By Allwell Nwankwo

Do you still remember a particularly awful service experience you had in the hands of a certain organization some 10 or 15 years ago?  If you do, your memory can favourably compare with that of an elephant.  I understand that elephants hardly forget anything.  In fact, as they grow older (especially the female) their memory gets better and becomes more useful for adaptation to the environment.  Well, some customers are like that.

I don’t know of any systematic study that has attempted to unravel the average time it takes customers to forget a poor – or even great – customer experience.  (If you have come across such a study, please do bring it to my attention).  Anecdotal evidence, however, suggests that some customers simply find it difficult to forget certain experiences – especially the egregiously poor ones.

In their book, Satisfaction, Chris Denove and James D. power IV graphically narrate the experience of one of those customers who simply won’t forget.   In 1977, Frank Burrows bought a General Motors (GM) car – a Pontiac Trans Am.   The car came with a 12-month or 12,000-mile warranty.   Seven thousand miles and 13 months later, Burrows began to hear some strange sounds that he easily attributed to a manufacturing defect.

He took the car back to GM and then discovered that many other cars had a similar problem.  Since the problem was obviously the result of a technical error made at the manufacturing stage, Burrows had hoped that GM would fix the car at its expense.  Also considering that his car had done mere 7000 miles, he couldn’t see any reason why GM would not be glad to fix the problem without billing him.

Well, the chaps at GM thought differently.  They would not fix the car free of charge.  In frustration, Burrows wrote several letters to GM without getting a response. The long and short of it was that he coughed out $500 (a huge sum in those days) for the repairs.  Almost 30 years later, he was still so furious he hadn’t bought any car from the company ever since.   And guess what?  Frank Burrows had bought 11 cars since then and had vowed never to go near a GM car.

If GM had taken a long-term view of its business, absorbed a $500 bill of a complaining customer and done a few other basic things to keep the customer happy, it obviously would have sold 12 cars to the same customer in about 30 years – an average of one car every 2.5 years – instead of just one car.  And who knows how many other people Mr Burrows could have influenced to buy GM cars!

In fact, I suspect since he was so angry with GM, he must have discouraged many from buying from the company.   It may sound good to blame the rigid executives at GM.  But we’re talking about 1977 here!  You and I know that thirty years later, many of us still operate our businesses with the same inflexible mind-set.  Everyday, many of us choose the same route in our business decisions.

Now, let’s turn to personal experience.

As a customer, I don’t forget bad experiences too easily.   It’s not as if I make any special effort to remember.  It’s just that the memories of some experiences refuse to fizzle out.  And that’s human, isn’t it?  After all, we would never learn anything without a good memory.

I remember vividly that in 1995, I boarded a Harka Air (light) aircraft that flew from Lagos to Abuja in all of 95 minutes!  And the in-flight service wasn’t particularly great.  One of the people I travelled with said he would never patronize the airline again.  I knew I didn’t want to spend more than an hour in the sky moving from Lagos to Abuja.  Today, Harka Air is moribund.  If it were still in operation, I’m sure it would have lost at least two customers that were on that flight.

TO BE CONTINUED

Comments are welcome.