Music Trade Review

Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
The Doctrine
of the
Satisfied
Customer
T
HERE is no more potent word in the
language of business than the word
service, for the possibilities growing
out of service are all the possibilities that
make for consistent business development.
Service that takes care of little things as well as the big things is the final and most important
thing that connects the customer with the store. After a sale is consummated it is service that
keeps the purchaser satisfied and interested, not only in the product but in the house that sold
it. No concern is too big or too little to overlook the value of service in business. It may be
that the service may demand an expenditure of money and time, for which there is no direct
financial return, but a return will come just as surely as will the grain sprout from the seeds
that are sown in the ground.
An interesting and enlightening view of the importance that is attached to service by a big
concern was set forth recently in a letter which A. M. Wright, vice-president and general man-
ager of the Mason & Hamlin Co., Boston, sent to an official of Thos. A. Edison, Inc., and which
was reproduced in Edison Diamond Points. Every word is worth studying. Mr. Wright, in talk-
ing of the value of service, said in part:
"When I took the management of this business, eleven years ago, one of the first things I
asked was whether we were tuning regularly, and caring for in a general way, every Mason &
1 iamlin piano that had been sold within twenty-five miles of our Boston headquarters. The ex-
pected reply from the manager was that it would cost a lot of money to do it, to which I added:
i t will cost more not to do it,' because there is no salesman so potent as the piano always in
tune and the finest possible condition. I said to him what I have repeated a thousand times to
dealers everywhere: that if I'were given my choice between keeping pianos sold always in the
finest possible condition and ordinary salesmen, or extraordinary salesmen and a hit or miss sys-
tem of caring for the goods sold, I would take the former. My reason is the following: every
piano is an advertisement for or against itself, and it is obvious that where all pianos, at all times,
are in the finest possible condition, the public hearing them receives never other than a high
opinion of the piano per sc, and, when such a prospective customer comes into our store to
buy, the sale is already half made. A condition where the pianos are all out of tune, generally
speaking, and sounding badly—even with the prestige we enjoy by making the highest priced
piano in the world—would need a much stronger salesman, because the customer would have never
heard the piano under the best conditions and would therefore be unfavorably impressed and
would practically have to be given an entirely new viewpoint before it would be possible to make
the sale.
"As in all lines of business, it is a simple fundamental idea which is not worth anything un-
less carried to the utmost lengths of logical conclusions, and the difficulty lies in finding people
who will carry out instructions to the limit or get as nearly as possible to the 100 per cent, possi-
bilities.
'incidentally, our tuners and salesmen, in talking with these highly satisfied customers, learn
of other prospective customers, friends of owners of our pianos, and thereby we amplify our
trade. It took us about three years under this plan, and others put into force at that time, to
quadruple the previous high water mark of business, which we have held since that time through
thick and thin."