Our Inside Sales Rep had this person on her call list and without tribal knowledge, called.  To her shock, this customer advised Ashley Dawkins, our Inside Sales Rep, that "I no longer use Stadia because of performance issues."

So I wrote this customer the email below a day or two later.....

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Dear Customer:

As per your conversation with Ashley, our Inside Salesperson.

I understand in the past you have had service challenges that have affected your opinion of Stadia.

As you know, Stadia reopened in 2005 and is under new management.

I wanted to share with you some of the changes Stadia has made in the last 36 months to ensure great customer care.

•  Quality Assurance Program: (see more information on our Web site) this initiative is more then smoke and mirrors.  We actually review every customer challenge we have, at the management level, conduct due diligence and execute an action plan that we expose to our customer in a consultant QA Report.

•  Match Price: we now offer match pricing with our competitors (spec for spec) we match any price or we give $200.00 to a charity of your choice.

•  Measure Twice, Cut Once Policy: every job is review by a trained scoper to ensure all customer objectives are reached.

• Simple Invoicing: our admin has been modeled after customers requests, 3 templates to choose from, along with E-billing for faster 3 day turn around of invoices.

•  2 Day Quoting: mandate, all quotes are turned around in two days. (With detail... No extras)

• Green Initiative: Stadia is the only vendor in the glass and door business in Canada that has developed a green program to ensure disposal, 3R, energy management.

•  We have our own booms, swing stages, scaffolding (no rentals).

•  Fleet increase: we've put more trucks on the road to ensure same day service where and when you want it.

• Workshops and education: for customers and staff every month: educating to improve the "spend", product knowledge and service culture. Working with TBMOA and BOMA, 8 times a year.... At your boardroom for your team, in our boardroom with other customers to network, or at association meetings.

You may never use Stadia, but at least you have a bench mark for other competitors to live by.....

After 20 years of operation we have never stopped learning and changing, leading the industry in improvements.

Be affordable
Always show up
Intelligence before execution
Trust........

We want you as a customer on your terms, not ours.

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We must have really hurt the customer, cut to the bone and lost their respect because their reply was simple......

Basically in 50 words or less said: "So what."

That's my quote not his......but at least you get the gist.

Service recovery of any customer is complex; most buying habits are emotionally driven......

I can't fix the past, only learn from it..... The rearview mirror in your car is small and the windshield so big, for a reason...... What's behind can't be forgotten, but it doesn't matter as much as what's in front....

Like I have said before, time and time again...... Don't look at the mistakes of your vendors look at their intent to be better, look at their passion to survive, their effort to make you, the Property Manager, look good.......

Life is too short to lose friends, lose referrals, and lose business.  My real job is to provide a good life for my family. I do this through Stadia/Byrne Partners and I work really hard.....

So for this customer/friend and any other out there, I ask for forgiveness and another chance...... I won't give up trying to win every customers trust..... Failure is not an option......

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On the funny side of life......between 1983 and 1989 I worked for my father...... I'll set the scene of the story I'm about to tell (a little embellished)...... My dad (bless his soul) ran a pre-glazed commercial curtain wall and window company, and, from time to time (all the time) I was sent to site to be the "Joe Labourer" along with my dear brother Kevin.....

Kevin, the "ideal office jockey", was never tool inclined....not incompetent on site, but you could say he had little desire to work on tools thus precluding him to have two left thumbs. Being three years older then I and being able to shave, I thought the sun rose and set on his every effort.......he was 19 and I 16.....

Working in the shop, my dad called in and said he was on a site installing windows with a group of installers that we nicknamed "Ed and the Barbarians".  A grizzly group that smelled like booze, smokes, coffee and sweat.......

Ed, of course, was the boss of this motley crew of five....... which my father, on any given day, would assume would not perform without his personal deranged management and skill.

Consider that my father designed the window systems......that never quite worked without our sheer strength....and perseverance.......

Ed and the Barbarians, despite their appearance, were kind, loyal and trust worthy....... Ed was 350 lbs, spoke like Wolfman Jack and could swear with the best of them....... I had never heard the word fuck used in so many ways.  For an impressionable kid at 16 I found him scary and cool at the same time........ They treated me like "one of the guys", called me Timmy and made fun of me at any opportunity which created some kind of acceptability for me ......made me a man.  I learned how to smoke and drink double double....with Ed and the boys....... I was a man...

On this winters day, the old man (my father) made Kevin and I drive out a load of 6' x 6' pre-glazed frame to the site in question.  Upon arriving to site you could see the group on the 2nd floor, struggling.......  

Ed, over the noise of the site, signaled for Kevin and me to come up.......handing me fifty bucks to purchase hot coffee and donuts for everyone, as 10am and minus 12 degrees meant a break was needed from hard work, and from my dad's constant interference........

Ed handed me the cash.  I looked at my brother Kevin and he looked back as to say "you get the coffee, it's beneath me to do it", so off I went.  Of course, I was dressed for the weather and Kevin was in a light jacket and slip-on shoes...... I went to get the goods.

While I ran across the street my father was insistent on getting one more 300lb frame in...... Dad and Kevin were in safety loafers and leather coats.....knee deep in the process to install a window.  Ed's boys wanted coffee and to have a break from grizzling father.

My father sequestered Kevin's help..... As I arrived back on site with two trays of coffee Ed screamed over the noise of the generator, "Turn that fucking thing off, and drink your fucking coffee before it gets fucking cold."  

Standing in front of Ed, about 30' away was Kevin....Dear Kevin, with a smoke in his mouth.  I walked over and handed him a coffee......with my Dad beside him who believed coffee breaks were for the weak at mind.....

Dad climbed up a 6' foot step ladder and began to use his brute strength to pull the out of level frame square, refusing his coffee...

Kevin was standing at the base of the ladder trying to light a smoke on this cold day on cold concrete at a construction site in undeveloped, wind torn Mississauga.

I turned to walk back to Ed who had made a skid of metal his bench.  As I walked back, I reached into the pocket of my Cartwright jacket to get the $28.50 of change to hand back to Ed. Ed said in that scary Wolfman Jack voice, "Fuck the change Timmy, keep it."

I had barely peeled back the lid of my scalding hot coffee only to notice that all the real men had finished theirs. With chagrin, one of Ed's guys, nicknamed Igor, maybe 25 years old, looking 40 and worn out from the hard labour, handed me a smoke as we watched my father standing on the top of this 6' ladder struggling to get the frame into place....with his heir to the throne, Kevin standing looking at us from the base of the ladder..

The king bellowed at his prince "Wake up, put the coffee down, there'll be time for that.....after....hand me the crow bar."  Kevin, perplexed, wondering what to do first so as not to let my father down, put his coffee at his feet.  Not letting go of the ladder, he slipped the smoke in his mouth, glanced at Ed, me and the Barbarians in the dark distance, watching as we grimaced at Kevin's difficult circumstance...... To be one of the boys or please his father.........

Kevin stretched to reach the crow bar, not making eye contact as he had submitted to my father's needs as only a good son would do.....

He stretched, squatted with his smoke in his mouth, not letting go of the ladder, reached out with his right hand, smoke in his eyes, got the crow bar and without looking up handed the bar to the circus act above him, my father.

Without acknowledgment, my father took the bar aggressively from Kevin's paper cut hands.  Simultaneously, Kevin placed his right hand on the opposite side of the ladder to brace my father for the grand finale......

My father, now with 14 eyes upon him, began his execution of the ultimate climax......jamming the hook side of the crowbar between the steel header and the frame..... Kevin sheepishly looked at me with disdain.  I should be the one holding the ladder.....I'm sure he was thinking........as he is the elder, perhaps wishing he went and got the coffee considering he was now the helper.....

With the two of us making eye contact, sipping my steaming hot coffee from the small rip in the plastic lid, I glanced down at my brother Kevin's steaming hot coffee getting colder by the minute, between his legs.  To Kevin it must have seemed untouchable, for if he lets go of the ladder he would fail the king's request.

Breaking the silent stare between brothers was my dad yelling "Don't let go, focus, I need your help.  Don't mind them."

As Kevin gripped tighter than ever to the ladder as if to emphasize his efforts to my unnoticing father.......my father pulled hard on the wedged crowbar......  Kevin eyes were now upon the audience looking for us to react, to offer a hint as to when my father would be done.

My father was now pulling with his 170lb force straight down, almost hanging from this cold steel.  The crow bar slipped and the pointy end of the crowbar, like a spear killing its prey, hit the top of my brother's unprotected head.

At that moment, all of Ed and the Barbarians and my chins touched our chest bones, like we were watching a sporting event.......

Ohhhhh..........

At this moment my father, without a concern, screamed at Kevin not to let go of the ladder...... Kevin's eyes were watering, not from cigarette smoke but from the pain of this 18lb cold steel bar that had just pummeled into the top of his cranium, with the velocity of a 38 caliber gun.

Yet Kevin, with his need to please his father, never once moved from his ordered position...... like Fred Flintstone getting hit in the head, you could envision the welt on the top of his head breaking through the crown of his hair.........

No one said a word........ Except my father who proclaimed "Now it's time for coffee."  Poor Kevin.  I with hot coffee and $28.50 and he with an egger, cold coffee and a father unfettered.

We drove back in the truck that afternoon, me giggling..... Kevin in silence, and not a word was spoken of this day for many years....

Kevin is a smart, kind, warm, sincere person, with a heart 3 sizes too big..........but shit, that day was so funny.....

I love you Kevin.

If you have comments I would love to hear them and post them.  Email me at timsblog@stadia.ca.

Tim