"We Often Warranty Mistakes Our Clients Make"

JH
John Honovich
•Jul 11, 2017
IPVM

From a comment by John Bayzk:

I should also mention, most of the time when we are providing warranty service it's not due to a failure of the device. We often warranty mistakes our clients make, we don't want them to feel stupid, sometimes it's better just to fix it, let them know what happened and tell them it's on-the-house.

Bayzk mentions this in the context of charging a premium vs what a product is sold at vs ADI or Amazon, etc.

It makes sense. The challenge, of course, is doing things like this and ensuring one gets paid a premium to cover the higher costs of handling such issues.

Thoughts?

(1)
UI
Undisclosed Integrator #1
•Jul 11, 2017

I think it is good customer service but this only goes so far. If it involves physically breaking a more expensive item, sorry , its on them. Lets say they pull all the drives on the DVR and bust the RAID, we will eat that. 

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Jonathan Lawry
•Jul 17, 2017
Trecerdo, LLC

Ultimately there is nothing wrong, in a business setting, to gently remind customers of your largess.  If things gets out of hand, it becomes easier to have "that conversation" when you have to start charging them.

In another vein, I once had a large facility customer that somehow made things "our fault" even when they knew it wasn't, because we were the only company on the job with the ability to solve the issue.  We gradually raised our rates over time and to this day, they remain a customer of my old company....but they pay a hefty premium to account for the headaches.

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SE
Sam Eskew
•Jul 17, 2017

When faced with "difficult" customers, there is usually an opportunity to charge for the extra effort required to please them. It has been said that we wish we could choose which A******s we will do business with, but mostly we just hope the A******s choose us.

Remember the first rule of customer relations: the customer is always right.

Rule #2: In the case where the customer is wrong, refer to Rule #1.

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GB
Glen Bhimani
•Jun 27, 2019
In reply to Sam Eskew

We dont follow the customer is always right rule and we have told clients their wrong. It works great for us never had any issues after putting the client in their place.

UI
Undisclosed Integrator #2
•Jul 17, 2017

You have to at least charge a minimum. If you can help someone in less than 30 minutes remotely let that be good will but if you have to dispatch then you need to get paid for that. This will also discourage customers from being too needy by calling you for problems they can handle or aren't your responsibility.

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