That was the question I was asking myself when I hung up the phone a few weeks ago following a surreal conversation with the manager of Florida Leather Gallery in Bonita Springs, Florida. Florida Leather Gallery is an upscale furniture retail chain with headquarters in Tampa.
The issue at hand (or better, my three-year-old's hand) was the pink children's marker he had taken to an arm and seat cushion of our new, cream-colored couch. Fortunately for us, we had purchased the extended five-year warranty to cover occasions just like this. Or so we thought.
What transpired over the course of numerous phone calls was, in fact, surreal-like. The bottom line: the store manager essentially blew up his brand, by insisting that his $200 in warranty was more important than our satisfaction (and word of mouth referral).
To him, it didn't matter that we had specifically asked of his salesperson if such damage by a child was covered (this wasn't the first time our artist son has expressed himself with marker). It didn't matter that his salesperson said yes. It didn't matter that he, the store manager, expressed surpirse that the warranty vendor (an independent company in Michigan) rejected our claim. It didn't matter that we had spent thousands of dollars on quality furniture, from a quality furniture store, and that this negative experience could forever taint our perception of his brand. He was not going to refund us a dime on what we believed was, now, a toothless warranty!
Clients, vendors, friends: This is the essence of what NOISE preaches when we say, "the customer experience IS your brand."
At that point in our minds, Florida Leather Gallery
was that store manager. Cheap. Intractable. More interested in keeping the $200 or so they made off our warranty, than in our satisfaction, word of mouth referrals, and potential future purchases.
Fortunately for Florida Leather Gallery, their president, Tom Matter, knows more about branding than his store manager. To his credit, he seized the opportunity I presented him by way of a copied letter to the store manager, to place a personal telephone call to us, at which time he apologized, rebated us the warranty cost, and funded the warranty himself.
Lesson: Your customer's experience is your brand. That experience can be defined from the global (mass media advertising) to the trivial (a rude customer service representative). Make sure that every messenger of your brand speaks the same message, makes the same promise, and delivers the same positive experience. Or you, too, could wind up losing thousands of dollars of future sales over a couple of bucks.
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