Chapter 7
Legendary customer service
At Com Tech, we were always competitor aware but customer obsessive.
I don’t want to say that we ran Com Tech with blinkers on, but it’s hard enough worrying about your own company – if you have to worry about everything that your competition is doing, you will never sleep. When I started, I was determined to be the best technology company in Australia. If I just wanted to be 1 per cent better than my direct competitor, Datamatic, I would also have been a lousy company. To me, in the late 1980s Compaq Computers was the benchmark, and so I set my goal as having our customers regard Com Tech as better than Compaq.
Customer service is the provision of service to customers before, during and after selling something to them. Do this well and the sales will flow. Do it poorly at your peril.
I tell customers before they buy from me: ‘We’re going to have problems. They may be ours, they may be yours, they may be the product that we are using, or they may even be related to a third party – but we’re going to have issues. That’s why you want to work with us. When we have problems, there will be no finger pointing – we’re all sitting on the same side of the table.’
I think we’ve all been around long enough to know that technology is fraught with problems. I’ve worked with almost every major large vendor, and I’ve also been involved with many smaller companies like Holly and MacromatiX – and there are always issues. How often have you received a new version of your iPhone software that fixes some bug?
Our job at Com Tech was to take our customers from an old computer environment to a new computer environment, as painlessly as possible. When we hit that Valley of Death, I knew that not only were we working with the right products, but – just as importantly – we had the people with both the ability AND the attitude to fix those problems as and when they occurred. We always did fix them. I can honestly say that we never let a customer down, and it’s how we built our brand and our profits too.
For many years, Macquarie Bank never bought product from us – they purchased directly from the vendors instead, as they believed that Com Tech could add no value. That was, until they moved from their Bond Street office to their new head office at 1 Martin Place. They moved over a weekend, and when everyone showed up for work on the Monday, nothing worked. Mac Bank was deep in that Valley of Death. Cisco was blaming Novell for the outage and Novell was blaming Cisco. In desperation, the CIO, Rob Hamlin, called me and told me that this was our opportunity to add value. I sent one of the best tech guys that I have ever worked with, Roland Chia, to fix the problem. Within a few minutes, Rollie had isolated the issue. He had switched off the Novell network and the network still didn’t work. It was a Cisco problem. As soon as Cisco acknowledged that it was their problem, they threw everything at it. If you were going to have problems, you wanted to have Cisco as your supplier – like us, they were fanatical about customer service. Rob Hamlin was impressed, and Rollie’s outstanding work won us many millions of dollars of business with Mac Bank after we saved the day.
Conversely, poor customer service can be catastrophic for a business. I witnessed this once when I went down to Melbourne with my colleague and longtime business partner Dave Jacobson. We were going to Melbourne to see Telstra – together with our partner, SynOptics – to sign a massive contract for Ethernet hubs. SynOptics was the pioneer and market leader in Ethernet networking over unshielded twisted pair cable. Together with SynOptics’ country manager and their sales manager, Dave and I were meeting with the infamous Mariyon Skreblin and John (Giovanni) Vilani, two of the toughest negotiators I have ever dealt with.
Mariyon’s EA had offered us coffee – but Mariyon said, ‘Forget the coffee, bring the champagne.’ We sat down, and without any preliminary discussion Mariyon simply signed the contract. The trouble was that the contract included a product that Telstra had not requested. Rather than the current version of the Ethernet hub listed in the contract, Telstra were expecting the next version, which had additional and important features required by Telstra. SynOptics would have had to ship two units instead of one until the new version was available. This would have been costly for SynOptics.
The contract was signed, and the SynOptics country manager never said a word. I whispered under my breath, ‘Tell Mariyon about the issue.’ He didn’t say anything, so I said it again. When he still did nothing, I said, ‘Mariyon, the contract that you have signed does not include the next generation of hubs, but we do have a solution until it becomes available.’ Fuming, Mariyon ripped up the contract and said, ‘Get out.’ When Dave and I stood up to leave, he told us, ‘Not you.’ He thanked us for our honesty.
It cost SynOptics and Com Tech at least $10 million over the years, and Hewlett Packard became the incumbent supplier to Telstra. The country manager rightly got fired! Com Tech still did lots of business with Telstra, but Mariyon was true to his word: SynOptics – and then Bay Networks, the company formed by the merger of SynOptics and Wellfleet – never did business with Australia’s largest customer again. I was proud to receive an email from Mariyon when he resigned from Telstra, saying that no other supplier had the integrity that we did. Coming from Mariyon, that was a big compliment. You can lose money, lots of it, but you can’t lose your reputation, not a shred of it!
Problems don’t just occur with technology. A bad meal served at a restaurant, the wrong package delivered by a supplier, or a flight delayed by an airline – how you respond to these problems will determine the difference between an ordinary company and a great company.
I was lucky enough to work with two outstanding founders at Centric Wealth, Jon Pillemer and Roy Agranat. They ran the risk and life insurance practice. You don’t want to know how good your provider is when it comes to life insurance – it means that you’re in trouble. Either you have passed away and your loved ones need to claim on your policy, or you have suffered major trauma. When it came to these types of tragedies, there was no small print with Jonny and Roy. I saw how they fought to ensure that their customers’ policies were honoured to the letter, to make certain that families didn’t suffer any additional trauma or avoidable distress. Take the case of one of Jonny’s clients, who had terminal cancer. The client wanted to know that his family would be provided for once he had passed. Somehow, Jonny convinced the insurance provider to pay the policy prior to the client’s death, giving the man peace of mind before he passed away. I haven’t worked with Jonny and Roy for years, but I continue to recommend them to everyone, because I know how they fight for their clients when they most need the help. Jonny and Roy have a thriving business today (Fairbridge Wealth) – not surprising, considering their obsession with customer satisfaction.
I could continue writing about customer service for several more chapters – yes, I always have been and always will be obsessed with customer service. Just like my builder, Ron Conti. I met Ron in 2000, through a referral from my now business partner, Geoff Levy. When I asked Ron about the way he liked to work, he said, ‘David, it’s got to be fair for you and fair for me.’ I shook his hand, and that was our contract. Eighteen years later I was building again and who was I using? Ron Conti. I still didn’t have a contract. I think that between 2003 and now, Ron would have got at least six large jobs on my recommendation – as I’ve said before, there is no better salesperson than a happy customer. During the 13 years that I lived in my last house, if there was ever an issue, Ron would be there in a heartbeat. And he never gave me a bill. I found it almost embarrassing to call him.
In 2018, when I was organising a cycling tour to Italy for myself and my mates, I was lucky enough to meet a delightful couple, Daniel and Tara Brickell. Their company, Chameleon Bike Adventures, took 16 of us to Italy. They went above and beyond to make sure that it was an unforgettable cycling experience in Italy – not just a cycling trip. The little things they did made such a massive difference. If you want to go cycling in Italy, call Dan and Tara, they won’t let you down.
It doesn’t matter whether you are a one-man band like Conti Construction, or a two-person company like Chameleon Bike Adventures, legendary customer service (or, in the case of Amazon, fanatical customer service) will always be the differentiator in your business.
At the end of the day, providing legendary customer service is pretty simple. All that customers expect is accurate information, a prompt response and not being kept in the dark – bad news doesn’t get better with time. I don’t know what the country manager of SynOptics was thinking. A soon as Telstra had received their first shipment, they would have realised that the latest version of the product was unavailable. I’m pretty sure that if the country manager had explained the issue, Telstra would have been more than happy – and the contract would not have been ripped up.
The diagram on page 63 shows that balance again. Deliver legendary customer service and your sales with existing customers will grow, while attracting business from new customers will become easier.
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