If you’ve ever worked in customer service or technical support, it’s almost a foregone conclusion that you’ve spoken with someone who isn’t getting what they wanted from your products and/or services. And no matter who you are, you’ve almost certainly spoken with someone you’ve bought something from, because you’re not getting what you wanted from it, right? And we can all (I hope) agree that there are MANY things we’d rather do than make…or receive…those calls.
I had the pleasure of assisting a customer yesterday who wasn’t getting what he wanted from an EXAIR product: in this case, it was one of our Stay Set Hoses. It seems that the bendable element inside had broken, meaning the Stay Set Hose was no longer “staying set.” Since this unit had only been in service for about a month, I was anxious to know what would cause such a failure on a solid product with such a successful track record. The caller was up front, early in the conversation, with his understanding that we can’t warranty against everything that a user might do to our products (the fact of the matter is, we do honor a 5 year “Built To Last” warranty against manufacturing defects,) and we shared a quick laugh because we both remembered this luggage commercial:
By this time, it was the best warranty claim conversation ever.
Flexible and durable, EXAIR Stay Set Hoses come in lengths from 6″ to 36″.
This particular Stay Set Hose was one of many in their plant, so we had a good discussion of some common best practices for their use:
*Keep bends as gradual as possible, especially if repositioning is frequent.
*Use two hands to bend the hose, as much as possible, to prevent/limit an excessive amount of leveraged force being applied to the connecting end of the bending element.
*When re-positioning is needed, do not grab onto the point of use device (Air Nozzle, Air Amplifier), but instead, use the spring relief as a grip to bend the blow off device into place.
*Keep in mind they’re PVC…temperature rating is 158°F. They’ll handle a fair amount of heat, but take advantage of their flexibility and bend them well away from any hot surfaces.
Like I said, this hose had only been in service for about a month, so we’re getting it back in the shop for failure analysis. Stay tuned for a future installment, where I’ll tell you how the rest of EXAIR’s warranty evaluation process works.
Russ Bowman
Application Engineer
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Filed under: Accessories, Customer Service Tagged: Accessories, air blowing, air hose, air hoses, air nozzles, built to last, claim, Compressed air hose, compressed air hoses, compressed air product applications, compressed air products, customer service, engineered air nozzles, exair, failure analysis, FAQ, Frequently Asked Questions, gorilla luggage commercial, manufacturing, RRBowman, Stay Set Hose, Stay Set Hoses, tough, warranty, warranty claim, warranty evaluation
