Focus group quickly rectifies the situation

One of the defining traits of personalized service is the practice of never offering excuses or denying responsibility for shipping problems. That's why you'll rarely hear ABF people say: "It's not our fault" (even if it's not). After all, we're in business to offer shipping solutions, not to assign blame for poor performance.

Anytime ABF customers are having problems with their shipping needs, we work diligently to find the source of the problem and offer a personalized resolution for correcting the situation. Often, it's just a simple case of improving lines of communication. A multinational consumer products company, for example, reported that some of its customers were complaining of late deliveries. ABF looked into the matter, but nothing was found to indicate shipments were arriving late. Nothing. In fact, from all indications the company's shipments were moving quite smoothly.

At this point another shipper might have said, "Hey, guys, it's not our fault." But that's not the way ABF treats customers. Instead, ABF used a focus group to determine the root cause of the complaints being received by the company. The group identified a simple lack of communication as the culprit. As Strother Martin said famously in the film classic Cool Hand Luke, "What we have here is a failure to communicate." It seems that buyers were frequently telling the products company exactly when they wanted shipments to arrive. Problem was, these requested delivery times were not being communicated to anyone at ABF. As a result, shipments were often delivered after the anticipated arrival date, and consignees were frequently dissatisfied.

Once identified, however, the problem was easily resolved. Now, proper lines of communications have been established, anticipated delivery times are being met, and the consumer products company is enjoying a nice boost in customer satisfaction.

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Do you have a similar situation? Or perhaps you'd like to give us some feedback. We'd love to hear from you! E-mail us at marketing@abf.com.