The Unreasonable Customer - Responding to 3 or more Customer Concerns a Day

SteelMaiden

Super Moderator
Super Moderator
#11
RCBeyette said:
Do you pay out financially for these complaints? One thing that we noticed was we had a customer who repeatedly filed complaints and our company immediately issued the credit before an analysis could be conducted. We quickly changed that process upon determining that the analysis was finding the complaints to be invalid (i.e., no proof to indicate that the customer was right).

We have stopped the process of paying out immediately and the customer has since stopped complaining.
ROFLMAO...I bet I can name those customers, they try it with all of the mills until somebody stops the practice!
 
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s-bell

#12
Our business is 100% at present with this customer. They have us over the barrel. I'm going to try taking on the SQA department head on over the issues and detail the fact we need their support to improve.

I've pulled together a Quality Improvement Plan, however this is based on the fact that if we were not spending all our time answering complaints we could begin to implement actions and improve. I reckon the plan would reduce concerns by 50% in the first month!

If I get no where with this then I guess they'll be the first customer to beat me. I've dealt with the B3 and BMW in the past in Europe and have enjoyed every minute of it, whilst hard on suppliers they are reasonable.

Our customer has a shut down coming up and we have 30+ concerns to complete in 39 man hours. Don't see how it's possible to perform effectively under these conditions. I'm with you Cari, maybe it's time to spread my wings and leave the automotive industry behind.
 

Mike S.

Happy to be Alive
Trusted Information Resource
#13
s-bell said:
Our customer "lied" to us when the equipment was transfered about secondary operations and also the faults within the process. We were then swamped with non-con's resulting in us setting up the secondary ops our customer had originally hidden from us when quoting for the business (before my time with the company).

We've also tried the management approach but we've hid a brick wall here as well.
Ugly situation! Looks to me like you have no choice but to have your Top Dog call a meeting with the customer and you and the Top Dog go there and voice your concerns. At this rate I'd think you cannot survive much longer as a company. Maybe it is a communication thing which can be improved in a face-to-face meeting with someone on their side with some power.
 

Caster

An Early Cover
Trusted Information Resource
#14
Annoying!Why not try a little passive agressive behaviour on them? It has worked for me in the past.

Make sure your root cause analysis ends up back at your customers door. As you have described, you feel you were tricked into running an inherited job of their design.

So assign corrective action back to the customer.

Be creative, support your request with solid data. Be extremely painfully humble and polite. And always, always turn any response from the customer back on them.

Take the easiest most trivial issue and resolve it immediately, then ask for their help on something difficult that they control.

You always want the ball to be in their court.

I have used this with great results in the past.

Once they know you won't give up, they may give up.

This approach require tact and diplomacy especially for a customer you want to keep.

Please make sure your are right before you do this. Is it possible the customer has legitimate concerns? Have you gone to their dock to see for yourself? Have you met these inspectors one on one?

 

RoxaneB

Super Moderator
Super Moderator
#15
Jay Sturgeon said:
Here's the kicker, to don't bill us, they just take it out of the check when they send it. Then you have to move the world to get your money back.
We've had a few try that with us. A note is added to their file so when they place an order next time, the flag is raised that $$ is still outstanding. It is then a Sales issue to decide if it worth placing an order at this time or waiting until the Customer pays up.

Basically, we explain the situation that money is still outstanding. If the Customer says that there was a problem with the material, we explain that we are ISO 9001:2000 registered and that we have a process in place to effectively and efficiently handle Customer Complaints. We want to hear the complaint...how else can we ensure that a similar situation does not arise again. To communicate the issue back to us and allow us to resolve it means that everyone wins in the end....and so on and so on...

Usually they pay up...and we don't get complaints from them again (or short payments as frequently).

SteelMaiden said:
ROFLMAO...I bet I can name those customers, they try it with all of the mills until somebody stops the practice!
Shhhh! You never know who's reading this! :lmao: Found out that one of my organization's Customers is a fairly regular poster to the Cove.

The problem for us was two-fold. Customers who complained about invalid issues and a department who accepted the Customers without further analyzing the issue. I'm pleased to report that after collecting data for about 1.5 years, the number of invalid complaints has significantly dropped (i.e., those particular Customers are no longer thorns in my side) and the process is slowly beginning to change (i.e., we're being asked to analyze and resolve the issue before the credit is paid out).

s-bell said:
I'm with you Cari, maybe it's time to spread my wings and leave the automotive industry behind.
That's a shame to read! Especially because it's only due to one aspect of the Customer. Surely if the first dock has things under control and is reasonable, there is hope for the other dock?

It would appear that even though it sounds like you're addressing the complaints, the Customer just keeps on piling them up. Suggest that you put a freeze on all complaints from this Customer (and point out, if true, that short-payments are not permitted as per their contract) until a meeting is held to discuss the situation and a resolution, satisfactory to all, is developed...or at least drafted up.
 

Cari Spears

Super Moderator
Staff member
Super Moderator
#16
s-bell said:
Our business is 100% at present with this customer. They have us over the barrel. I'm going to try taking on the SQA department head on over the issues and detail the fact we need their support to improve.
Bummer! That really limits your options.

s-bell said:
I've pulled together a Quality Improvement Plan...I reckon the plan would reduce concerns by 50% in the first month!...

...we have 30+ concerns to complete in 39 man hours. Don't see how it's possible to perform effectively under these conditions.
How many of those 30+ concerns will be addressed by the Quality Improvement Plan? Can you lump bunches of them together and just reference the plan?

s-bell said:
I'm with you Cari, maybe it's time to spread my wings and leave the automotive industry behind.
I've never been happier - seriously. And, I loved learning about all the cool stuff we make.

(Hey Roxane - look at me go!)
 
Last edited:

Wes Bucey

Quite Involved in Discussions
#17
My two cents

I only noticed this thread today.

As I read through the posts, it seemed like a fairly typical abusive customer UNTIL I came to the part where we learn the customer is the SOLE customer!

If s-bell's company has only one customer, how many suppliers does the customer have for the product provided by s-bell's company?

If there are multiple suppliers, s-bell is indeed between a rock and a hard place. However, if the customer is dependent on s-bell's company as sole or major source, then the tables begin to turn and the playing field is more level.

Since the products are custom-made to the customer's specifications, it is obvious the customer has outsourced a previously in-house process to s-bell's company as a cheaper alternate to making them in-house. There may be a "political" situation at work where customer employees are trying to sabotage or otherwise discredit the outsourcing in an ill-advised attempt to restore the original status quo or merely a petty attempt at revenge.

This is a situation which needs some clever negotiating at a high level to prevent a near future disaster for both customer and s-bell's company.

The key to the negotiation will be getting a true picture of validity of complaints and a mutual effort between customer and supplier to resolve the root and common causes of those complaints, especially if there is a non-Quality factor at work.

If s-bell's bosses need some Mentoring to get through this - I work cheap in return for an interesting case study for a book I'm trying to write!
 
Last edited:

RoxaneB

Super Moderator
Super Moderator
#18
Wes Bucey said:
If there are multiple suppliers, s-bell is indeed between a rock and a hard place. Howver, if the customer is dependent on s-bell's company as sole or major source, then the tables begin to turn and the playing field is more level.
Good point. :agree1:

In fact, you raised many that provided some possibilities to my much-thought-but-never-typed observation that there is most likely some information behind the scenes that s-bell may not be privy to.

:topic:

Cari Spears said:
(Hey Roxane - look at me go!)
Awww....*sniff*.....I'm so proud of you!....they grow up so quickly!... :rolleyes:
 
S

s-bell

#19
Caster said:
Make sure your root cause analysis ends up back at your customers door.


I started this approach yesterday before I read this post. I'm going to play with it a while and hopefully have a little fun. I've started playing the ball back into the customers engineering pool. My intention being that customer engineering will need to respond to the concerns being raised by the incomming inspection guys.

As I've mentioned previously we feel we're getting a little bit stiched up by the customer at present and with a lot of minor niggles, not real concerns. By banging these concerns back to engineering we'll hopefully get them suitable annoyed to complain internally at the goods inwards inspectors on dock for raising the concerns in the first place.

I've also persuaded my manager to raise the profile of our company onsite at the customer and we've installed a Quality Technician onsite to manage issues at the customer and take the dock inspectors through the issue. I recently discovered through challenging a concern, that the guys raising the non-con's don't even leave the office in the dock to investigate the concerns. They just bang the paperwork out. (The dock we have no issue with investigates before raising the documents)

I've also begun completing root causes as a change in standards (risky but in a lot of cases true), we have the master samples, how can anyone challenge signed off parts? In these cases I've put down the corrective action to work with Customer engineering / SQA to revise standards, with our company then we can advise cost's and leadtimes to modify equipment / processes to complete the corrective action.

Thanks for your help guys, sometimes you can't see the wood for the tree's.

I'll update this thread with my progress. :thanks:
 
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