Anyone know what is happening with Lee Valley Customer Service?

[Patrick Chase]

Have now replied personally to Mr Hawkins, and have in front of me the 34 different events that occurred 25 days. We all agree here that this was the largest most complex screw-up we have made in almost 40 years of shipping parcels. While I won't bore you with the details, what I've told Mr Hawkins is that "These were all simple human errors – made by good people who care about their work. It was a lightning strike: a one in several million sequence of independent errors." It all started with mistakenly entering the country code for Australia into our manifest system, instead of New Zealand....

IMO this is a great example of how to acknowledge and apologize for human failure without blaming/scapegoating. It happens, it's how you recover from it that really matters.

[Frank Martin]

There was never a doubt. LV understands that their customer service builds a loyal following. I'd guess that's part of the reason Rob Lee monitors the web forums like this one - for opportunities to show off their service.

I know a guy who owns a small business that sells stuff to large companies.
He always says "I love it when my customers have problems. LOVE it!"
"Huh?", says I.
"Yup", says he. "They can buy this stuff cheaper elsewhere. But when they have a problem, THAT'S WHEN I GET TO SHOW THEM WHY I'M WORTH THE PRICE." (Meaning that he takes real good good care of problems.)

Whenever Rob Lee weighs in here I think of that story. (And I've heard plenty of folks say that they'll buy an item from LV even if someone else sells it a little cheaper. Me too.)

Fred

This is what great companies do. In fact, it is a pretty well known way to build loyalty by delighting the customers when they have problems. I am also one of those people who consider LV as number one when it comes to anything I can buy from them. My loyalty exponentially increased about 14 years ago when they addressed a problem (not really their problem as it was a case of lost package) very quickly and to my satisfaction. After that, I knew I could always count on them if anything did not go as expected. Over many more orders since then never another problem. Always predictably high quality items (in particular anything Veritas brand) with stellar customer service to back it up.