How important is client retention? Most of you who read this would go huh?-everything. Recently I was in a situation that made me ask that question. Not of myself but of a company that I was doing business with through a third party.
My first thought is to hesitate to name the company but when you treat customers badly, you should take the press for it. My wife and I have been slowly remodeling a home over the last twenty years. OK, really slowly. In our defense we are very meticulas (picky) about what we’ve done, how we’ve done it and the quality is important. We’ve paid cash rather than taking out loans. We’ve also done much of the work ourselves.
Since we’ve been in the house for over twenty years it’s also safe to say that we’ve literally been through the house twice. So much that we have come to calling our remodeling projects phases. At last count I’m pretty sure we’re on phase twenty two or three.
Our latest project is the kitchen. It started with me declaring sometime towards the end of last year that I wasn’t going to put up with our range any longer. I wanted a decent gas cook-top to prepare my epicurean conquests and our existing stove just wasn’t cutting it. The difference was that I thought I would just get the stove, cut it in to the existing tile and start cooking.
That was last February. Apparently I didn’t know that you just can’t order a cook top, cut it in to the tile and start cooking. There is a certain rule that when you expose old tile to new ideas, the tile must be replaced. If your going to do that, you may as well find a tile mural to to center the whole kitchen color scheme on.
Much of our decor is Asian theme. Our furnishing vary from new to antique Tibetan and Chinese furniture. With that, you have nowhere else to go but a Chinese mural. After purchasing that and making sure it comes intact so can start you’re search for new counters and wall material to match. After considering numerous solid counters, granite and others including synthetic we embarked on a task of finding tile. After shopping all the usual places such as DAL, Arizona, Bedrosians we embarked on a Internet search to far away places.
The color we were looking for was something in green, a Chinese green or celadon. After several weeks of searching my wife happened to go back to DAL thinking we would have to settle on something else. If you think about it for the most part you have a selection of Tuscany or Tuscany. Neither of which appeal to us. I don’t know how we missed it before. Maybe it was a new line or the sample board was hidden in all of the other visits we’ve made but there on a sample board was celedon tile. Even better, a unique finish called Terra Crackle. A hand made tile that is custom glazed with a crackle finish with a celadon color. Though expensive, it was exactly what we were looking for. Though we contacted the manufacturer on a couple of occasions with questions, we never heard back from them. maybe that should have been our first indication that they didn’t take client retention seriously. Besides, we were working through DAL tile, a reputable firm and let’s face it, maybe they would answer to DAL.
We made the order and set off to wait for the tile to arrive. Six weeks, then eight. We were told that the manufacture decided to re-run the “V” cap because it didn’t match. Wow, that’s customer service and better yet quality control (we thought). At last the tile arrived. We scheduled our installer and went to go pick up the tile. Not only was it a different color than the sample on their sample board but it was also a different color than the sample they sent to us to approve. Better yet, the “V” cap that they re-made looked like it was from a different tile company entirely.
Our first thought was to reject the entire order. Though we could accept the balance of the tile though it was quite different than anything we were given, if consistent-we would install it except the “V” cap did need to match. We gave them through DAL two weeks to manufacture the matching pieces. In the mean time we started looking at alternatives. At this point in anticipation of starting the counters we had removed the original tile and back splash. Of course this was the weekend before picking up the new tile.
For three days DAL tried to contact the company. Remember, my wife and I had tried to contact them early on. On the fourth day they finally returned the calls. “That’s as good as we can do” was the response. My turn to go huh? Luckily while waiting for their response we chose a back up plan to go with another product. One that we had used in another room in our house. A granite called rain forest.
At this point we did decide to take possession of the splash material, a “subway” tile. In the next week the kitchen will be finished and I’ll be able to cook with the stove top that I bought back in early march. It may take a few meals to get the bad taste of the lack of customer service we received from a manufacturer in dire need of quality control and customer service.
Though Terra Green Ceramics has a unique line of tile products, after our experience I would not recommend them to anyone. In fact I would discourage anyone from doing business with them. I do not know if their problem is quality control or simply customer appreciation but if the treatment we received from them is indicative of their service, they are not long for this world.
Is customer retention important? You bet it is. By this post I have spread the word to a few thousand. By the tweet I am about to post it will extend to a few hundred thousand.
Do not do business with companies that do not appreciate your business. Unfortunately, I believe that Terra Green Ceramics is one of them.
