Advanced Electronic Industries Inc

"To start with, we sincerely apologize to this customer for the wasted time incurred by our technician. We have scheduling policies that have been in place for years now that were devised for the express purpose of not wasting a customer’s time in exactly this fashion. And we have taken steps to improve communications between the customers and the front office since this customer’s report was submitted It is our policy to give all customers a 30-minute heads up call at all of the customer’s provided phone numbers before arriving. The idea behind this policy is to inform our customer wherever they may be (work, shopping, gym, business, out in the yard, anywhere with a cell phone) approximately 30 minutes prior to arrival,to inform them, that we are on our way. This gives our customer ample time to get home, (hopefully) just in time to meet the technician for service. If the customer is already home and the technician is only 5 minutes away then obviously we don’t make the customer wait the extra time. The technicians are also instructed to “work” with the customer if he/she needs a little more time than the allotted 30 minutes to get home. This negative report is a prime example of what our policy was devised to eliminate. We do however, only schedule calls for a full days time period due to the nature of in-home television service. This time frame aspect of our scheduling policies has been changed from ½ day time frames to full day time frames since 2010. This scheduling scenario has been implemented because we schedule out each technician's day geographically keeping in mind whatever special circumstances each customer may have throughout the day. We do strive to accommodate each special request; however, we are not always able to do so. An example of this would be the customer who wants 10:00 am in Peoria, IL, with Bloomington-Normal customers that fill out the rest of the day, and the additional Peoria customer who has to have the very end of the day. As you can see this scenario doesn’t work. Note: Peoria, IL is approximately 45 miles one way from our shop in Normal, IL. However, if we have service calls in the Peoria, IL area and we have a customer who contacts us at the last minute, and absolutely has to have an a.m. call (assuming there were no other customer preferences), then we do whatever we can to adjust the order of the days’ service calls to accommodate the last minute customer and still keep the geographic order. We do perform In-Home service for our customers. This means that we do not simply send out a couple of guy’s to pick up every set for in-shop service. We actually bring (if appropriate) parts out the customer’s home and perform all reasonable service right in the home. We only pull back into the shop, approximately .05% of the sets that we service, mainly for safety reasons. This In-Home service and the varying times required for each repair also contribute to the need for our "30 minute Heads-Up” scheduling policy. As to the trouble with communicating with the shop, we have terminated the employment of all individuals that were involved with customer relations here at AEI at that time. These actions, along with a new phone system, have resulted in a marked improvement in communications with our customers."