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I was sitting in my office at home working on my computer when our generator suddenly switched on. I assumed we had lost power and our generator had taken over. But I soon determined that electricity was not off elsewhere in our neighborhood–so the problem was at our house.
I called Alabama Power and they promptly sent a service person. It only took a few minutes for the technician to determine the problem was our generator—not the power. I called our heating/air conditioning company and they recommended a firm specializing in generators.
The generator company came immediately—fixed the problem—but said I needed to have them come back in a month to do a complete inspection. I couldn’t understand why the technician couldn’t do the work while he was there so I decided to find another company to do the actual inspection.
I had seen the eye-catching Aux Plumbing and Heating trucks in our neighborhood, reviewed their professional looking website, and gave them a call.
I was immediately impressed with the seeming competence of the person answering the phone. She talked from a well-designed script that not only asked for my name and contact information, but gathered additional information that would help in service.
When I asked for an estimate, she told me there would be a $49 truck charge and the actual work would be extra—depending on the service required. I told her our generator was working fine, but she insisted she could not give an estimate until the technician inspected our unit.
When I approved the service call, she offered a block of time between 2 and 6pm. I arranged my schedule to be home during that four hour period. However, on the day scheduled, I received a call from dispatch at 4pm saying no service person was available. I was disappointed since I had been inconvenienced–so I asked that she reschedule within a shorter block of time. She agreed to send someone between 3 and 4 pm on a day the following week.
Even though the serviceman was scheduled to be at my house between 3 and 4, I didn’t get a call from dispactch until 5pm. I was told that the technician was running late–he didn’t arrive until close to 6.
The technician got out of his truck and pulled out a price sheet. He told me the standard charge for servicing a generator is $329 plus the trip charge. I asked him why the dispatcher hadn’t told me the price when I asked on the phone. He said he had no idea—so I sent him away–saying if I had known the charges in advance I wouldn’t have set the appointment.
Surprisingly, I got a call the next morning from a representative from Aux wanting to know if I was satisfied with the service. I explained that no service had been performed because I was not told the cost in advance. The representative was very apologetic and said “Aux would make it up to me.” She said to hold tight and the service manager would call me shortly. I’m still waiting for that call.
Aux spent a lot of money on a good-looking website, developed a comprehensive–well-scripted–customer intake system, and had a representative call me the day after service for an evaluation. They even sent me an e-mail survey a few days later. How is it possible to go through such painstaking effort and completely fumble the ball?
Aux had the procedures in place to give excellent customer service—but they were totally inept in their execution.
Should I feel guilty by writing this negative blog about Aux? I did my best to let Aux know there was a problem and give them an opportunity to respond. I feel I’m doing Aux a favor to hopefully make someone in their management team aware there is a problem.
A company can do great marketing, but no website, SEO, SEM, PR, advertisng, or fancy trucks are going to help if they can’t make their customers happy.
David Sher is a co-founder of Buzz12 Advertising. You can read more of his posts by looking for the “David Sher Posts” category in the sidebar of Buzz12’s website.