In the many years which followed me 'treading the boards' in selling new
'Any Type Sports Cars from BL' in London, my career moved into the
autoparts business - both at manufacturer and retailer level.
I've been following this "perception of quality theme" with considerable
interest
over the last two days and I am reminded of the intiatives I saw a major
importer and distributor employing in the Middle East about ten or so years
back. For those of you who have not visited that part of the world, the
prime lines of parts distribution are either the franchised dealer network
or the local market called the soukh. The Soukh is able to exert
considerable pressure on the franchised area of product support in terms of
end-user pricing and certainly on product quality.
One company who I visited regularly, carried out continuous face to face
research with customers into customer satisfaction at the point of
service/parts supply and as this affected the overall level of service,
pricing, alternative sources of supply. It also solicited answers to
questions of what it could do to make things better for the future.
The upshot of all this careful questioning was translated into financial
terms for the company to see what its vulnerability was likely to be within
its total turnover. In other words, if it loused things up or provided what
the customer saw as an unacceptable level of service, that actual or likely
dissatisfaction level was accurately measured and they could take pretty
immediate steps to keep things going in the right direction to keep pepole
happy as far as possible.
IMHO, the lister's letter to whoever the company was (Moss?) is appropriate
in that it at least tells the company that some of the people are far from
happy some of the time. If that level of dissatisfaction can be quantified,
any company is morally bound in the interests of its continuing business to
try and do something about it. A failure to do this on the longer term can
only result in a progressive loss of business. All companies are guilty of
this to a greater or lesser extent - its a fact of life owing to the nature
of the human animal in terms of what they 'reasonably' expect for their
money.
If anyone is interested, I'll be happy to receive survey Emails until
Friday of next week where listers of any LBC can notify me of their
dissatisfaction of ANY parts supplier where there is a perceived problem on
the quality of product or service provided. All I want to know is the name
of the retailer, the amount of money spent, whether the dissatisfaction is
price / speed of service / product quality / misc oriented - and the make
of car involved. I'll then post the results to the list by Friday of next
week. Names of individuals participating will be withheld. I doubt this
exercise will be conclusive but at least it might provide someone who knows
the personal Email address of Head Honchos with some material to send them
saying this is how they are seen by many of their customers.
Equally, to achieve a balance, I'd like to hear from people who are
SATISFIED with the service they have received. This latter input at least
achieves a sort of balance.
John Macartney
"Life at Triumph" in print - unique pictures and lots more. See info at
http://www.toolbox.ndirect.co.uk/triumphbook
ORDER LINE STAYS OPEN UNTIL SEPTEMBER 30, 1998.
You can order your book through:
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