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It’s Only Common Sense: The Perfect Customer

If only our customers understood us; oh, what a wonderful world that would be! We have spent a great deal of time in this column talking about the perfect salesperson, and the perfect fabricator and the perfect customer service person, so I thought it would be interesting—and only fair—to write about the perfect customer.

I’m sure many of you have heard this statement more than once, usually said through gritted teeth by a frustrated production manager: “This business would run much more smoothly if it weren’t for those gosh-darn customers.” Well, of course we all are smart enough to realize that we would not have a business to run more smoothly if it wasn’t for those gosh-darn customers.

Certainly, building our customers’ boards would go more smoothly if our customers had the slightest understanding of how a printed circuit board is built. We have passed the age of the educated printed circuit board customers. It was different once upon a time in those days of yore that we’ll call “the good old days,” or as my old friend Pat Wetli was fond of saying, “the good old day” (because he said that in all his 40+ years of being in the PCB industry there was probably only one day when things ran smoothly). Back in those old days, most of our OEM customers had their own board shops staffed by their own board experts who all had complete knowledge of PCBs and how they were built. In many instances they were smarter than we were and taught us how to build their boards in our shops. But those days are gone.

OEMs have closed their PCB shops and many of them have stopped manufacturing their products, turning over that part of their business to the contract manufacturers, who often openly admit that they don’t know much about PCB technology. And, to add to this growing problem of our customers not understanding our technology, many of the designers who did know something about our technology have aged out and we are now dealing with a group of much younger PCB designers who have never spent even an hour in a board shop; they admit they don’t really understand the technology. And as well-intentioned as these entities are—CMs and designers and OEMs of today—their lack of understanding of how a PCB is built is creating more problems than we’ve ever had.

When I ask my customers, the board houses, why they cannot get their quotes out faster (especially in these times when many of our customers are awarding the orders to the vendor who gets the quote in the fastest, the issue of quote response is a very serious one) they tell me that the real problem lies in getting incomplete or incorrect RFQ data packages from their customers, which causes them to put the quote on hold, which of course brings the quote process to a screeching halt while they wait for the customers to get back to them with an answer.

And here’s the worst part: Many times, the customers actually get angry that the PCB vendor is calling with a question, in some cases chastising the vendor. “Stop asking these questions and just build according to the data we sent you!”

What are the PCB fabricators supposed to do with this kind of feedback? Are they supposed to build boards that will not work? This has become a very real dilemma for all the PCB fabricators. For the past few months I have been performing an informal survey of many of the shops I know, asking them how they handle this problem and here in a nutshell are my findings. The diligent PCB fabricators still man up and call the customer until they get their questions answered. The more, let’s say “aggressive,” board shops simply make assumptions and move on; sometimes they get burned, but they tell me that it’s not that often. Percentages are on their side and they have given up calling customers only to get yelled at for “holding up the quote with these stupid questions!” And the truly scary thing is that it’s the latter shops that win the orders most of the time, and who the heck knows how functional their boards are in the end?

So, back to becoming that perfect customer. Here are three things you can do:

1. Get closer to your PCB vendors. Talk to them, visit their shops, and learn everything you can about how a board is built.
2. Ask your PCB vendors what it is that makes up a perfect data package.
3. Consider your PCB vendors to be your PCB experts, your consultants if you will, when it comes to everything PCB.

And one more, in the spirit of underpromising and overdelivering, listen to your fabricator's questions instead of getting mad at them. Stop and realize that they are not asking these questions to be a pain in your neck, but to fabricate the very best board for your company. Doesn’t that make sense?

Yes, it’s only common sense.