**Guest posts welcome at any time, I love to collaborate and to share learnings!**
Today a guest post from friend and past colleague, Alan Wick. Alan is a great coach, passionate about empowering entrepreneurs. He listens and talks softly, and at the same time everything he says is direct, powerful and on the money.
I loved his post this week on LinkedIn, and he has kindly allowed me to share it today.
This succinct article makes a clear point to me around leadership. As I wrote about earlier, “how you do anything is how you do everything“, in this case, how Bowers & Wilkins responded to Alan’s customer need surely is reflected in everything they do.
As Alan wrote, then…..
Premium means Premium
My beloved Bowers & Wilkins headphones – the bees knees – finally gave out after three years’ sterling service.
I phoned the factory, got through to a helpful young woman within a few minutes, “No problem, sir, we’re sorry to hear that, we’ll post you a box to return them to us for service.”
Two days later a small cardboard box arrived containing what they call a “beauty box” – seriously. The cardboard box itself was sealed with carefully-positioned and cut tape, and had shipping labels that were stuck on absolutely straight. It looked like someone really cared what it looked like before shipping it. The “beauty box” is the same box the headphones had originally shipped in: white, branded, with a soft insert shaped to fit the headphones. Beautiful indeed (if you’re into this sort of stuff!).
Off it went back to the factory. I received an email saying they’d arrived safely.
A few days later another email arrived saying they’d inspected the headphones, but due to the type of fault, they recommended replacing them with the latest model for a few pounds more – would that be OK? Yes, I replied.
A few days after that I received a pair of brand new headphones (in another beauty box!), with a note apologising for the inconvenience.
Will I buy from them again? Will I recommend this company? You bet I will, with bells on (disclaimer – I have no interest in Bowers & Wilkins other than as a customer).
If you’re positioning your brand as Premium, make sure that every aspect of what your company delivers is what it says on the tin, down to the tiniest detail, every day. No exceptions.
Premium means Premium.