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Quality & Service [Q&S]
Such simple terms, quality & service, but seemingly so lacking these days despite all the potential that technology and training provide. It’s rare these days that I have fault free technology or service. My switch to iPhone & a MacBook Pro was clouded by the quality of customer service and delivery issues. Fortunately the hardware lived up to my expectations albeit tainted by some of Apple’s restrictive practices. Vodafone as a service provider was no better and I rarely hear good things about their customer service. I have had my iPhone practically useless for a day in Hong Kong, USA and recently in Aussie too. Calls to helpline workers in Egypt and elsewhere proved less than helpful. At other times although their system promised to connect me to an after-hours help desk the phone just cut off (a few times).
I also recently spent thirty minutes on hold to Telecom to arrange to move a home phone to a new house. The connection was however up on the day as requested but it took the ISP and Telecom three days to get our ADSL back online. A colleague tells me of a case where someone we know was left on hold for a day! I guess the upside is that at least we can get services and phone lines while in Africa it can take months…
Even though Vodafone offered free MySky HD if I switched home phone and broadband to them I was reluctant to give them a critical service like broadband. Better the devil you know eh? We have thus stuck with Telecom and Maxnet, our almost faultless provider of broadband at home and work for over a decade.
Peace of mind, service reliability, near instant access and real people at the end of a phone line or email are worth $15 a month.
That’s the point really.
You get what you pay for or as we used to say in Pretoria “Kak en betaal dis die wet van Transvaal”
With the changes in the face of optometry being promoted in a seemingly endless barrage of inane advertising it will be interesting to see if the critical areas of Q&S are delivered on.
The Ju ry is out.
Worthless Optometry Degrees?
Over the years I have noted that some patients will give the chain stores and more commercial outlets a try. Convenience is sometime the reason for a switch in that they can see someone closer to home or they ‘pop in’ while doing weekend shopping in a mall with family. The average twenty or thirty minute eye exam, often ‘free’ in many such outlets, may be done and dusted before wife and daughter are even out of the changing rooms at the clothes shop. I have written before on the trend to ‘free’ eye exams, which we all know are not really free and thus won’t waste time commenting on such a crock of marketing bull. Try and take your Rx from your free eye exam elsewhere and you will see it is not free. All I will add is that any optometrist who is prepared to sacrifice their professional integrity, and seemingly worthless university degree, is crazy.
Resist all such attempts to undermine your profession. End of story.
The upside is that many patients eventually come back as they realise that they paid a similar price once all the add ons were added to the el cheapo base price. They also realise that we actually do try and deliver on quality and service and that we stick around from one year to the next; providing a level of service continuity that the oft changing optometrists in more commercial outlets cannot provide.
It’s the contact lenses that are supposed to be frequent replacement not the optoms!
As I write this I have had three patients in one day come and see me who had not been in since 2003. Colleagues tell me similar stories about patients returning from some of the multinationals dissatisfied with spectacles, contact lenses and service or frustrated by seeing a different person every time.
They’re happy to be back and we are equally happy to have them back.
Privacy Act?
Two years ago we purchased a mobile phone from Vodafone look-alike Digital Mobile so we could keep in safe contact with our daughter. The phone broke twice over Xmas and New Year so we had no idea if our daughter was safe, negating the reason for purchase. The store was a pain to deal with: We had to pay $50 for a loan phone and another $50 for ‘service’ on a two-week old phone under warranty. Eventually they supplied a new phone. A few weeks later my daughter and friends started receiving weird calls from an unknown person. It turns out her original phone had been serviced and re-sold to a third party with all her private data!
We have to comply with the privacy act at every turn and we figured so should they. After reporting this to the privacy commissioner we eventually ended up with the managing director sending his assistant around with an apology and a new, better phone.
The old one was recovered and destroyed.
The Great Rort?
So many things seem to have to be done twice these days at great cost.
The leaky building disaster is one example that is costing people their life’s work and ruining them emotionally and financially, yet eight years down the track there is no resolution for most people. In our neighborhood there are many houses covered by circus tents and undergoing full re-cladding. Not that a re-clad makes much difference to the internal untreated timber frame. These houses are literally rotten to the core, or will be one day. I expect we will see an epidemic of leaky houses this winter. After a dry summer there will be new cracks a plenty and the winter rains are going to seep in. What a ridiculous situation. The building industry should have been made to pay, as should the government officials who deregulated standards in the first place. Idiots.
So what’s new?
Palmed off & Ripped off?
Apologies and a bottle of wine or some vouchers seem to be a common answer to dissatisfaction but don’t address the underlying issues. All these things add cost and overhead while reducing satisfaction and loyalty.
Recently we’ve had a VW Golf with under 60,000km need a wheel bearing replaced, develop a water leak and most recently had both electric fans and an air-conditioning compressor need replacing. Each repair costs a grand. It’s almost as if garages reckon that in these days of lower sales following the GFC they have to load the services at a grand a pop? The items that ‘broke‘ should have lasted well beyond 50,000km. It also seems weird that two cooling fans pack up on the same day? I suspect some kind of rort.
I wonder if the insurance companies are savvy to this?
The list of dissatisfaction is almost endless: The quality of food and service is generally poor too and prices are exorbitant. Some say the lack of tipping in NZ leads to this rather casual attitude and hence why one finds some of the best service on the planet in the USA.
Two years ago I purchased a Kiwi F&P fridge as an Aussie built Hoover fridge had rusted and all sorts of cheap plastic parts had broken. The F&P label said ‘Made in NZ’. It was delivered with a fault in the interior light. Someone had set the voltage too high and it kept blowing. A call to what turned out to be an Australian customer service rep eventually had the problem sorted by a service call. The pleasant lady in Oz informed me that my fridge was not in fact NZ made and that all except bar fridges had been made in Oz for sometime. This was contrary to the labeling. The Commerce Commission was keen to take up the matter and so was I, on principle, but it was a busy time in my life and I let it slip.
I think companies rely on the fact that only a small number of dissatisfied customers actually take matters further. It’s such a hassle and waste of time that many people just walk away. What companies don’t realise is that most will simply avoid dealing with the company ever again. I certainly won’t buy certain products and have boycotted some companies for decades after a bad experience.
I have, of course, had some excellent cases of customer service and quality products that not only delivered what they promised but did so efficiently and without any hassles.
I deal with such companies time and time again. Consumers ultimately vote with their feet.
A Pleasant Surprise
Restaurants are something we are all familiar with. Most are mediocre, even when paying top dollar. There are however some that manage to maintain high standards and deliver way above expectations. Auckland’s French Café and Sydney’s world renowned Tetsuya’s are two of these I’ve been fortunate to experience. Fantastic service, top quality food and ambience are provided in a subtle, effortless manner. Service is there when you need it without being over the top. Of course one pays top dollar but one can get similarly faultless Q&S at the local $10 noodle restaurant.
Credit where credit is due.
So what’s the difference? Well I reckon some of the essentials are that top businesses usually have the owner actively involved. They also have staff who are passionate, enthusiastic and well trained. Companies spend untold millions on staff training but it seems wasted on some of the sullen, useless trendoid employees they have. That’s where most problems arise; bad employees with bad attitudes who should not have been hired in the first place.
Call centres are another issue and a frequent cause of dissatisfaction. In the interest of cost cutting, large companies frequently use off shore, low cost call centres. One wonders if the cost saving is really worth it considering the potential to lose customers?
We’ve seen it happen here in NZ in the recent past as some contact lens companies have relocated to Australia or moved call centres off shore. Service levels have in fact dropped and contact lens delivery times have increased.
So where’s the benefit?
I could harp on ad nauseam about such issues but would it make a difference? I and others have suffered way too many examples or poor service or poor products. Discontinuations of products are another area where Q&S are forfeited and cause untold hassles which I will not reiterate here.
One wonders if anyone is listening or indeed cares?
Next month I hope to present some new contact lens options that are proving to be problem solvers for some tricky cases.