"ACTIVE SERVICE."
Page 4
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By "The Inspector."
MOST OF US whose business needs require the proximity of a, typewriter and its fair or unfair operator have noticed the surreptitious, apologetic and almost pained entrance into the office, from time to time, of a cadaverous shadow of a wanequipped with a handbag that is a cross between a doctor's and an engine-driver's. He steals up to the typist and murmurs something cryptic to her, then falls on the unoffending typewriter and begins to poke at its vitals with tooth brushes and to twiddle unseen screw heads with a useless looking screwdriver. A rapidly executed cadenza on the keyboard, and with a hurried " Thasorlrite, Miss 1 " he flits out of the door in search of more machines. That is service of the Remington or Smith-Premier order. And very efficient, it appears to be, and gratis, too, I believe.
I buy an Ingersoll or Waltham watch, at next to no price, and I straightaway ,get remarkable clockwork value for my money. While my newly-acquired timekeeper is synchronizing itself with my own activity, I probably have to open it up with a view to speeding up or slowing down. Inside the case I find a pasteboard medallion, endorsed by the salesman, inviting me, within a year, I think it is, to come back to the shop for free advice and replacement if anything in reason goes wrong. That's another kind of service and it is rattling good watch business.
One of the principal reasons why plenty of people have been ready to pay a thousand guineas for a Rolls-Royce car I believe is to be found in the widespread appreciation amongst users of these exclusive machines of the maker's system of periodic visiting and inspection. I am not the• possessor of a Rolls myself at the present moment, for reasons which I need not disclose, and I must be corrected therefore if I am wrong, but I believe I am right in stating that, if any detail in Rolls chassis construction is proved to be capable of reasonable improvement, the necessary alteration is, if possible, carried out by the company's travelling inspector at the company's expense. At all times, Rolls-Royce, Ltd., insists that its products shall be up to concert pitch. This is service of a. superfine kind and in the unique circumstances of type and clientele is justifiable and, I svo-uld add, profitable.
Ford service is no less effective but it is of another kind. It consists of assurance to the owner that his chassis is exactly like others owned by tens of thousands of other users, that he can buy spare parts at reasonable prices almost anywhere, and that the whole vast retail organization is so widespread that he can. obtain intelligent Ford help in Penzance as well as he can in Perth.
Contrast these business methods with those of a maker who sells his chassis or other mechanism at a purposely low and attractive price, and who deliberately relies upon ridiculously-priced spare parts to recoup him in after months. This is apolicy which is not so unusual as one would like to believe. Cases are not unknown where the manufacturer cares very little what happens to the machine after he has sold it, so long as the orders for spare parts come tumbling in.. -Not a few good businesses thrive on spare-part supply for chassis of which the classification has long e2S since disappeared from the maker's list, and of which the rapid obsolescence has been. regarded as most desirable. Such happenings as these are dis-service alike to the user and to an industry.
In the time that is coming when once again people will do and buy anything they like within reason, without permit, priority or ration, this so-called service is going to play a very large part in the nation's life. At present, we are existing in a take-it-or-leaveit era. Dis-service is rampant, and millions of us are going to remember. Our favours will yet again be sought. As a nation we shall not always bend the knee for sugar or prostrate ourselves for potatoes. if I mistake not, when the black clouds of war at last disperse, there will be vast and healthy competition for orders, whether for sirloins or chassis. Service is going to count for much.
I imagine many people talk of service who have but a vague idea of its significance. Am I wrong in suggesting that, in the sense we have in mind, it may he defined as the caring for sales as much after as before they are effected I Any really intelligent effort to ensure Proper use, effective working, freedom from failure of articles once they are distributed and sold is good service surely. It creates satisfied users who are the best possible advertisement media.
All this is particularly true of the commercial vehicle, as, indeed, of any other machinery which is intended for use, if need be, in other than skilled hands. It is so with the Remington and the Ingersoll, and it is equally pertinent in the case of the tradesman's parcelcar as of the farmer's agrimotor. One really bad result from a motorvan or lorry in, shall I say, the laundry trade, will do ten times more harm to future sales to laundries than freedom from trouble in a solitary case will do good. If for no other reason than to avoid "getting a bad name," good " service " in service is good business. The commercial-vehicle trade particularly needs the goodwill of users because of its application to nearly every trade and its capacity for goodwill or badwill in each individual industry. It is only necessary to consider how certain lorry or van chassis become particularly popular in certain trades, for no very particular reason in some eases, in order to realize the very special need for care-after-sale of commercial motors:.
This is one very particular reason why there is going to be need for agents to an increasing-degree in. the future. But I also hold that the class of middleman has got to be very different indeed from the average garage proprietor, ivho principally owns an overcrosMed shed where your car is periodically shunted about to the detriment of its paintwork in the effort to squeeze another machine under cover. I am not with another writer in a contemporary who recently wrote that he hated middlemen who toil not neither do they spin. There are plenty of excellent middlemen, dealers and agents, and with the return of the A.S.C., from active service there will be more. But there are a good many very poor ones. I wonder if I dare write of what I think of agents one day soon, and of the active service that they .must sive in future'? I think I may.