Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1111672
86 SMT007 MAGAZINE I MAY 2019 tomer came in for NPI, not somebody who was already doing business with us in the produc- tion facility. Once, a group out of Marlborough, Massachusetts, came to the NPI Center in a critical state because they had a supplier—a CM—that wasn't delivering. They couldn't get commitments on the product, and I had a VP of engineering show up on my doorstep say- ing, "I need this high-tech board built within a few days. Can you help me out?" After procur- ing materials and building product built within a few days, they became a customer and still are today. Their VP of engineering is one of our biggest fans as far as referrals go. Johnson: Am I correct in assuming that your team quickly became part of their consulting process going from design to manufacturing? Lori Giglio: Oh, absolutely—on a regular basis. I either go down to visit them, or they come up to visit us. They confer with our engineers directly, so it's an ongoing relationship. We're part of their group now. It's almost like we all work for one company because they will send a design concept to us and ask for our input. Johnson: You need to have that sort of collabor- ative environment with your customer; that is a lot of what seems to be missing. How about an experience that didn't go so well and had some lessons learned? Lori Giglio: Again, that's an interesting question for me because I know we've had opportunities to improve on things, such as communication. But I can't tell you of a customer experience that was that bad that stuck in my mind. If we have any concerns or issues, we're so involved with the customer—talking and corresponding every day—so I can't think of something that went completely wrong. We learn things every day because we have new designs walking through the door and things we've never even thought to do where a customer will ask, "Can we do it?" And we will. As we collaborate with them and try it, we learn something from it, but that's not a bad experience—it's just through good collab- oration. It's through that excitement of some- body's new idea and idea, wondering if some- thing can work, and we try to make it work and get the customer to where they want to be. Hamlett: I have to agree with that. I can't really come up with an individual bad expe- rience we've had. We retain most of our cus- tomers over long periods of time. Our longest customers have been with us here since 1980. And they're continuing to grow with us, which has been a great experience. We just improve on what we see as some of the small pitfalls that we come across with some of the custom- ers. When situations don't go as planned, it's because of a lack of communication, as Lori mentioned. But we ask lots of questions. Ron Sprizza: I also want to emphasize that we take the relationship with our customers very seriously; it's extremely important to us. So, when a customer brings up any issues, we take it to another level. No matter how bad the situation might be, we can take those lemons and turn them into lemonade. And we've had a few of those in both production and probably one or two over on the NPI side. As Lori men- tioned, we view those as learning experiences. It's all about the relationship and how you treat the customer when something goes bad. In terms of making a mistake that could have been a total disaster, Lori went to the customer and told them that we were going to build the board for free. We aren't going to charge them for fixing the problem or building new boards; we would take the hit on that. But the cus- tomer didn't want to do that because it was partially their fault, so Lori responded, "We can share it." But they didn't even want us to do that. So, that situation could have been a total disaster. Johnson: Fumbles are going to happen. Some- times, it's in your control to have prevented Ron Sprizza