What's the value of good customer service?

Don't worry, this isn't one of those rant-type post where I will rail against the injustice and indignities inflicted upon me by some company.  I do want to discuss how much of an impact that good customer service has on your desire to buy a product from a miniature vendor / producer.  I had the opportunity to go to the war-games show "Cold Wars" yesterday with some friends.  We spent the majority of our time in the vendor hall and it offered a fascinating range of customer service models to observe.  Some vendors were a pleasure to chat with and while others seemed to behave as if both being at the show and, even worse, interacting with a customer was an extreme inconvenience.  Now before you go making assumptions, I do have relatively good manners and had, in fact, taken a shower the morning of the show.

Rather than use a negative example, lets go with a good one.  I wandered by the booth of Thoroughbred Figures, which run by a gentlemen named Toby Barrett.  One of their products is a range of 1/600 scale ACW ironclads that look great and it's a period that my son is interested in.  Toby was very pleasant and took some time to walk me through the range.  Now, I need another game range like I need a hole-in-the-head but after talking with Toby and getting a better understanding of his products, I now have the start of a fleet of ironclads.  Had Toby not tried to engage me, I doubt I would have ever made the purchase.  I think our total interaction lasted about 10 - 15 minutes and he made a $100+ dollar sale, which has a high likelihood to drive additional transactions.

Other vendors, who don't need to be named, were either rude or could not be interrupted from their cell phone conversation about which gentlemen's club they were planning to attend that evening (true story) to answer questions or try to make a sale.  This isn't a moralistic rant, people can do what they want but I'm not sure your customers should be involved or inconvenienced by it.  That example may be extreme but I would say at least a third of the vendors were downright cranky during the show.  I do realize there is a deep recession on and some may be struggling economically, but letting that show through to customers doesn't seem to be that good of a strategy.  I was also a bit off-put by the choice some vendors made to plead to me there case on the injustice of the fee raise for the upcoming Historicon show.  Why discuss the topic with me? I don't set the rates and the more your denigrate the upcoming show the less likely I am to go to it.  Simply amazing.

So here's the rub - how much does good service drive your decision making.  From my viewpoint, it's a big factor and I'm willing to pay a bit of a premium for it it.  If vendor "A" is a selling a gaming item for $10.00 and has good service and vendor "B" has a poor service attitude but sells the same item for $9.50, I'll go with "A" ever time.  Why?

For me, the hobby is both totally discretionary and pursued as a stress reliever.  My own logic tends to translate good customer service into a better overall experience and the point of the hobby is the experience.  The improved experience comes from a better understanding of the product, better product support and just a more pleasant interaction.  Better experience equals lower stress.  I haven't tried to figure out the equilibrium point (WARNING: economic babble-speak), but likely think I'm willing to pay as much as a 10-20% premium to a company that offers great service on gaming products.

Of course this doesn't hold for other items, say groceries, where the experience factor isn't that important so my willingness to pay a premium is greatly diminished.

I really think the hobby can benefit a lot from more vendors that stress great service and use a customer lifetime relationship model rather than more, deeper discounters.

Let me know what you think.