Welcomed Thoughts from a Fellow (Jeff Valles): It Is Time To Change The RGA Process

The marketing math is compelling. It’s obvious that the most highly-leveraged moment in every brand’s relationship with a customer is the moment when something goes wrong. Seth Godin

 

A customer is upset because the product does not work as advertised. They call the showroom that they know and trust. Their salesperson now has been transformed from trusted advisor to inquisitor. The sales professional needs to ask their loyal customer the exact nature of the problem, determine if the problem can it be fixed on site and how much time it will take for a resolution? What an incredible waste time for both the customer and showroom salesperson, and this is only the beginning. Looming on the horizon is the oftentimes argument with the manufacturer as to whether or not they will credit the part, cover the labor, who is responsible, and of course, is the product indeed defective? 

 

Here's a better idea. Empower sales professionals to simply ask the customer what the customer wants and then do what they think is best? That applies even if the salesperson offers that the manufacturer will send the part or replace the fixture at no charge, and will pick up the freight and any additional labor costs. WHY NOT? Is it not better to have a happy customer and a content salesperson who will want to continue to specify the manufacturer's products? And the time involved ... the time savings are huge.

 

Let’s review today’s return process. It involves time from the showroom salespeople, manufacturer's customer service and warehouse people, cost for materials, accounting, and occasionally, management. How much time is wasted here, not to mention the frustration while at the same time taking people from productive tasks? No company has time for this. Let’s develop a new process that better promotes winning people’s trust and saving precious time.  

 

We need to move to one of these two models: 

 

1.    The Trust Model is when the manufacturer trusts its distributor/showroom to do what is best and reimburses them. No debate.

2.    The Additional Percentage Discount Model in which the manufacturer adds a few extra points to the purchasing discount to cover all return costs, product and labor, as agreed to by the distributor/showroom and its client. No debate.  

Let's take this model to the extreme. What if custom products all go bad and then a hurricane hits and …? True, there will be times when one side loses. But, over the years the law of averages will balance out. Strange and unique situations will always happen, but we cannot manage by those rare occurrences that might possibly occur. The benefits of time saved, customer meltdowns avoided, angered showroom staff, the chasing of product and the issuing of credit memos will all disappear.  

 

Doesn’t it make more sense to move from a time- consuming, issue-to-issue return process to a simple annual agreement? That would make all of our lives easier and would also give our customers another reason to trust us.