Delivering excellence is hard.
I recently had one of my acoustic guitars checked out for a truss rod adjustment. I typically do this myself, but since it was a new guitar, I wanted to make sure everything was perfect. It’s the type A in me. I actually gigged with the guitar twice and absolutely loved playing it. Here’s the story.
I was looking at the action on the guitar and the recurve on the neck and decided to play around and make an adjustment of the truss rod to see if I could improve its playability. The guitar included a truss rod wrench, which is a great idea, as the type of wrench required can vary from guitar to guitar. FYI, neither of my other guitar truss rod wrenches would fit it. I inserted the wrench into the truss rod and rotated it counterclockwise and then clockwise. The truss rod did not move. I only turned the wrench an 1/8 of a turn. I called the store where I purchased the guitar and told them of my concern and they said absolutely, send it back and they will check it out. So, that is what I did.
The guitar workshop called me back to discuss the guitar and what they found. They were able to adjust the truss in both directions. That surprised me. However, I suspect they used a better grade of truss rod wrench than what I had. Something, I will have to look into. A lot of guitar luthiers like to use Stewmac tools of which, I have a fair number of. The second part of the conversation was, they went through the whole guitar and determined the nut was not cut deep enough for the strings to seat properly. They said they would correct that, while it was in the shop. That’s cool.
After the guitar was completed, they boxed it up and shipped it back to me. So, here is a summary of the good and maybe not as good parts of the whole process. The not as good. At first, it was going to take a couple weeks to get the guitar into the shop. Second, there was a delay in shipping the guitar back. The shipper of course, was late on the delivery. The guitar case had some wood dust (think saw dust) on the inside where the guitar was sitting. Now for the good, I called my sales engineer and got bumped to the front of the line. My guitar was in the shop in a couple days. The packaging the guitar was shipped in, was better than when I first received it. The guitar arrived even more polished up than when I first received it (Wow, does it look good). Finally, the guitar plays better than before.
Now, I say delivering excellence is really hard because, any one of us can be disappointed during any part of the process of customer service. I think it’s because, there are so many variables or moving targets to contend with. I try to be understanding at every turn. At the end of the day, I am very happy with the final result. As a matter of fact, I am actually ecstatic. If you think about it, excellence is the target and getting as close to excellence as possible is the goal. Have an awesome day.