Let service be at the top like this!
Here are 2 stories I picked out from the web about the legendary special assistance from Rolls Royce.
It might sound at first as stories from our childhood, but I am sure you will find similarities with your present everyday business in 2013!
The first story: please, do not disturb!
In 1932, Rudyard Kipling’s Rolls-Royce Phantom ‘failed to proceed’ – Rolls-Royce do not break down! As he was in the South of France, he telephoned the Paris distributor.
By noon the next day, Kipling had not seen anyone paying attention to his car, so he asked the hotel manager to remonstrate most strongly with the Parisian service manager. « But Monsieur », replied the hotelier, « the gentlemen from Rolls-Royce came last night and it was only a minor matter. » Further questioning revealed that the mechanics had traveled through the night and had completed the repairs before dawn.
They left unannounced, as they did not wish to disturb the great writer’s sleep.
And the second story: a Rolls Royce never breaks down!
So the story goes that a man borrowed his wealthy friends Rolls Royce to make his family vacation that much more special. Unfortunately somewhere in Europe the car broke down and he had to put a call back home to the Rolls Royce headquarters in England for assistance.
They were extremely professional and courteous and they immediately dispatched a pair of expert mechanics who made their way across Europe, and barely a half a day had passed until the two mechanics were there at the vehicle working to fix the problem. It didn’t take them long until the car was up and running and they set on there way once again.
The man was thankful that Rolls Royce had provided such a prompt high quality service and that their family vacation wasn’t ruined, but he was also worried about how much that high quality service was going to cost him. Immediately dispatching two expert mechanics across Europe couldn’t be cheap after all, but he’d already decided that as his friend had been kind enough to lend him the car then he was going to take care of the cost of the repair himself, so he’d made sure the mechanics had his billing information.
A few weeks later they returned from their vacation to a big pile of letters but none of them were the invoice from Rolls Royce. In fact another six months went by and he had still never received and invoice for the emergency roadside assistance.
Worried that his friend might have ended up footing the bill by mistake he called the Rolls Royce headquarters. Once he was done explaining the issue to an accountant who could find no record of the invoice he was asked to stay on hold for a moment whilst he was put through to a manager. Once again he explained the situation, this time to the manager, and no sooner than he was done talking the manager exclaimed “Sir this is Impossible! A Rolls Royce never breaks down!”.
Stories were picked out from the web by Didier Perrin.
You might think about the high margin that allows this, or say it only applies to luxury, or put ahead that service has a price, or… Please, write your comments on this blog to share with others.