First of all we had the $15,000 bucket of tomatoes, now we have the $125,00 kitchen tap.

Many of our friends are aware of the Stanley’s ongoing home renovation saga.  If you have not already heard of our saga,  we are renovating our home and have experienced various challenges over the last two and half years.

Our kitchen was the biggest challenge and was completed in November last year.  We are delighted with our new kitchen, it is gorgeous, all except for the tap.  The tap fittings are exquisite and came from Italy, but when you turn the cold water tap on you get hot water and when you turn the hot water tap on you get cold water.   It’s back to front.  Having invested several tens of thousands of dollars with the kitchen builder we thought he would quickly and easily rectify the back to front tap.

We were wrong, messages and phone calls since November have had no result; we still have a back to front tap.  The tap has become a part of the Stanley entertainment process when guests come to visit.

So far, two neighbours have seen and admired our kitchen.  Stating that they were about to renovate their own kitchens they asked how the renovation had gone and who our kitchen builder was.  When we showed them all the features of the kitchen they were even more impressed, until we got to the back to front tap.  They asked when the builder was going to replace it, and when we explained that we have had no response from him since November, they asked us to write the name of the builder down so that they could make sure they did not use him for their renovation.

So rather than the small cost of replacing that back to front tap, it has already cost the kitchen builder $125,000 in two lost kitchen renovation jobs, simply because he has ignored the concept of after sale service, did not understand life time value of a customer, and is unaware of word or mouth marketing – positive or negative.

The message from this is common to all in business; business owners need to identify where the customer feels the pain and find a remedy to that pain so that they become heroes in their customers minds, not villains.

It highlights that even a simple phone call and an apology can often save the situation, but not responding to your customers can be exceedingly dangerous for your business.  We are all guilty sometimes of missing the simple things that make a difference to our business.

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