[canarasimhan]

I have a suggestion.  Instead of giving a lifetime warranty, can we think of Warranty given on the work done? There are two things involved, the parts and the labour.  We can buy the OE parts directly from the manufacturer where he gives us the warranty against failure.  The other one is the quality of labour which we offer.  Any premature failure due to faulty workmanship, has to be redone free of cost to the customer.  If the part has failed prematurely due to its own inherent quality issues, we must tie up with the manufacturer to provide a free replacement to us.  Here we may charge the labour to the customer but not the part of the cost.  We will be able to recover the cost of the parts through “Free Replacement”.  As regards our own quality failure, we save the cost to customer by absorbing the cost ourselves.   This means that we have to ensure we do our tasks without any failure.  Sounds simple but not really so when put into practice.  We will have to employ measures to reward quality work and  penalise its absence.  Our internal processes will have to be streamlined  and strengthened.

C A Narasimhan

[canarasimhan]

I entirely agree with and appreciate the way joecval and JeffryD feel about the entire affair.  I have been a trainer and have been emphasising that the moment we step out of our work place, we become customers, we may go for a cup of coffee, we may buy some snacks, we may buy medicines, we may travel by bus or train or for that matter do anything when that service is being provided by someone else.  We have now become the customer and we react to the way the service is offered to us.  We judge that person and that organisation by the way the service is offered.  We judge it to be good, bad or indifferent, depending upon how we react to that interaction.  We do not need to study any great management manual or management terms or attend customer service programme to understand what the customer is expecting.  If we apply our own experience as a customer to our own profession, we will react to our customers differently.  Unfortunately, neither many managers nor many of the executives want  to analyse how they would react if they would be the customers under the situation.  What we need is to inculcate certain values in all the people who will have to interact with the customers and meet their requirements.

 

I would like to complement joecval and JeffryD for their bringing their own experience to learn from them.  Hats off to them