Customer Service Story – Pontiac

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Customer complaints are very valuable sources of insight into the growth & improvement of a business and its products or services. They help businesses identify problems with its products or processes and also provides an opportunity for the brand to make improvements. This makes it necessary to value the complaining customer and take their complaints seriously.

In this customer service story from the 70s, that is exactly what the president of Pontiac did when a customer sent a weird complaint to the automobile company.

“This is the second time I have written to you, and I don’t blame you for not answering me, because I sounded crazy, but it is a fact that we have a tradition in our family of Ice-Cream for dessert after dinner each night, but the kind of ice cream varies so, every night, after we’ve eaten, the whole family votes on which kind of ice cream we should have and I drive down to the store to get it. It’s also a fact that I recently purchased a new Pontiac and since then my trips to the store have created a problem….

You see, every time I buy a vanilla ice-cream, when I start back from the store my car won’t start. If I get any other kind of ice cream, the car starts just fine. I want you to know I’m serious about this question, no matter how silly it sounds “What is there about a Pontiac that makes it not start when I get vanilla ice cream, and easy to start whenever I get any other kind?”

The Pontiac President was skeptical about the letter considering the nature of the complaint but went ahead to dispatch an Engineer to check it out anyway.

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The engineer arranged to meet the customer just after dinner time, so the two hopped into the car and drove to the ice cream store. It was vanilla ice cream that night and, sure enough, after they came back to the car, it wouldn’t start.

The Engineer returned for three more nights. The first night, they got chocolate. The car started. The second night, he got strawberry. The car started. The third night he ordered vanilla and the car failed to start again. 

Being a logical man, the engineer refused to believe that the customer’s car was allergic to vanilla ice cream. He arranged, therefore, to continue his visits for as long as it took to solve the problem.

He began to take notes during their trips: He jotted down all sorts of data: time of day, type of gas uses, time to drive back and forth etc. In a short time, he had a clue: the man took less time to buy vanilla than any other flavor. Why?

The answer was in the layout of the store. Vanilla, being the most popular flavor, was in a separate case at the front of the store for quick pickup. All the other flavors were kept in the back of the store at a different counter where it took considerably longer to check out the flavor.

Now, the question for the Engineer was why the car wouldn’t start when it took less time. The engineer quickly came up with the answer: “vapour lock”.

It was happening every night, but the extra time taken to get the other flavors allowed the engine to cool down sufficiently to start. When the man got vanilla, the engine was still too hot for the vapour lock to dissipate.  

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The story does not state what actions Pontiac took following this discovery, but I like to imagine that they made significant changes in the design of fuel pumps for their subsequent automobiles. 

As this story reveals, customer feedback is not worth much until some form of action is taken on it. This makes it important that businesses have an effective customer feedback program in place that generates the required data and insights for informed business decision-making

Kelechi Okeke
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