If you’re an integrator who’s focused solely on finishing your latest job on time and on budget, you’re forgetting about a huge part of the job: customer service.

Making sure you meet a customer’s needs whenever and wherever they want something is at least as big a part of the job as knowing all you can about TVs, stereos and connections.

“The focus should be on the customer experience,” said Daniel Newman, CEO of United Visual, Inc. and a Commercial Integrator blogger, during a recent #AVchat, a Twitter-based discussion involving industry insiders. Click here for the #AVchat transcript (pdf).

“‘Customer service’ is an old term that focuses on one part of the transaction. They compare you to the best customer experience across all industries,” he said, noting that customers won’t just focus on A/V competitors when trying to have expectations met.

From Bad To Worse

When customers are agitated and in need of answers, there are a few ways dealers can cool down the situation and turn it into a positive. There are also bad moves and spur-of-the moment reactions that sometimes make a tenuous situation worse.

Anthony Zotti, owner at reTHINK Connection, LLC, in Thornton, Colo., admitted he once told a customer to “F himself,” clearly a tactic he realizes should be in the “don’t” column for installers looking to improve their customer service.

George Tucker, engineering coordinator at Scharff Weisberg, pointed to honesty as the key to strong relationships with customers, saying “not being honest about a resolution” will often created more ill will than the problem itself. “I need a turnaround,” he says.

Along those lines, Richard Fregosa of R.A. Fregosa Electronic Interiors, targeted “not owning up to mistakes” as a way relationships can go sour, and Dan Fulmer, founder of Fultech Solutions, said it’s important to avoid writing lengthy technical email replies, a mistake he’s learned the hard way a few times.

Don’t Hide Contact Information

There was a variety of thoughts on what information was most critical from a vendor in case of an issue, so maybe it’s wise to provide them all to your customers to ensure they can get answers quickly and will want to work with you again on future projects.

Contact information is clearly the most important. You don’t want a customer to have to hunt and peck around your website - or make their fingers do the walking to be able to track you down when they need a quick fix. Warranty details, technical documentation and an update on whether customers qualify for volume discounts or free stuff also help.

About the author

D. Craig MacCormack

Craig MacCormack is a veteran journalist with more than 15 years experience covering local and national news and sports as well as architecture and engineering. He joined Commercial Integrator in January 2011. Follow him on Twitter: @CraigMacCormack.

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