Customer service must be a deliberate strategy
By Francis Moran
I had a conversation the other day with a senior executive at a company for which I occasionally do some consulting. The executive wanted my opinion on how his company handles warranty returns. Under their current practice, they oblige their customers to remove the faulty equipment, which is often tightly embedded in an operational environment, pack it up as best they can with their own resources, and ship it back at the customer’s expense. If the fault is determined to be covered under warranty, they refund the customer’s shipping costs. Meanwhile, the customer may have to do without what is often a mission-critical piece of gear, although most of this company’s customers do stock healthy inventories of spare equipment.
