Chinese Customer Feedback

Every week Top Cat sends out corny e-mails. He’s trying to keep us factory peasants motivated while informing employees about company business. Usually Top Cat is sent on overseas assignments to meet with customers or business partners concerning their complaints and suggestions. Investigating customer issues in person appears to be necessary because we as a test and measurement electronics company are fucking up so badly. Top Cat frequently writes his e-mails to us from the comfort of a first-class seat on an airplane while he is probably sipping a chilled glass of champagne and munching on a cracker covered in Russian caviar. He’s actually an adept writer, going into rich detail about each on site customer visit. He doesn’t realize though that employees back in our product divisions who have not received a merit wage increase in years are even more disgruntled by his lack of understanding. Top Cat’s e-mails seem condescending to employees who have survived a dozen rounds of deep job cuts while having to tighten their belts at home over the last couple of years.

Writing from China, Top Cat interviewed dozens of companies gathering their feedback. To my amazement he actually forwarded word for word many of our Chinese customers’ complaints which were quite harsh. As I read many of their grievances a common observation became clear. When we broke up Bill and Dave’s company into two separate entities our product reliability rapidly dropped off. The computer division kept Bill and Dave’s names and the test and measurement core was spun off into a new unheard of company. Chinese customers noted how poor our quality was immediately after the company split. I completely agree with them. Top Cat asked all employees what we thought about the situation and he openly solicited suggestions from us to solve our problems. It’s always risky using the open door policy to communicate with upper management here, but I decided to go ahead and write a response to Top Cat. I’ll probably be blacklisted by management now. Yeah!

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Top Cat,

I just finished reading your email containing the customer feedback from China. Sadly, I can’t say I am at all surprised by their dissatisfaction with our products. Many of our customers are extremely unhappy with the reliability and performance of our units. While I’m certain you have much more access and visibility to our customer feedback than I do, I’d like you to take a few moments to look over some of what customers are saying about the products I currently work on.

“Customer has had many quality problems with their EXXXXC and EXXXXA … on verge of terminating any business relationship with Bill and Dave’s company.” -ZTE

“EXXXXC High failure rate; long Turn Around Time for repair parts; no loaners available.” -Global PCS

“We have a severe quality problem that this customer has been experiencing with the EXXXXB and C’s. The customer has had 8 separate failures and believes its a design problem. They just received a new EXXXXC – Dead On Arrival.” -Motorola

“EXXXXC Up to now, we have had 3 sets of ESG (2 EXXXXC, 1 EXXXXB) get broken. All had the same failure mode.” -Global PCS

“EXXXXC Customer is very frustrated about several instances of long product shipment delays, product specs, and overall operational issues at Bill and Dave’s company that affects him and his work. He’s tired of hearing excuses and wants results.” -Powerwave Tech

“We have received a customer complaint about the smoke from the EXXXXA.” -Epson

“Our service center received another burnt capacitor in the EXXXXA.” -Toyo Technica

Unfortunately there isn’t much that I can do directly on a daily basis to help remedy this general situation. Every day when I show up to work it seems like everything is always worst-case scenarios. I frequently feel overwhelmed, and I try to go the extra distance for our customers but it really is an uphill battle. We have laid off so many employees, there is hardly anyone left here. Our materials supply is extremely inefficient. Work coming to us from various subcontractors is generally shoddy.

Top Cat, Bill and Dave’s company is no longer an industry leader. We have become an industry “follower.” Our company has become a “How little can I give, for all that I can get?” company. This needs to stop. We have made many shortsighted business decisions for the past few years that have placed us in this appalling situation. To be honest I’m skeptical we will be able to turn this around anytime soon, if at all. In order for us to restore customer confidence in our products we have to stop talking about Quality, and we have to start taking direct action. Otherwise our problems as a whole will continue and worsen.

We need to either find higher quality and performance from Subcontractors or we need to pull that work back in-house and do it ourselves. I feel the more direct control we have over our work, the more direct control we ultimately have in the timeliness and quality of that work.

We need to be more realistic in what our overseas divisions can be tasked with, and what they can handle.

We need to streamline our internal processes and make them more uniform. Instead, generally we have been doing the exact opposite.

I felt a need to voice my personal opinion directly to you after reading your email. Please understand I care tremendously about our company. I started here in 1992 and over the years I’ve put a lot of effort into what we do.

Thank you for your time,

Factory Peasant

~ by factorypeasant on August 22, 2007.