It is incredible how much time goes into building a brand, and how little it takes to destroy its intrinsic value. Over the past few years, I have seen this story play out with some leading global brands. Yet this really hit me in the week gone by.

 

My refrigerator wasn't cooling too well. A complaint was lodged and the company in question promptly sent its engineer to rectify the issue. The chap came home and after five minutes of tinkering proclaimed he had found the issue. The pipe needed replacing. Simple enough! Or so we reckoned. Then in a conspiratorial whisper the lad suggested we get the procedure done from a local outfit because (in his words) the company wouldn't be able to resolve it. I must confess my eyebrows did a bit of a tap dance at this. I mean, why wouldn't the company take care of this when it was their own refrigerator! That being said, it is rather hot in Bombay (Ok, call it Mumbai if you like) and we figured let's just get the damn thing to work rather than debate the issue with the chap. And here's where the story gets interesting...

 

The guy - Let's call him Dick (and this has nothing to do with how we felt about him later) - told us he will have someone else come home and resolve the issue. We reckoned it would be a local player and not someone from the company. After all Dick had told us that the company wouldn't solve the issue, right? So we were understandably bemused when another company guy came home saying Dick had asked him to be there and help us out. Let's call this lad Damien (Again, no reference to the devil intended). Now you need to know someting about ol' man Damien. This lad can put Amitabh Bacchan or Al Pacino to shame when it comes to his acting prowess. After ten minutes of fiddling around with the fridge (we were wondering why he had to fiddle with it when Dick had already told him it was the pipe that needed replacing), he announced that it wasn't just the pipe that was faulty. The compressor had conked off too!

 

I must confess at this stage my wife and I were beginning to think that if a third person from this company came home, he might well tell us that we had no fridge and that the appliance sitting pretty in our living room was merely a holographic image or some illusion. We were pretty confused by this time, I'm telling you!

 

Anyway let me not digress. This second guy - Damien - said the compressor was gone and we would have to replace it. "Well, do it by all means" I said. I can be fairly amiable when I know I am up against a higher power, you know. But Damien was a tough nut. he said it wasn't that simple and that the company wouldn't be able to replace the compressor either. Damn!! At this point, i was wondering what it was that the company would be able to replace, if anything at all. So he suggested buying a new fridge. Mind you that comes to about 80,000 bucks and while it wouldn't kill us, it certainly isn't small change. Looking at my woebegone face, Damien (god bless his soul) told us not to fret, because he already knew someone in some retail outlet who could give us a 30 percent discount on a new fridge as long as we didn't mind taking a slightly dented piece. The fact that the fridge wouldn't be one that his company manufactured was an unnecessary detail as far as Damien was concerned. Smelling a rat, I stuck to my guns and told him I wanted a compressor, not a new fridge.

 

Here is where Damien sighed (bloody awesome if you ask me) and apparently relented. "Ok, sir. We shall get you a compressor. I will personally order it from Noida from our factory and you will have it in 2 working days" I was thrilled. My wife was thrilled. The kids were thrilled They had just seen good old daddy persuading a tough cookie to give in to my demand for a compressor. My personal equity in the family was awesome that night. Damn, it felt good!!!

 

Cut to 6 days from that night...... Damien keeps giving excuses about why the compressor hasn't yet reached Bombay from Noida. Dick (the original guy) doesn't pick up his phone. Finally after a series of missed calls, Damien takes the call and says, "Sorry sir, the compressor isn't coming". Poof! The personal equity I had built up a few days ago with my wife and kids went up in smoke. It's pointless to mention here that Damien had been telling us all this while that he has filed a report with the company to get us our compressor; that we would be getting a copy of that order request in our mailbox (never happened); that we would get a mobile alert for the same (never happened) etc etc etc. Not to mention that he had taken inspection charges (after Dick had already been paid too) and we never got a receipt for that either. Even though the receipt too had apparently been sent to our email and mobile.

 

After almost a week of waiting and fretting (without a fridge) Damien knew we were ripe meat for the taking. So he again suggested we take up his offer of buying a fridge from his retailer friend. And that's when I knew for certain that the guy had been playing us all this while. That he had never put in a request for a compressor; that there was no report filed and PERHAPS, the damn compressor wasn't screwed up at all!!! Okay let me confess, the last part was deduced by my wife, and not me.

 

Without wasting another day, we called up a service engineer through a hyperlocal business venture. The guy came within 15 minutes. The problem was solved within 2.5 hours and the refrigerator was running and purring like it was brand new. The total bill was under 4,000 and this included servicing the fridge as well as sprucing up other stuff too. And as you might have guessed by now, there was NOTHING wrong with the compressor.

 

At this point, we were told by well intentioned neighbors and friends that this is a racket that's been in the making with some companies, especially with the one in question here. We decided to call up the big bosses at the company HQ to apprise them of what was going on with some of their service engineering staff and how this could destroy their brand value. Calls to LG's corporate office were so painful that we finally gave up. Yes that is the name of the company!

 

There's a reason I didn't mention the name of the company upfront. Frankly speaking, I would bet that the company perhaps isn't even aware of the racket that is happening. Be that as it may, the lack of awareness of something as serious as this is certainly something the company ought to view as a blind spot. And not having systems in place that proactively provide them feedback such as this, will keep them away from the reality of what is happening to their brand.

 

Therefore, whether it is LG or any other player in the same category, or even any other industry, here are a few things I would recommend they do, and this is something I recommend to most business leaders I coach:

 

Don't wait for the customer to complain. Proactively seek customer feedback

Establish customer intimacy initiatives and do not limit them to the customer service team. Make every business unit accountable for customer intimacy

Set up systems and processes that make it easy for the customer to complain rather than being a 'closed' entity

Structure the organization in a manner where 'market sensing' initiatives (including customer insights) are shared across the company, and not limited to a specific business unit

Have a process whereby someone is on top of all the customer insights and these are being funneled into specific 'market relating' activities

Irrespective of how big the company is make sure you have a 'small company' culture as far as responsiveness is concerned

Finally, it is not important that you don't screw up. You will eventually screw up no matter what you do. What is important is how you deal with customers when you do make a mistake. That is what defines your brand. And that is what will sustain when everything else is falling to pieces around you!

 

Important note: This article is not intended to show down any particular company. It is purely based on my personal experience with the company in question. My naming the company too is not intended to put them down, but to share how even innovative and successful brands can end up ignoring customer centric issues that over time can destroy value rather than create loyalty.

 

The image in this article has been taken from the internet. Since the source was not mentioned, I have been unable to express my appreciation to the owner of the image. If the owner communicates with me, I would be delighted to share my gratitude for inadvertently using what is theirs.