In a perfect world, of course, there would be no complaining customers because no customer would ever have a complaint. Alas, the world is not perfect!

     And although most every company pays lip service to "customer satisfaction", precious few make a real commitment to act on it. Too many employees still think customer problems are something to avoid; uncomfortable to deal with and get in the way of their jobs.

     However, smart companies (like ours, we hope) know that customer feedback - especially the negative kind - is a valuable tool that we can use to retain customers, improve our services, and continue to grow our business. We've learned the hard way that an unhappy customer, who takes the time to tell us what they don't like about our company, can be the best friend we have.

     We've long recognized that there is something far worse than a complaining customer. It's the silent customer. They're the easiest to lose. The dissatisfied customer that doesn't complain…just "votes with their feet" by walking away, taking their business with them never to grace our premises again. We may not even know they've disappeared until they show up as someone else's customer.

     For these reasons, we've tried over these past 50+ years, to roll out a broad red carpet for our customers to air their complaints. Initially, we mailed out a printed form entitled "Are We The Best We Can Be?" for each new installation of a HVAC system.

     We still mail this form (everyone does not use the Internet) to every purchaser of a new installation but have expanded the coverage by requiring our service technicians to leave a similar "Comment Card" for every service call we make and we follow up every service call with a telephone call to assure customer satisfaction.

     With the advent of the Internet, we've been able to make it even easier (and more convenient) for a customer to voice an opinion for now with just the click of a computer key, they can:

          1. Evaluate a New Installation (Are We The Best We Can Be?).

          2. Evaluate a Service Call (How Do We Measure Up?).

          3. Evaluate Our 200+ page website (Report Card).

          4. Report Website Errors on each web page.

< If you have a complaint or a suggestion as to how we can improve our services or our website, why not click on the appropriate link above. I'd love to hear from you.>

     The purpose of all these evaluation opportunities, are two-fold. (1) To solicit the customer's opinion of our performance. Did we deliver all that we promised and more importantly, all that they expected? (2) and if not, to provide a clear channel for customers to voice any complaints so that we will have an opportunity to redeem ourselves in their eyes for any errors made (for we realize we are not perfect yet!).

     Does this mean that when you have a need for HVAC services you should search for a perfect company, a company that doesn't make mistakes? Don't waste your time…there aren't any.

     Then what is your best bet? Well, it seems to me that a company that actively seeks feedback, especially if it's negative, and the knowledge that as president of Climatemakers, I value the feed back from our customers so highly that I personally read every corporate email, would make us a very strong contender.
  

Climatemakers Ltd.