Quality Management
A. BLANTON GODFREY

Customer retention and customer loyalty are two of the most important concepts for competitive businesses these days. But many organizations still manage to drive customers away through stupid, thoughtless acts. When these failures or mistakes are the last memory the customer has, the consequences can be disastrous for future sales.

Some of these mistakes seem obvious and easy to prevent, yet they happen time after time. A restaurant will spend a fortune on decor, service and menus, and each course of the meal will be outstanding. But just when I'm planning my next visit, the server will bring a cup of coffee that must have been brewing all day. Or a hotel will have everything ready for my registration. The room will be excellent, the dinner and other services outstanding. But when I try to take a shower, a water restricter only allows a trickle to squirt out of the shower head.

Other common mistakes that drive customers away are less obvious but just as

damaging. Although many people buy new cars every three to five years, most car manufacturers and dealers provide only a three-year warranty. At the time the customer is considering which new car to purchase, the dealer maximizes the hassle of repair, inadvertently encouraging the use of outside mechanics and driving the customer to other parts and service providers-and eventually to another car manufacturer altogether. The same is true of the manufacturers of other products: It is usually most difficult to get service at the end of the useful life of a product. Often the service is so poor or so overpriced it convinces consumers to replace the item with one of another brand.

Some of my favorite peeves include the impossible-to-remove labels on new products, stickers on fresh fruit that tear the skin during removal and those diabolic airline stickers that destroy leather luggage.

When I was a grad student and money was extremely tight, our washing machine manufacturer's service department badly bungled a repair and charged us for every mistake, resulting in a bill that was far higher than the written estimate. The repair charges were close to the cost of a new machine. After numerous calls to the service department, the dealer and the manufacturer, I ended up paying the bill out of frustration. When I finished my degree, took a real job and bought a new house, I refused all of that manufacturer's appliances that came with the house-they were returned in original boxes for trade on other brands. Poor service not only lost the manufacturer new sales, it cost the company sales already made.

There are so many other instances of companies doing everything right until the last encounter that it would be hard to list them. Cable television companies woo customers with new service offers, create attractive package deals of service, and then mess up the installation so profoundly with repeat visits, missed appointments and incorrect equipment that you never want to do business with them again. Furniture companies deliver broken goods and then make returning them or getting them repaired a major challenge of time and patience. Mail order houses send the wrong goods, incomplete shipments or duplicate orders and then make it almost impossible to remedy the problem.

But probably the absolute worst examples now are the telephone companies, long distance, local and wireless. They seem to be engaged in a national contest to provide the worst service. They badger potential customers with sales calls and mailings of three, four or even more offers per week through every possible source: airline programs, credit cards, banks and who knows what else. The worst news comes if you actually decide to subscribe: You're bounced from one department to another, each of which must have some established rule for how long it has to keep customers on hold. Then they make numerous mistakes in your order so that you get to call at least three of the departments again. Perhaps this is deliberate: By the time you actually get the new service working, you're so exhausted you wouldn't dare try to switch to another provider.

It's easy to complain. Everyone has a list of poor service experiences that left a bad taste in the mouth. So what can we do to improve service quality if we are the ones providing the service?

1.Analyze the last interactions the customer had with your organization at the end of one event.

2.Determine the elements of service that matter most to customers during their final contacts with your organization.

3.Create measures to estimate the importance of each of these elements.

The success of your business may depend on your customers' last impression of your product and service. It's your choice whether that last impression is positive or negative.

About the Author

A. Blanton Godfrey is chairman and CEO of Juran Institute Inc. in Wilton, Connecticut. He is the co-editor of Juran's Quality Handbook, Fifth Edition, which was published in March 1999. Special copies signed by both Godfrey and Joseph M. Juran are available from the Juran Institute, www.juran.com .

©1999 Juran Institute. For questions, comments (especially your pet peeves) or permission to reprint, e-mail agodfrey@qualitydigest.com