Survey Says…Objectionable?

Foreflight Image: Objectionable, Near Youngstown Ohio

SURVEY SAYS…?

Customers and I have been talking lately about their struggles with their big vendors. “You can’t be fired for going with IBM!” has morphed into “Is there anyone there who cares about service?”

One non-inconsequential switch/firewall vendor, Juniper, has come under fire from CISA for not keeping up with required security patches, CVE notices, and customer updates. Customers are finding out about potential serious vulnerabilities from the news. Even if they don’t have Juniper products in their own, local infrastructures, what about their cloud providers? Seems like inquiring minds would like to know. Sadly, Juniper is not alone in not being exactly forthcoming to their customers.

As a pilot, I also follow aviation closely: Boeing Quality Control, anyone? I mean, we just completed our Annual (intensive) inspection on our RV-10 and found/fixed some small, non-critical issues with the brakes; but with Boeing, we’re talking about missing or loose bolts on their rudders, and door plugs that are not bolted on. Does anyone look?

It hit even closer to home last weekend when I was on a flight from PHL to DFW. We boarded one plane, then we were told that we would have to deplane so they could change the tire. Okay. A tire. Couldn’t take that long, you’d think. Instead, after an hour passed, we were taken to board another plane. Then, we taxied out only to be informed that there was a stuck valve, and we taxied back to the terminal. Another hour waiting at least, and finally we were on our way. I was given an extra package of 2 cookies with my coffee. Livin’ large. When I landed, my wife, who’d been tracking us on FlightAware, said, “How come the plane only went to 20,000 feet the whole way instead of the 30K plus usual flight level?” I said it could have been more favorable winds lower down, but inside I wondered if that valve was an air pressure valve and that is why we stayed lower than usual. The flight arrived safely at DFW–only about 4 hours late! The next day, when presented with a survey as to how I rated my flight, I demurred.

I did answer one survey about 6 months ago, for one of our long-time service vendors. On it, I provided examples over the previous year where their sales and service teams had misled us. About two weeks ago someone called us from their “customer satisfaction” team. He told me how concerned the company was and how they were going to address the issues I pointed out in my survey. He said someone would call me right away to discuss the issues we were having. Still nothing. I don’t expect anything. Meanwhile, I won’t recommend them any more to my friends with similar businesses.

How do these companies expect to build a long-term relationship with their customers when they can’t even provide a reliable service, keep an appointment, or provide references about their businesses? I suspect they don’t care. It’s all about today and the next sale.

I can assure you that if you call Zerowait about a problem we will respond quickly and follow up to make sure that the problem is solved. If you call us for a storage hardware solution, we will build you a solution that fits your requirements and provides long term, reliable service.

Do you need assistance with data storage? Please contact us at +1 302-996-9408 or by email at sales@zerowait.com.