CSC-2 Testimonials

	Customer Service Center: CSC-2 *Laundry* *Case Histories/User Testimonials* Case Study with Laundromat Support Services, Inc September 2004 through February 2005 A number of years ago, I left “corporate America” to join the ranks of the self employed. A positive experience creating a laundry center in an apartment building, a number of years earlier, led me to consider my first laundromat. As a hands-on owner, operator, attendant, repair guy, and accountant of four laundromats, I have amassed a large amount of hard earned laundromat industry knowledge. The experience has been challenging but very positive overall. According to the CLA 2004 Coin Laundry Industry Survey, my laundromats profile the statistical average across most categories. My laundromats vary in square footage between 1,500 sq ft. and 2,600 sq.ft. I have an equipment profile which includes the following: topload, 18lb, 25lb, 35lb, 50lb washers and 30 lb stack dryers. From a staffing & resource perspective, I utilize the following profiles: fully attended, partially attended, and unattended. All of my laundromats offer a wide variety of ancillary profit centers which include: cold drink vending, snack vending, soap vending, novelty vending, and arcade games. Some offer wash-dry-fold some do not. I am a firm believer in the need to continually invest in my businesses. Based on the number, size, and variety of my laundromats, one would think, that I embody an ideal marketing profile for someone. However, I have found very little innovation available that offers a justifiable ROI to me or a tangible value to my customers. This is especially problematic in my smaller unattended laundromats. How is it possible that much of the innovation targeting laundromat owners is out of reach? I find this to be the case even with the plethora of daily advertising I receive about new laundry equipment features. Why does it seem that new product development is only financially available to large laundromats that may not care if the product has a realistic ROI? According to the last several CLA Industry Surveys the vast majority of laundromats are smaller, owner operated, partially attended, etc… (Note to manufacturers: you are missing an enormous business opportunity by developing products that only 25% of laundromat owners can cost justify. Non-voluntary equipment replacement expenditures should not be confused with voluntary improvement expenditures. In addition, I believe that many manufacturers are making the mistake of incorrectly associating product sales to perceived product improvements value.) Last year I ran across a product that was specifically developed for unattended / partially attended business sites. This product offers a justifiable ROI to the laundromat owner, and a tangible value to the laundromat customer. The product is the Customer Service Center (CSC), manufactured by Advanced Manufacturing Sales Corporation (AMSC). In summary, the Customer Service Center is a kiosk type communication system. The Customer Service Center enables a customer to have immediate access to a customer service representative (you) by simply picking up a handset. This intern enables you, or a customer service representative, to immediately address your customers concern, provide equipment usage instruction, or even provide an immediate refund! All of this can be accomplished without being physically on site or paying an attendant to be on site. The Customer Service Center is the answer to the question; “how can I reduce payroll costs and attended hours without sacrificing customer service". The Customer Service Center allows the laundromat owner to have a virtual attendant on duty at all times. The Customer Service Center provides a significant business value even in the fully attended laundromat. Many laundromat owners are aware, or should be, that having an attendant on duty does not necessarily ensure your customers are getting the attention they expect and deserve. The Customer Service Center encourages an additional level of employee diligence. Your attendants will know that customers have immediate access to management via the Customer Service Center. I have been utilizing the Customer Service Center in my laundromats for over six months. At the risk of sounding weird, the operating results of utilizing the Customer Service Center, is nothing less than exciting. The operating results, identified below, are based on the actual results of utilizing this product in three of my laundromats. In the past when considering if attended hours could be reduced many concerns continuously ran through my mind….”what if a customer has a problem, will I know, what will they do, etc..?”. With the introduction of the Customer Service Center these concerns have been eliminated. In both my fully attended and partially attended laundromats, I eliminated two (3) attended hours per day. Specifically, I eliminated 1 hour in the beginning of the day and 1 hour in the middle of the day between attendant shifts. The cut in attended hours was easy to implement at these existing break point. The initial purchase price of the Customer Service Center was $3195.00. The average hourly attendant expense in my laundromats is $7.00 per hour plus overhead. Based on the purchase price of the Customer Service Center and my average hourly wage expense, it took less than 5 months to recover the expense of the Customer Service Center in wage savings. Based on the first six months of operating results, I am anticipating a $6,600 increase in cash flow from eliminated wages within the first year of operation. From a pure financial perspective that’s over a 200% first year return on investment. WOW! I would be willing to reinvest in my business all day long at this rate of return. As a business owner you can’t simply eliminate attended hours without closely monitoring the impact this action might have on your customers. On the other hand you may not have a choice financially. Customer satisfaction is typically a difficult concept to quantify. I currently use a simple questionnaire in an attempt to quantify the sentiment of my customers. The questionnaire results indicate that even customers who receive a refund check in the mail are not satisfied. Even worse, these customers also indicate a negative overall laundry experience because of losing money or the perception that equipment does not work properly. Since the introduction of the Customer Service Center, I have repeatedly heard customers mention that they feel like they won a prize upon the receipt of an immediate refund. Image how powerful this is from a customer service perspective. With the installation of a simple device, I changed a customer’s refund experience from “I’ve just been ripped off” to “I feel like I just won a something”. Refunds had always been a black hole in all of my laundromats. I always track and execute multiple tests on equipment associated to a refund request. Unfortunately, a significant percentage of the time I never find an equipment problem. Regardless, I always send a refund check. The accumulative cost of a refund is always more than the request. There is a negative customer sentiment to overcome, the customer’s time to fill out an out-of-order card, the time it takes to test equipment, utility costs associated to testing the equipment, time to create the refund check, postage, the customer’s time to cash the check, etc… I have found that handling refunds requests in this manor is very inefficient. To make matters worse there is no guarantee that the receipt of a refund check will alter the negative perception of the customer’s laundry experience. Why should we assume that because we wrote a refund check that the customer would forget a negative experience? With the introduction of the Customer Service Center I have experienced a 40 percent reduction in refund related activities and costs. A high percentage of the time I have been able to address the customer’s questions remotely via the Customer Service Center. Common problems that may have been associated to refunds in the past include: the washer door needs to be closed the entire time you are inserting coins, you only inserted $3.75 and the machine requires $4.00, two quarters will not dry an entire load of laundry, push the button that says “start” to begin the wash cycle, soap pouring out of every washer crevice is not an equipment failure, etc.. There are times when a customer really needs or deserves a refund. No problem. With the implementation of the Customer Service Center, I have the ability to immediately dispense a refund in any amount I desire while I am talking to the customer. I currently have Customer Service Centers in three laundromats. Each of the systems is programmed to call me directly when a customer lifts the handset. At first I was concerned that the call volume would be overwhelming. I have found the call volume not to be an issue. I receive an average of two (2) calls per day. I have also received a number of calls where customers wanted to compliment something about the laundromat. I clearly remember the first time this occurred. I was tongue-tied and didn’t immediately understand that the customer really didn’t have a problem or want a refund. In addition to the providing enormous customer service benefits, the Customer Service Center can also be configured to provide automatic notification of up to 16 ancillary alarm conditions. For example, I have the Customer service Center configured to call me and state a specific preprogrammed alarm condition message if I have a power outage or a low temperature condition on my water heater. Based on my experience of utilizing the Customer Service Center, I would like to encourage other laundromat owners to consider the Customer Service Center. This product is especially applicable to those of us that haven’t been able to afford any revolutionary improvements to their laundromats in the past. Kent James President Laundry Support Services, Inc. 2044 E. Grand Ave Lindenhurst, IL 60046 Phone 847-421-7274


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