We're Not Satisfied Until Your Not Satisfied

Hi Folks

Another month is about to bite the dust and the frightening thing is that tomorrow is September. What is that about? That's like almost the run up to Christmas. People will be making resolutions to give stuff up again soon. People aren't dieting for their holidays anymore they are dieting for their party dresses.

Predictions
As predicted in my previous post by my right knee....The weather is changing. I think I made the prediction on Thursday and when I got in my car on Monday the morning temperature was 7c at 8am. We've had beautiful clear days where the temp has got up to 18c but late at night and first thing in the morning we're into single figures. Barring an Indian Summer, Which is not uncommon in Scotland, the temperature will continue to drop. Better fire up the heating and check it still works.

Blogging
Regular visitors will hopefully be noticing some changes to the blog recently. I've purposefully kept the advertising to a minimum but I've been trying to use more images and beef up the content in the side margins. My two main topics (cigs and iPhone) now have rather cool (I think) picture links and I found a non flash (iPhone friendly) news gadget just to give you our British slant on world affairs.

I've been doing all this to try and make the blog a bit more appealing because I worry that now that it's not just about smoking it's a bit harder to market and make appealing. If you've no idea who I am then why would you want to read what is essentially the diary of a grumpy git in a cold climate who misses his fags and drinks a bit much? I welcome any feedback as to how I can continue to decorate the place to your taste so do use the comments button to let me know. Maybe you could put a link to your blog or one that you know as an example.

Face Book
I've also recently taken the chance of blowing my cover a bit on face book and trying to drum up a bit of trade from a site they have on there about Champix. I'm slightly edgy about this because it links the site back to the real me. The one that people who know me can easily identify. When I started this blog it had absolutely no intention of being a place for friends and colleagues to find out about my life. If they want to know they can just ask. The beauty of the blog was anonymity. Only my mum and my wife were even aware of the blog as far as I know. As I'm new on face book, most of the people who would have ever searched my name will already have done so and not found me and given up so I've taken the risk safe in the knowledge that I can erase the links quite quickly if necessary. Early signs are that the risk has paid off as analytics shows that fifty referrals in the last four days came from face book.

Statistics
In the last 30 days the site has had 523 visitors looking at an average of 2.5 pages per visit. (Must find the page that they only get half way through and delete it). Recently, up until face book at least the search engine searches that bring new folk are Quitzits (I knew I couldn't be the only one affected by those wee bastards) and Jail breaking IOS4.02. Incredibly 24 separate countries have provided visitors this month. With the exception of Russia and China we seem to have all the rest covered.

Tennessee, Utah and Texas are the biggest followers outside the UK. In all the USA brought 57 visits last month followed by Hong Kong with 28, Australia with 27, Canada with 26 and Ireland with 25. After that you get to Singapore with seven visits and so on.

Smoking
I intend to keep pushing the smoking part of the blog on Face book. The Champix site that I've discovered has just reached 500 members and I'd love them all to view this site as well. I was surprised when I searched face book that there were lots of anti smoking sites but that most had very poor following or were hopelessly out of date. The Champix one seems to have it's heart in the right place but, for me at least, it all seems a bit ignorant of the facts. It's full of the sort of advice that I personally found annoying like,'Take it a day at a time' (does that mean I can smoke tomorrow?) and 'Concentrate on something else'. If someone said that they were sitting with a meat cleaver in one hand swigging from a bottle of strong malt whiskey whilst deciding which of their hostages to kill first I get the feeling they would get some twee encouragement like 'at least you wont smell of smoke in prison and your lungs will be nice and pink'. It's the Allen Carr thing all over again trying to convince you that you actually don't want to smoke and that giving up just involves not lighting the thing. Is it possible that I'm the only person in the world that gave up against my will because I wanted to live?

Car
So what's the title of the blog all about this time? Well it's stolen from a fantastic site called despair.com. What they do is take all those motivational posters you see, like 'there's no I in team' and twist them into something less pleasant. I think the latest was: 'BP, Bringing oil to American shores'. Anyhow I chose 'Customer Disservice' for a reason. This is a cautionary tail for all of you customer facing folk. Especially those of you who may be slightly wired to the moon through lack of nicotine.

For the moment we have a conclusion to the car wheel story. On the surface it represents, not so much a win win situation as, a 'this allows everybody to save face' deal. The offer sits like this: I will be getting a brand new front wheel at half price, my 45k service at half price, a wheel (already replaced but showing early signs of corrosion)completely free and my front fog lights (used twice in the past three years) replaced again completely free. Each wheel replaced gets a new 2 year warranty meaning that this particular garage could be replacing wheels for some time to come as they appear to start showing signs of corrosion around 14 months or earlier (their problem not mine).

Here is a very brief history of the problem and, I hope, a stark warning to all those who handle customers (For 15 years I was a retail manager).

Crime number 1: Lack of empathy. When someone has to bring a three year old car in with a major fault it does no harm whatsoever to show some empathy. I'm choosing the word empathy carefully. Prior to an investigation into the cause of the fault you don't want staff to be agreeing that such a thing is a disgrace. They just need to be saying that they understand how the customer might feel about such a problem occurring. This is where the dealer fell completely flat. They were almost confrontational about it.

Crime number 2: Imply that fixing the fault was some sort of good will gesture when the car was still in warranty. Investigation done, fault found, now you can admit guilt and sympathise, even apologise. Instead they were looking for me to thank them for fixing the problem and learn my lesson that I should have allowed them to service it in the first place.

The above fault was identified and fixed. It was a serious fault that shouldn't have happened and I'd be lying if I said that I would have been delighted with an apology. But, had they not behaved as described above, I would have walked away. Instead I decided to bring up every petty complaint about them and the car that I could think of.

The fog lights have condensation in them. They work but they shouldn't have condensation and I found out through the Internet that the manufacturer agrees with me. If I was to replace both units as a customer I would expect to pay between £60 and £100.

The front wheel shows signs of corrosion. It's hard to see these signs because I kerbed the wheel very badly shortly after buying the car. (I was gutted at the time). I had never even tried to claim my warranty as, even I thought, it was a bit of a push given the damage. A life of retailing however taught me that 'where there is a proven fault there is a case even if the fault is not the only damage'. To replace the wheel (which I had planned to do this year) would have cost £164, now it will cost £82.

The signs of corrosion on the rear wheel are very very early and, had I not had another wheel replaced for this in the past, I wouldn't even have noticed them. In about 3 years time however they will become unsightly. In about three years time I would have them replaced at my cost. They'll be replaced next week. No cost to the dealer unfortunately but a cost to the manufacturer.

Finally a half price dealer service. To the customer this amounts to a cash value of between £120-£160. I could save that by going elsewhere but it's always good to get those dealer stamps in the book.

In all that fault should have cost the dealer nothing but man hours. The manufacturer would have supplied the part and the dealer would have fitted it. In addition to that this dealer has paid for a hire car for a week, a set of fog lights, 1.5 wheels and half a dealer service. Cost to them is probably just under £200 plus whatever hassle they've had from their director as he's had about six emails. To me it's a saving of about £400. If their service manager had handled one ten minute conversation differently... Cost to them, whatever it cost to replace the part and probably the cost of the hire car. Saving for me, Nil.

It's also worth noting that I intend to have all this done and be all smiles and charm till it is. But from the outset I've been clear that I wanted them to feel the pain I felt about that fault. So far I've dealt with the dealer. Once the dealer makes good on their promises. I thoroughly intend to start on the manufacturer and their new owners. Can't imagine there will be any point starting at any level below the director for European operations. It will be next year but, if your here, watch this space...

The iPhone Update
Finally, I'm giving you this months statistics a day before I have the full months figures. I'm doing this because tomorrow 01/09/2010 Apple will be holding a press conference to tell the world what they are up to next. It is widely rumoured that coinciding with this will be a new and improved software update. Given that my IPhone bears almost no resemblance to any other on the planet in either appearance or functionality I may be quite busy over the next couple of days trying to keep my phone the way I want it. The worst thing that happens is when the software is updated but the Dev-team can't break it straight away. That leaves me hopping from foot to foot for days. I feel that there may be an iPhone blog before the week is out. Incredibly people find those blogs despite there being thousands of competing iPhone blogs some of which update hourly.

Watch this space

T