I suddenly noticed a whooshing sound from the right hand channel of my three month old Whest Audio 60Se Pro phonostage.
I did all the usual lead swapping, swapping left channel for right channel etc and determined there was a fault with the right hand channel of the phono stage.
I emailed Whest Audio on Sunday 17th-09-2023 expecting them to pick the email up on Monday morning. However the CEO, James Henriot, picked the email up on the Sunday. A brief email conversation and James told me a courier would arrive on Monday to collect the 60Se phono stage and that I would have it back by Friday, complete with all new internals. On Monday the courier duly arrived and collected the phono stage. Come Friday I received an email from the courier to say that becuase nobody was at home they had left the parcel on my frontdoor step. This was odd as I work from home, and nobody had been to the house. I emailed Whest Audio and James was most apologetic, and to leave it with him. I then recieved an email from James to say he had been in touch with the courier and had also arranged for a new phonostage to be sent out to me on the following Monday and he would arrange for the “missing” one to be collected from me should it ever turn up. Late on Friday the doorbell went and there was the courier with the “missing” phonostage,so I let James know so he could cancel the one that was due to be delivered on Monday. All of this was at no cost to me nor was I inconvenienced at any time.
Therefore I just want to shout Whest Audios praises for exemplary customer service and for going above and beyond.
That is truly an extremely high level of customer service. Most impressive. You’re obviously not in Canada as good customer service is a rarity here.
It’s weird because good customer service is what keeps customers returning and recommending the company. After your post, I would actually search out their products if I was looking for a PS.
It’s also weird that the people who are the best at customer service, in my experience, are Americans, which is a bit odd as I wouldn’t even set foot in the country at the moment. I honestly feel like they’re on the very of a civil war. Very, very odd.
But really, when you enter an American retailer, you are immediately looked after. In Canada, I’m quite cerrtain that the retailers feel that they are doing you a favour by being in business. In the USA, they generally make you aware of how much they appreciate your business.
Up till about 2018 I was fairly pro-American, but lately, not so much …
hi @david1111
My own experiance of customer service in the UK is that it is one of " we are doing you a favour".
My own experiances are that the businesses I come into contact with are happy to aim for mediocrity, and no higher. However, I am unaware of anybody being criticised for aiming above mediocrity.
In my experience I am happy to pay a higher margin on a product if the service is exemplary. I run a medical practice that strives to offer high quality, ethical and reasonable costing GP services. I tend to expect this from others, I have an excellent mechanic, hifi dealer , lawyer, accountant, wine merchant and bike shop that look after me well and I am happy to pay for them. I try to avoid big box retailers as much as possible if the product is a complex technical item as I know the service will be crap. And don’t get me started on telecom services providers and any firms using outsourcing for advice on the computer or phone.
I fully agree with all the points you made. I was o/o of my own business for almost 20 years and I made sure that everyone knew that customer service was first.
And I also have all the professional bases covered re: estate lawyer, litigation lawyer, accountant, investment advisor, and mechanic. One thing I would highly recommend with these people is that they be part of a larger firm of maybe 5-7, or more, other lawyers, accountants etc., and preferably an equity partner, or just a partner. We recently had a terrible situation where my deceased mother’s lawyer retired and sold her practice to an idiot. The new lawyer lost the original Will, lost our bank draft for the taxes, it’s still in thr courts being dealt with. You need to have continuity if something happens to your professional person. Then the files get passed another pro in the firm and you are barely aware of the change. Plus, a larger firm generally has more resourses.
We also try to avoid the big box retailers as well. I don’t count Amazon in that group as I use them regularly, especially if I may need to return the item, which is very easy with them. I have no issues with Jeff B., and the billions he makes.
When I worked in hifi retail (a very long time ago) we went to extraordinary lengths to help customers. But struggled a bit getting the backup we needed from manufacturers when things went wrong. But dealers in the UK are, mostly, exemplary.
Here, (Japan) a good dealer is hard to find but manufacturer support excellent. During the pandemic I had trouble sourcing a Luxman amp and the factory dealt with me direct after a dealer intro so I could jump the queue before a distributor. When I wanted to hear a fairly budget TEAC amp, TEAC just shipped one to me for week from the mainland (no shipping costs, no security deposit).
I sort of wish I could have the level of UK dealer customer care and Japanese level of manufacturer care together.
My experience of great customer service relates to Neat.
I had a set of iota speakers and after several months I scratched the casing badly while inserting into a recess.
Contacted Neat to see if they could repair and the MD advised I send them back and he would replace with brand new ones, at no cost (because he didn’t want poor examples of his product in the public domain).
How impressive is that for support !!
A big shout out to the guys and girls at Audio Note.
I have an Audio Note CD player from about 1997. Thousands of hours on it.
Early last year the tray mechanism was not engaging, common with old players I believe. I emailed Audio Note and they gave me some contacts to source a new belt. Then worked like new.
A couple of weeks ago I lost one output channel. I rang them for advice and they said we should be able to fix it. One hour labour cost, a capacitor or two and some DHL cost. All working again and and invoice for less than ÂŁ100.
The player has a highly regarded DAC and I want to keep it going as long as possible. Amazing customer service in this day and age imho. Really chuffed.
