Buying a Blender is NOT Like Buying a Bike Part…
Posted by Stephen on
July 26, 2006
Dealing with my Broken Manitou has taught me a few things about the retail bicycle industry that I did not realize. Having worked in retail for over 16 years, you would expect that the type of service from one retail market, would be the same in another. I was seriously mistaken.
As I discovered during my experience of being a victim of a defective bicycle suspension fork, there is a huge gaping chasm between the type of service you will get when buying a blender, and the type of service you get when buying a bicycle part….
Buying a Defective Blender
If you buy a defective product, like a blender, from any regular retailer that sells them, and it breaks within a short time period, retailers will not make it your problem in their regular return period. It could be 10 - 30 days. Some retailers push a first year exchange for a defective product. In that time period, you would be offered a replacement, a credit, or an upgrade if the retailer plays their cards right, to make the sale. Any retailer asking that the product be repaired by a local service depot would have that blender shoved up their happy parts.
Buying a Defective Bike Part
If you buy a defective bike part, like say, a bicycle suspension fork, your relationship with the shop ends there. As I am finding out, the way things are done is way different in this industry. In my case, the fork would not be replaced for me if defective in the first few days of use, unless uninstalled, in most cases, but of course, hard to tell, unless you use it which means installing it. The way it is dealt with is a bit of a redirection to a third party: The shop drops out of the picture. The third part is typically a service center of some sorts that deals with repairs of the product. Repairs? Well, my blender would have been replaced! Well, sorry, not going to happen.
As I was told, the bicycle industry is very much like the motorcycle industry. Even if your motorcycle part breaks in the shop’s parking lot, you’re not going to get an exchange on the spot. You’re going to get it shipped to the depot, and the depot will decide whether to fix or repair that part. Uh…Yeah…
So as you can see, there is quite a gap in the type of service that you will get in both industries. Even in the electronics industry, which I’m very familiar with, you will have an exchange most of the time, as long as it is in stock, and you purchased within a reasonable amount of time. It’s disturbing to see how far behind this industry has lagged behind other retailers, making this extremely surprising to me as a veteran of retail. I thought I had seen it all. I guess there is still a lot I haven’t seen in retail afterall.
There is so much opportunity for bicycle retailers to step up and raise the bar. In my case, I was fully prepared to accept an exchange or an upsell to the defective part I bought. They didn’t have to discount it. They just had to make sure it was installed, and that I was out on the road before I knew what I had done. Instead, they seemed locked to the fact that it is a defective part, and these are the steps they needed to take to get it dealt with. Let’s cost this out…
Doing it By The Book…
I purchase a $749.00 fork. It breaks. A technician needs to look at it (Minus $50.00), but I’m on my way afterwards, however, there is a chance it may break again. It breaks again. A technician needs to look at it again (Minus $50.00). Now the shop needs to send my fork away and install a loaner fork for me (Minus $25.00 for shipping and Minus $50 to swap the fork out). When the fork comes back, the shop will need to reinstall my new/old fork (Minus $50.00). So from my initial purchase of $750, they are left with $525.00, and probably no profit by now.
Doing it Differently…
I purchase a $749.00 fork. It breaks. A technician looks at it (Minus $50.00), but I’m on my way afterwards. Fork breaks again. Shop offers a replacement, but unfortunately, the fork I bought is no longer available, so shop offers an exchange for something else, or an upgrade. I really want to ride, and don’t want another problem, so I spend MORE money and buy a $1300 fork. Shop takes care of me, reinstalls the new fork (Minus $50.00), takes my old fork back and they deal with it later. I’m so grateful of the service, I plop down another $200 on tires and accessories because I felt good about what happened, even though they took me for more money. Later, the shop gets the old fork back from the service depot (Shipping Minus $25.00) and they sell it for $700.00.
So after all that, the shop comes up with a $2075.00 in sales.
Makes you go “Hmm…” doesn’t it?
…
It also depends on the store… The hub on my bike completely locked up after a just a couple weeks (or months). I brought it back to the store (west coast cycle IIRC) and they were apologetic because it happened while I was riding. To get me back on my way right away, they just gave me a whole new hub, gears, and rim (the rim was an upgrade). All they had to do was switch the tire over and I was on my way!
If I were you, I wouldn’t spend another dollar at that bike shop.
Well you’re missing a key element here chief. When you buy a blender, you are buying a commodity of which they make in runs of the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. EVERYBODY buys a blender or a TV. A bike part is a very specialized product; if 30% of the population rides a bike regularly and only 10% of those ride seriously and only 20% of those have the disposable income and passion for the sport to buy a thousand dollar fork, you are looking at a niche market product. This means they produce them in the hundreds, not the millions, and they are probably a company with revenue in the millions, not the hundreds of millions.
So what does this all mean from a service perspective? Well it doesn’t mean that you won’t get service. It means that you’ll get a different type of service. If there are only so many of this product made, the bike shop probably doesn’t have a collection of warranty replacements. This is not unusual for bigger ticket items; how many 52 inch top of the line plasma’s did you keep in stock at LD? When I worked there the number was usually 1. Maybe display plus one if it was a busy time of year, but usually just the display. Now, take it a step further; not only is it a big ticket item, it’s a big ticket niche market item. So as a big ticket mass market item you can get them a new one in a few days barring any stocking issues. As soon as it’s a niche item it becomes a “send back to depot” situation in a lot of cases.
Of course not ever company is the same; some will offer warranty replacements or loaners to their retail distributors…remember when you worked for the cell company and you had a loaner/replacement pool separate from your regular inventory? Not every manufacturer has the ability to provide those replacement parts tho. The smaller the niche, the less likely that a given manufacturer can provide loaners/replacements. When I worked in the music gear industry, if a Marshall amp had a problem, we had to send it back to Marshall. We did have a repair shop in house, but they couldn’t always repair a warranty issue instantly. If possible we would give the customer something to get by if they needed it, but again, it wasn’t always possible.
I guess I’m just saying that you can’t necessarily blame the manufacturer for not providing replacements; only for building shoddy product. If the store you’re dealing with is giving you bad support change stores, but don’t blame the manufacturer.
I guess it’s been a while since we’ve worked together because…
If that 52 inch plasma broke in a week, I would have replaced it. I would have sent a tech out to make sure that it was fixable, and that the customer had something watchable while I order a replacement, and I would have replaced it. In fact, in 2 cases, that I remember enough of, not plasma, customers had a problem with a certain “S” brand of LCD Projection Television. In both cases, they fried in some way, in the first 2 weeks or less.
Bottom line, in those two cases, I took care of the customers and NEVER made it their problem. I took the problem away, and gave them what they purchased: New Working TV’s. The other two TV’s, once back from repair, were sold without hassle, for a few dollars off, but the goodwill I built with these two customers, and the communication I fed to them during the repair, exchange, and follow up, made them come back and buy a hundreds of dollars in cabling in one case, and a home theatre system in another. I had them for life. They trusted that I would never stick them with a problem and that they would be taken care of.
As a result of how I altered the way I did things at the store, my staff had fewer fights with customers, and built better relationships. The stress level was non existant, and you know what, I stopped getting calls at home! Near the end of my “reign”, and after cleaning house, the store had record margins and the highest “M___” percentage in the lower mainland, and was second only to the yodelling Christians in Kelowna.
In my case, the product was a week old when it broke the first time, then 10 days old when it broke the second time. Although they did offer me a loaner, and at no point did I feel that they were not genuine in their service, no one thought OUTSIDE of the box. The scenario “Doing it Differently” above was never discussed or alluded to probably because that was “The Way it Is”.
My bottom line is that, if you think outside the box, and remember to NEVER make it a “Customers” problem, you will enjoy more, easier sales, and you won’t be stressing out everytime someone brings in a return. I taught the guys to see “Gold” when someone brought something back, because, the next time they come in, they will come to you if you take care of them correctly, or if the cards were played right, you might make a bigger sale right then and there.
So in closing:
“Sell Products. Not Problems!”
I guess I misread your original post, cuz my understanding was that you were pissed at the manufacturer because you didn’t get a replacement. I agree 100% with everything in your reply to my comment, and yes, that was the way we did it when I worked there (although I never actually worked WITH you there other than that first 2 or 3 shifts). In both cases with the LCD projection TV’s, you didn’t give them a replacement product right away; you gave them a different solution. That’s what I was getting at. It was the blender metaphor; it’s easy when a customer walks in with a 50 dollar blender to say “here’s a new one”…not so easy with a 4500 dollar tv or any priced specialized item. That was what my post was getting at.
Definitely I agree, anybody who sells any product (be it the 50 dollar blender or the million dollar software packages I sell) has an obligation to support the customer and remove the weight of any issues. Well, I guess not an obligation, but if a store wants to stand out from the crowd the management should make it an obligation. Maybe you need a new bike store…somebody out there will give you the proper level of customer service.
Well, we can actually replace that “blender” with any number of items, TV or for that matter, more rare HD-DVD or BLU-Ray DVD Players. Fact of the matter is, in any retail store that sells those things, the expectation is clear that no item would become something the customer is stuck to deal with, if the period time is reasonble.
To me, it’s pretty clear that there is a huge gap in the type of service between industries. What is considered service in one industry, is certain death for future patronage in another one. After experiencing first hand what kind of service is normal, and understanding why, I can see how some folks silently retreat to other shops looking for the holy grail, or something different. Some just give up, and pick up another sport because they expect a certain type of service that they don’t get in this industry.
Again, I was shocked at first, but then after talking to people at the service center, where my fork is being looked after now, it appears that for products like this, this is the normal procedure, however, the shop can go outside of the box if they are able to. I just don’t think there was much empowerment to do so, but I didn’t feel like anyone didn’t make a genuine attempt to help me. I just feel that a more creative solution would have been warranted having been the victim of a likely defective as new product.
I guess the empowerment to do more comes from above. Hopefully the owners of that retail chain realize what a huge opportunity they have here to stand out from the crowd and offer that higher level service that is above the norm. There are so many retailers doing so many great things. All they have to do is look outside their market for a moment to pick up a few great ideas.
Again, I don’t feel like the shop wasn’t genuinely trying to help me. I just think that if they went above, or more creatively, although I’d still talk about the situation, my tune would have changed from…
“They did what they thought they were able to do for me…”
To…
“Holy crap! Those guys are fucking awesome! They totally felt for me, knew I only wanted what I paid for (a new working fork) and offered me something else right away that wouldn’t give me a problem, and I was on my way. They even got me to spend more money, but who cares. They took my problem away from me.”
I hope one day I’ll have that kind of story to tell.