While working on one of my most recent assignment, I had the delightful opportunity to interact with top-notch professionals at Toshiba/Westinghouse, who thought me a lesson or two in customer service. This pleasant experience is in stark contrast to what I had heard from a dear friend in London about her experience with my erstwhile employers. Incidentally, the lady’s husband is one of my best friend, and a former colleague at the company. Story goes, the lady, representing a big buy-side company as marketing head, approached my former employer with a budget, but the inside sales team out-rightly refused to even entertain the prospective client, simply because the incentives associated with the ‘small deal’ was not attractive enough. I found it quite bizarre to learn that employees could actually act against the interest of their own employers on trivial issues, even in today’s day and age. Maybe their morale was low, or maybe the organizational systems and processes were inefficient. Whatever the reason for the poor customer service, the lady swears never to work again with my former employer, and the company has, in the process, lost out on a big-budget client.
Coming back to my Toshiba/Westinghouse experience, I had less than 48 hours to gather critical information on a breakthrough product the company was developing. I had my deadline to deliver a preliminary assessment, and I was desperately searching for answers. Since the product in question is still under development, the company has obviously not made a lot of information available to general public. However, I had a job to do, and I relied on the government agency, NRC, to gather the names and contact details of key people involved with the project. The tactic worked! Little did I realize that I had actually mass-mailed about twenty people asking for information about the product - to my utter surprise, and great delight, I received an overwhelming response from everyone at Toshiba/Westinghouse. Remember, I’m not even a customer. I’m just a representative of a prospective customer.
I must admit that i now have the pleasure of working with great professionals who are not only masters in their respective fields, but who have also mastered the art of customer service. What is even more interesting here is that the set of twenty people that I had mass-mailed belonged to different business units. I am impressed with Toshiba/Westinghouse organizational efficiency and collaboration, which seamlessly facilitated the agile responsiveness.
As we approach the Gandhi Jayanti, a national holiday celebrated in India on 2nd of October, to mark the occasion of the birthday of great Mahatma Gandhi, I recall the Mahatma’s famous words “A customer is the most important visitor on our premises, he is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.”
Clearly, folks at Toshiba/Westinghouse have indeed lived upto Gandhi’s philosophy, and have delighted me as a customer. I want to take this opportunity to say a BIG THANK YOU to - Brad Maurer, John Goossen, Richard Wright and Tony Grenci
Coming back to my Toshiba/Westinghouse experience, I had less than 48 hours to gather critical information on a breakthrough product the company was developing. I had my deadline to deliver a preliminary assessment, and I was desperately searching for answers. Since the product in question is still under development, the company has obviously not made a lot of information available to general public. However, I had a job to do, and I relied on the government agency, NRC, to gather the names and contact details of key people involved with the project. The tactic worked! Little did I realize that I had actually mass-mailed about twenty people asking for information about the product - to my utter surprise, and great delight, I received an overwhelming response from everyone at Toshiba/Westinghouse. Remember, I’m not even a customer. I’m just a representative of a prospective customer.
I must admit that i now have the pleasure of working with great professionals who are not only masters in their respective fields, but who have also mastered the art of customer service. What is even more interesting here is that the set of twenty people that I had mass-mailed belonged to different business units. I am impressed with Toshiba/Westinghouse organizational efficiency and collaboration, which seamlessly facilitated the agile responsiveness.
As we approach the Gandhi Jayanti, a national holiday celebrated in India on 2nd of October, to mark the occasion of the birthday of great Mahatma Gandhi, I recall the Mahatma’s famous words “A customer is the most important visitor on our premises, he is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.”
Clearly, folks at Toshiba/Westinghouse have indeed lived upto Gandhi’s philosophy, and have delighted me as a customer. I want to take this opportunity to say a BIG THANK YOU to - Brad Maurer, John Goossen, Richard Wright and Tony Grenci
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