President's Message

[Ron Nossaman]

I'll probably regret this, but...

>     Dear Kent:
>     In reference to your article in the latest PTG Journal, I have to 
> take issue with your comments and please allow me to suggest a better 
> system.

Better by who's criteria?


>     1.  When a customer complains, one should listen with a sympathetic 
> ear, not an  argumentative, defensive one.  

I read the article, and I saw no sign of being argumentative or 
defensive. What I saw was a professional who knows his business and 
isn't going to allow someone without obvious qualification to 
arbitrarily tell him different. I don't consider this to be 
something to criticize.


>A "dreaded callback" is in 
> reality  information that requires serious attention, not excuses 
> or blaming.  

Again, I saw no sign of making excuses or assigning blame. I saw 
what I thought was a reasonable, educated, and informed assessment 
of the situation.


>Like doctors who listen to patients who know their own 
> body, we need to listen to customer's concerns about their piano.

How many times has a doctor provided you free follow up care when 
the initial office visit, diagnosis, and prescription didn't take 
care of the complaint? I've certainly never had it happen, though 
I've bought many an ineffective treatment through the years.


>     2.  The first step should be an _immediate_ return to the job in 
> question.  A client expects the tuning to be right and has paid you for 
> that expectation,  but how complaints are handled are the real mark of a 
> professional.  

The technical "rightness" of a tuning neither carries, nor implies 
the guarantee that it will satisfy or please the customer either now 
or later. We hope that our clients are reasonable in understanding 
the impossibility of producing concert quality sound from a less 
than stellar quality instrument with just a routine maintenance 
tuning. Never mind that it won't happen with any amount of time and 
money spent, since it's just not in the instrument to produce it. 
Minute by minute in this type of work and string by string, we judge 
ideals against reality in the attempt to achieve reasonable 
expectation results. Had this been a higher quality piano that Kent 
considered more nearly tunable and was pleased with, he might have 
been more likely to go back just to see what the complaint could 
possibly be. In this case, I expect he already knows. In these 
situations, I'll usually tell them I will be back in that area on 
(whatever my appointment book tells me, if I have anything scheduled 
that way), and they will meet me there at a specific time to 
demonstrate the complaint. Very rarely will I do anything different 
than I had already done with the tuning because I have what I 
consider valid reasons for doing what I did in the first place - 
unless I had screwed something up. It happens. My experience is that 
these people don't typically become repeat customers, but are going 
through the list trying to find someone who can please them by 
putting a better tuning on the piano than it is capable of taking. 
They eventually settle on the cheapest tuner they can find, since 
the higher priced can't please them anyway.


>A suggestion of "guaranteed tuning" might be better 
> replaced by a desire to achieve customer satisfaction promptly.

And when the satisfaction of the customer involves the impossibility 
of making the reality match their unreasonable expectation, how much 
time should we be willing to spend pretending to try to do what we 
are sure isn't possible? Trying to fool the customer into believing 
that we have done something we haven't isn't, in my opinion, a 
particularly professional approach.


>     3.  The desire that clients use  one technician for all their 
> instruments is a valid one but can only be achieved by techs performance 
> and trust _earned_, not automatically expected after the first 
> meeting.  If one expects to serve this client with "pianos all over the
> building,"  it would make sense to try to please rather than pre-judge. 

But this is precisely the point of referral based business. We come 
pre-qualified and trustworthy by virtue of the referral. If the 
source of the referral is trustworthy, the referred is less suspect. 
In this case, a random name gotten from a music store isn't much of 
a referral, but does still come with two reputations attached.


>     To assume the tuning was fine (which it probably was) and that the 
> fault lies with the piano or  the person complaining, might 
> be premature.   

It might be, but probably isn't. How much time is it worth to waste 
finding out?


>To devote the conversation to boasting about ones 
> reputation and methods is a turnoff and counterproductive.  

And again. I saw no sign of boasting about reputation or methods. 
Kent showed her his qualifications, and from her responses, I'd say 
she showed him hers too.


>Allow the 
> customer to find this out by your performance over 
> time.  He/she perceives a problem and our job is to respond in a 
> kindly,helpful way putting other things aside until it is resolved.  
> This would be my "better system."
>     Mike Kurta       

I've sat through a number of classes in my life (and participated in 
a number of discussions) where so much time was taken up by catering 
to and trying to enlighten the hopelessly lowest common denominator, 
that nothing beyond that level was ever reached. We have to decide 
for ourselves at what level we wish to function in our business, and 
define our own standards and guidelines. Not every customer is worth 
having.

Ron N