To Tell Or Not To Tell?
What would you do if you accidentally causing more problems to your customer equipment? For example, if the customer sends in an equipment with a simple complaint and you accidentally dropped something on the circuit board causing it to burnt badly, so what would be your next step. Deny that it was your fault or just simply tell the truth about it? In fact this is a very hard decision because you may lose this customer if you tell the truth. If you deny that it was your fault there may be a big quarrel and this could hurt your company reputation.
From my experience, the best is to tell the truth. Inform your customer what really happen and ask if he could give you more time to solve the problem and you have to let him know that you will bear the cost. Please do not give pressure on the customer side. If you could not solve the problem and have paid the customer and the customer decided not to send any equipment to you for repair, you also cannot do anything. At least you have done the best on your part by not denying that it was your fault. By sincerely telling the truth you will have chance to maintain the customer.
Why am I sharing this to you because many years back one of my staffs accidentally broke a 21" CRT tube and I told customer about it. I told the customer to give me few weeks to find the repalcement tube and if I cannot find it I will pay for it. After a week I managed to locate the same tube from a repair friend (Isn't it good to have repair friends) and finally fixed the Monitor. The customer was happy and continue to send things for my company to repair.
Have you came across such situation before? If yes we would like to hear your story-thanks.
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Philip Archondous
June 22, 2012 at 3:18 pm
Hi Jestine,
I had an HP laptop in for replacement of power socket. Quickly switched it on to make sure it was in working state before accepting it for repair and using keyboard (by habbit) shutdown Windows. After replacing power socket and putting laptop back together, noticed that touchpad was not working. Tried everything but simply not working. The touchpad on this specific laptop is actually a separate module that easily comes off laptop without disassembly and a quick search on the Internet showed reports of other people having problems with this model laptop and having to replace touchpad. I called customer and asked if touchpad was working before they gave laptop to me and they said yes, we were always using laptop with touchpad. Since I had no reason to doubt their word, I accepted full responsibility for the fault, even though it was just pure bad luck on my behalf that it went bad while I had laptop as I didn't do anything to cause the problem, and covered the full cost of replacement part (part + delivery). The customer was very understanding and appreciative and even offered to pay full or part of the cost for replacement part an offer which I refused. This customer has called in again with other problems and even recommended to others.
It feels very bad when you have something in for repair and you end up spending your own money on it instead of making money, but at least you are comfortable with yourself knowing that you have been honest and move on to next job with a clear conscience.
Philip.
Jestine Yong
June 23, 2012 at 7:01 am
HI Philip,
Thanks for sharing. In fact you are very right about this "but at least you are comfortable with yourself knowing that you have been honest and move on to next job with a clear conscience". Good job!
Jestine
Waleed Rishmawi
June 23, 2012 at 4:37 am
it depends on the problom. if I caused too much damage that could not be fixed soon, I would tell him what happend but if the problem can be fixed right away, I get it fixed and charge the customer only for the original problem.
Biswarup
December 26, 2012 at 1:44 pm
I agree with all three of you, Philip, Waleed and finally Jestine.