or simply not cost-effective to prevent, great customer service has a good chance of keeping a customer. Does it guarantee the customer will stay? Of course not. There are people who would have no patience for this no matter how good the customer service is. But I can tell you one thing: without that service the customers would leave in droves and I would be one of them.

So, we remain their customer, and a catalog/web furniture buyer, so someday we’ll be visiting them again. Product and price brought us to them but their service keeps us. The relationship isn’t perfect. We know the risks, but we also know we’re going to be taken care of when the next problem happens, so we feel comfortable doing business with them. Put it all together and it beats chasing three kids around a furniture showroom any day.