INTEGRITY and CUSTOMER SERVICE

To me, these are two more pillars of success.  Five little vignettes follow.


I recently visited the office of one of our construction industry customers.  During our visit he commented "We don't give envelopes"  filled w ith cash.  "We do give some dinners and pizzas, but we do not want to build our business by giving envelopes, even though it is very common in this area."  He had previously told me that once a month his wife, a key member of their company, delivered pizza to one of the many Ready Mix plants in their large metropolitan area.  I later emailed him "That is the kind of integrity I like in the people I do business with."


In our very early days, we employed a woman who had previously worked for another small manufacturer in our area.  One day we received a double shipment of some parts from a supplier.  Brenda asked me what she should do.  I told her to call the supplier and ask them to invoice us for the second shipment, as it was something we would use over the course of the next few months, or if they preferred, we could return it.  She was pleased at myresponse and went on to tell me that she had been fired by her previous employer for calling a "double shipment vendor" instead of just keeping the parts and saying nothing.  Her boss told her "his loss should have been our gain."



I have always told our salespeople that "we always use the same discount sheet for everybody and everybody gets the same deal" so that we don't have to "remember who got what and we don't have to walk the other way when we see the person who did not get the special deal."



I know a dentist who brought his wife and two daughters into his office at 10:30 the Saturday night before Memorial Day to treat a previously unknown patient with an abscessed tooth.

Talk about customer service!!!

But over the next ten years that probably garnered him at least 20, perhaps even 30, new patients who were family members, friends, and co-workers of that one person.

It helped, of course, that he is a good dentist who believes in saving teeth through conservative treatment, while inflicting as little pain as possible during procedures.

P.S.  The patient was my wife, who was in a lot of pain and had been unsuccessful in finding anyone, including her own dentist, to help her.  Needless to say, we were immediately "converted."



One of the best compliments we ever got was from the Vice President at our (then) largest customer when he told me "You really ramrodded that one through.  We appreciate it!"

This was in response to our frantic one week re-design of some equipment we were building for them, after they discovered that their initial testing of the first design had been flawed.




We bust ours to keep you on schedule.



You will find this happy dog on some of our literature and websites.
The drawing was inspired by two of the many dogs that have been part of our family.
We hope it helps convey some of our customer service orientation.