I parted company with my IT supplier today. It wasn’t a decision I took lightly; I hate changing suppliers. And I couldn’t exactly say they were a bad supplier; they did what their contract stated, and no more. If I’m honest, I don’t think they did it very well though – I never really felt comfortable that I was getting the best advice, and it sometimes took quite a while for them to fix problems. And, a couple of times in the past I had found that repairs that they did left my machine without quite a few of the applications that had been there previously, leaving me to spend time reloading them.

However, the good news is that they made it really easy for me to feel better about the change. Yes, you wouldn’t think that a supplier losing your business would help you to feel good about it, would you? This is how they helped me.

The decision to change came after I had been unable to use my computer for 3 days (actually I could have used it if they had explained that to me, but they didn’t). This is what happened:

I called them last Thursday morning to report that it was running very slowly when connected to the internet. I had done some internet speed checks and the speed on my computer was really slow, but on my wifes there appeared a big difference in performance.

Now, I always find it difficult to call them as they tend to take quite a while to come back and look at the problems I have. They do give me a time slot, but I find that I need to call them when I know that I will be free in a few hours’ time, otherwise they will be available when I am not, and it can take days to get them on the line when I am not with clients. Now, maybe I am being picky; their contract says 4 hour response, and they do generally give me a time slot in the next 4 hours. But their people are always busy at the time I call.

So, the engineer started to look around my machine in order to diagnose the fault and decided to run a scan. Now, it was fairly late in the afternoon and so it was getting close to his home time. So, he arranged to leave the scan running overnight and to pick up the problem in the morning. Come the next day I get a call to tell me that they have another customer who has a major problem and so they can’t look at my machine for a while. At lunch time they decided that they would need to sort it out on Monday as they finish at 3 on a Friday.

On Monday when I rang to see what was going on I found out they had decided to send an engineer out (which cost me an extra £50) because they couldn’t log in to my machine (they only had to ask me to go on their website to do that). When the engineer arrived – at 10.30 - I discovered that all he was going to do was download a different browser – which I could have done myself.

So, a simple phone call on Thursday night or Friday morning telling me that I should download a different browser would have meant I could use the computer on Friday and over the weekend.

When I told the company that I was going to find a new supplier they took exception to the fact that I wasn’t giving them a chance to put the problem right. They also insist that I pay for the engineer to come out and do the job that could easily have been done from his office – or better still – I could have done myself and then had the use of the computer.

I won’t share with you the exchange of e-mails that ensued. Suffice it to say that I am now among the group of people who tell on average 11 other people about the bad service they received.

So, have you read this just for amusement, or is there a useful message here for you?

In my experience far too many companies think that if they do only what their contract states they will have satisfied customers – and can expect those customers to be loyal. This is so far from the truth. We live in extremely competitive times and we have no right to customer loyalty, we have to earn it over and over again. I had been unhappy with the company for some time but hadn’t mentioned it – just like most other people – and the supplier never tried to find out how I felt about them. So, I gradually grew apart from them. Then it only took one mistake and I decided to look elsewhere.

The crazy thing is that some of the strongest customer relationships come out of making mistakes. But in those cases the company goes out of its way to rectify them, as opposed to building on them.

So, here are my four top tips for keeping customers for a long time

1. Do much more than you promised them

2. Keep checking that they are happy with you

3. Remind them constantly that you value them

4. When you make a mistake, move heaven and earth to put it right.

Follow these simple rules and you won’t find me writing stories about you.