- Mar 14, 2005
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For my sins I now help companies who wish to become or maintain accreditation to the BS EN ISO 9000 series of standards. Part of that process calls for the organisation to be customer focused, and for most organisations that has to include procedures to record and demonstrate how complaints are handled.
Traditionally a complaint has always been viewed as a negative, and it is human nature to wish to ignore such issues, but the more proactive companies actually spend considerable effort in analysing the causes behind a complaint, and turning that information into useful data to help improve the products or service. Some of the most successful companies will tell you that complaints are a very important resource that point to opportunities for improvement.
Now the Caravan manufacturers do not usually sell direct to the end user, instead they use dealers. The majority of the dealers are independent companies who are not controlled by the manufacturers, Each dealer will have their own complaints procedures so there is an organisational discontinuity between maker and user, the dealer acts as the intermediary, and to handle complaints they are usually categorised before sending information back to the manufacturer which looses some of the individual nature and importance of a users problems.
Sadly this has the effect of filtering the feedback of problems, and consequently it can appear to the end user that the manufacture is not responsive. It is also important to realise that a particular problem you have may seem major to you, but to the manufacture (when it is compared to the other issues they have to deal with) it may be given a lower priority. I do not condone that approach, but sadly it is an all too common when manufactures do not have direct customer contact.
With the introduction of web sites forums such as this one, it has probably become an eye opener to some manufactures. Customers now have a very easy way of publicising problems with products, and that is a danger of these sites. It is human nature to shout when something hurts, and that draws attention to the issue. Conversely when everything is going well we quietly get on with life. So it is the nature of these web sites that they will be very biased towards negative issues.
Most companies will not openly discuss individual problems in public, and that is probably correct, but when a groundswell of related issues raises its head, that is the time that a company should become involved in a general discussion. These forums are a good place to do that.
To their credit Swiftgroup seem to have swallowed the bullet and started to interact with forum members. This is good - we have seen Kath from Swift, become involved with a number of manufacture/customer related issues and it would appear that a resolution has resulted. Through all of this Kath's responses so far have been constructive, cooperative and measured but helpful.
What is more is that the public image of Swift group has been enhanced - hey that not bad considering the causal point was a complaint!
It is about time that the other manufacturers start to engage in these forums. They actually stand to gain quite a lot just like Swift.
What does it cost them? Well not a great deal. It is a low cost exercise but it can gain big benefits if not least improved good will, which is a tradable commodity.
Traditionally a complaint has always been viewed as a negative, and it is human nature to wish to ignore such issues, but the more proactive companies actually spend considerable effort in analysing the causes behind a complaint, and turning that information into useful data to help improve the products or service. Some of the most successful companies will tell you that complaints are a very important resource that point to opportunities for improvement.
Now the Caravan manufacturers do not usually sell direct to the end user, instead they use dealers. The majority of the dealers are independent companies who are not controlled by the manufacturers, Each dealer will have their own complaints procedures so there is an organisational discontinuity between maker and user, the dealer acts as the intermediary, and to handle complaints they are usually categorised before sending information back to the manufacturer which looses some of the individual nature and importance of a users problems.
Sadly this has the effect of filtering the feedback of problems, and consequently it can appear to the end user that the manufacture is not responsive. It is also important to realise that a particular problem you have may seem major to you, but to the manufacture (when it is compared to the other issues they have to deal with) it may be given a lower priority. I do not condone that approach, but sadly it is an all too common when manufactures do not have direct customer contact.
With the introduction of web sites forums such as this one, it has probably become an eye opener to some manufactures. Customers now have a very easy way of publicising problems with products, and that is a danger of these sites. It is human nature to shout when something hurts, and that draws attention to the issue. Conversely when everything is going well we quietly get on with life. So it is the nature of these web sites that they will be very biased towards negative issues.
Most companies will not openly discuss individual problems in public, and that is probably correct, but when a groundswell of related issues raises its head, that is the time that a company should become involved in a general discussion. These forums are a good place to do that.
To their credit Swiftgroup seem to have swallowed the bullet and started to interact with forum members. This is good - we have seen Kath from Swift, become involved with a number of manufacture/customer related issues and it would appear that a resolution has resulted. Through all of this Kath's responses so far have been constructive, cooperative and measured but helpful.
What is more is that the public image of Swift group has been enhanced - hey that not bad considering the causal point was a complaint!
It is about time that the other manufacturers start to engage in these forums. They actually stand to gain quite a lot just like Swift.
What does it cost them? Well not a great deal. It is a low cost exercise but it can gain big benefits if not least improved good will, which is a tradable commodity.
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