Oh, So You Want Me To Ship It To the Manufacturer?

Manufacturer

The following is a true narrative. It exemplifies the need for even management to be great to their clients –for a variety of factors.

The brothers Long started a drug store in Northern California a number of years ago. By the 1970’s they’d built a respectable series in the north and had started enlarging to Southern California. For years, when I was in the sunglass business enterprise, I offered the luminous chain. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s they climbed and that I sold sunglasses to the majority of their stores. I truly enjoyed the quantity of business I earned from their website over the years. Additionally, over the years, the section heads I worked with in the early days became store one and managers, a district manager.

Because of my how to manufacture a product to this specific drug store chain, I continued employing the store in my own community for decades after I was no longer at the sunglass company. As a question of fact, to this day, my entire family still uses the store from my community–one that I set their sunglass section once the store opened for business.

Together with this said, awhile ago I visited my community store to reunite a camera I had purchased that turned out to be defective. It was a day and I wound up getting help from the store’s assistant manager. While she failed to remember me, I recalled when she had been a clerk at the decorative department. She told me she could not substitute the camera because she failed to have that EXACT one in stock. She said to send it to the factory and they would look after it.

After attempting to sell sunglasses to the string for two years, I was pretty knowledgeable about their return policy. It was the simple fact she said to send the camera back to the factory, however more her disposition. I knew that she had the ability to do pretty much anything that she wanted to try and look after this circumstance. She could have given me a refund. She could have given me the same new camera however the next model up, which she did have in stock. But instead than to serve a customer that had been buying in the store since it had started, roughly ten years before, she selected to have an attitude (the large part in E-Go Attitude Training).

I did not make a fuss regarding her lack of customer care –instead I just abandoned the store with my defective camera in hand. In actuality, I had served Ronthe district director, as a vendor to the series for about 20 years.

As my private partnership with the chain (a number of folks from clerks to executives) was much more powerful than any single employee, I mailed a friendly letter into Ron explaining the situation. I told him my relationship was with the shop and not producer. I also said my ideas on customer retention and a couple of other thoughts. I didn’t ask him to take action, but only told him concerning the behavior of one of his managers.

It required a few weeks, but wow! The letter of apology by the assistant manager was amazing. Not only did I get the apology but and yes it came with $20 worth of store script (in regards to the retail gap between the defective camera I wanted adjusted and the next model up). Additionally, in her correspondence was that the pledge that easily brought my defective camera in the store she would personally exchange that, even when she had to upgrade it.

No need to in that situation, the camera proved to be a wonderful brand and I had sent it to the maker myself the very next day. Within a week, the manufacturer’d mailed me a replacement. I did even use the shop script–heck, why don’t you?

Ron, the district manager, is a really great guy so I am convinced he did not rip the assistant boss’s head off–at least overly much. But I have to admit, I would have really enjoyed being a fly on the wall at that particular meeting. Is your moral of the narrative to be great to folks who understand your district manager? I don’t think so. How can you understand?

Besides, you never know whom they understand. Becoming crummy to some customer could end up being a career killer–you simply never understand!

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