We pride ourselves on our top quality fire sprinkler parts and top customer service, however given that the majority of our products are made to bespoke specifications, the room for error is substantial. Our attention to detail and skilled engineers means that over 99% of the time we deliver orders with no issues whatsoever, but it doesn’t always work out that way… Here are some recent customer service tales to give you an insight.
Late change no issue
Despite one of our customers helping us to plan by placing an order in advance for an Alarm Valve Booster Pump (sometimes known as a False Alarm Booster Pump or Towns Main Booster Pump), we received a further email on the day of despatch – in fact, after the unit had been checked, packed and was sat in our loading bay awaiting imminent collection – asking if they were able to have a longer cable.
We think most manufacturers would respond with “too late”, “can’t do that now”, “we can’t alter the design” etc – not at Sale Engineering!
We quickly opened and unpacked the unit, our electrical technician prepared and replaced the cable with the new 5m flex requested, and we managed to re-pack the unit just as the carrier was arriving.
The surcharge? Nothing. The value? Another happy customer.
Proactive support
Following a call from a customer’s engineer, we agreed to sit down with them to discuss and resolve a solution to a residential sprinkler quandary. We came up with a ‘suite of parts’, including a residential riser (or valve set) assembly and a number of accessories including a specially made adaptor, that ensured a single site visit was able to resolve the problem no matter what the on-site job might have thrown up on the day.
Maybe the customer had a couple of parts left over for a future job, but the value in this case was their knowledge that the job would be done on the day which it was, removing the cost, worry and their client’s inconvenience of secondary visits.
It doesn’t always work
A couple of weeks ago, a particularly important customer ordered some 100mm glycerine-filled gauges which we calibrated and certificated – something we do regularly. We shipped the order out on our usual ‘small parcel’ next day service and thought nothing more of it (because, to be fair, it normally works like clockwork). However, our customer called a couple of days later asking for an ETA.
We called the carrier and over the next few days we and our customer endured a calamity of errors which culminated – a week later – in our local carrier depot arranging a private courier to go and collect from the London depot and deliver to the customer.
Not ideal, very frustrating, but thankfully very rare.
We were just relieved that the parcel was delivered…but then received an email from the customer showing that one of the gauges had been broken and spilled glycerine inside the package. We of course sent a replacement immediately, but it sometimes seems that when something goes wrong, everything goes wrong!
Take this as a public apology, Ian – you know who you are!
If you have a last-minute request, need something special for your order, require an engineer visit, or just some over the phone advice, please give us a call on 0161 428 1180 or email info@saleengineering.co.uk. Whilst we cannot guarantee to be successful every time we will try our utmost to help you where we can.