SolarGlass

Today, we lost an important job because the customer found our price too high. I hated the loss but penned a response to the customer to “speak my mind.”

I stated that I thought about this on the drive home and while walking the dog. I asked myself should I have taken our margin below my identified floor to win this opportunity. Certainly I recognize the long-term potential of working with the customer on his development initiatives.

While I was below my predetermined floor gross margin on the bid, I did have enough in the job to support the key principals for which I stand and that make the kind of difference in the building material supplies arena that underpin why I bought SolarGlass. I am betting the farm (literally) that service excellence is a long-term profit enhancer.

At SolarGlass, we have full-time service professional in each location. Our standard is to offer two years of labor warranty where our vendors and industry standards dictates just one year. We do post installation walk-through inspections to catch product or installation issues long before they cause a problem. Similarly, we do screen installations and final operating adjustments just as the project is turned over to the home owner, and without charge. This establishes SolarGlass as the first person called should anything crop up in the future, exactly where we want to be.

Beyond these policies, we look for opportunities to put service first. When our prospect identified a problem with a window and a door in his own home, we could have chosen to point him to the product manufacturer for resolution, consistent with the parameters of the warranties. Instead, it was an opportunity to walk the SolarGlass “walk”. We want to be at the center of the resolution and not the company that is unwilling to get engaged. When an architect had a problem caused by the predecessor company, we stepped up even though we would have been 100% right to state that the problem was not our responsibility. Just today, I waived a $300 charge to a customer because we did not provided the service level of which we could proud.

What I was trying to say is that when you buy SolarGlass, you buy our service model. You will find windows of acceptable quality priced lower that what we offer. They will be fine in many projects and a person would be justifiably proud of the end result. However, I don’t know of any company that prioritizes the service lifecycle the way we do. We are proud of our service model and understand that sometimes we loose business opportunities we absolutely covet in the pursuit of what we stand for.

What do you think? Are we on the right track or does this not matter?

I care deeply about service, but how do you deal with failure? If, despite best efforts, a customer does not feel you met their needs or requirements, then what?

Maybe the customer is being reasonable, maybe they are not. It does not matter. What matters is the effort, the principal and purpose behind the effort, and whether your actions match your rhetoric.

From my perspective, the litmus test is the drive home. Do I feel sick that we missed our goal of customer delight? Am I unable to find something we should have done but did not? Am I still willing to “look the customer in the eye” and tell them we have done everything that is consistent with our passionate commitment to the service agenda?

The questions are simple to write – even simplistic and self righteous. The answers are messy and there are no absolutes. I can’t prove that service excellence drives me and my stewardship of this company. However, I am undeterred. I believe service is our obligation. We earn or money only if we respect this truth.

Our success has been built on:

• Longevity of the team
• Expertise of the sales team
• Rigorous business process
• Leadership
• Profit sharing that aligned the entire organization to the successful fulfillment of a customers order

As a result, SG has earn a great deal of loyalty from custom builders who know that they will have a trusted expert guide their product selection and that they can rely on the entire SG team to get it right.

The resulting relationships between custom builders and “their” SG sales person is a strong foundation that must be protected. At the same time, remodels, renovations, and, most importantly, replacements will drive growth. This means more homeowner involvement in the selection process, and a more direct homeowner connection to the satisfaction equation. Warranty service will evolve from SG’s support of the customer builder in achieving customer satisfaction to SG having a direct, ongoing relationship with homeowners.

SolarGlass is very well positioned to raise the service standard. The DNA of SG can be expressed as “Expertise backed by Service.” Going forward, we need to flip the relationship to be “Service backed by Expertise.”

We need to let our markets know that the Quality of Customer Experience is SG’s defining difference. If we start to leverage the expertise of the team to push the service and quality of experience envelope at every turn, we can extend our current leadership position.

A problem or service issue is an opportunity to create a customer who advocates for SG. The alternative is either an outcome that leaves the customer neutral – not bad, but a waste of an opportunity – or far worse, the customer who tells anyone and everyone of their rotten experience.

The shift then is from being fiercely proud of what we know and the quality of our relationships to getting real joy in finding ways to go above and beyond expectations. In addition to honoring our existing relationships, we need to focus more on the experience and the end customer – the homeowner.