Customer Service

Jan 1, 2001 12:00 PM, SUSANNE HOPKINS

Going the Distance

Aabon Goes to Great Lengths for Customers

NOT MANY PEOPLE would interrupt their Christmas Eve festivities to drive 31 miles to unfold a wheelchair. But then, most people probably don't have Robert Harry's commitment to customer service.

Harry, the owner and president of Aabon Home Health Care in Ozark, Ala., subscribes to the philosophy that the customer comes first - even when it's 9:30 the night before Christmas and even when the customer's problem is not life-threatening.

"It was a family that couldn't figure out how to open the wheelchair," Harry says, "and they wanted to take their mother out to see the lights on Christmas Eve."

That was reason enough for Harry to take action. After all, he says, the first rule of a successful home medical equipment provider is to "take good care of the patient."

At Their Service

At Aabon, caring for customers can literally mean going the extra mile. "Will we drive 40 miles to deliver a quad cane?" Harry asks. "Absolutely. Because in six months, that patient is going to need a wheelchair and hospital bed. And if you screw up on the quad cane, you're not going to get that wheelchair and hospital bed [sale].

"You can't make money on everything," he acknowledges. "Sometimes you have to bet on the future."

That's just what Harry did back in 1991 when he opened Aabon as a retail store where customers could see and touch all the products he had to offer. "Everybody else then was working out of a warehouse," he recalls. "But we went into retail on the first day, with a showroom and products on display."

Taking this customer-focused approach has paid off for Harry: He now has four stores from Montgomery to the Gulf Coast, the 13,000-square-foot headquarters in Ozark featuring a 50-by-50-foot display area. Each store is stocked with everything from hospital beds and oxygen products to canes and aids to daily living. In the name of service, however, Harry has limited each store's market area to a 40-mile radius so that no branch is more than an hour from another.

"That was on purpose," he says, noting that his stores work in cooperation, not competition, with each other to ensure customers get what they need. If a certain type or style of equipment is not available at one Aabon store, for example, Harry's staff can probably get the right product within an hour from another location.

What They Need

Therein lies the crux of selling retail in the HME industry, Harry says. Even though he believes in the need for a showroom, he knows that people don't come into HME stores just to browse. They come in, he says, because they have a specific problem and need a specific product.

"This ain't no shoe store," he jokes. "[Customers have] had something negative happen in their life - or they wouldn't be in my store. They're unhappy, and my job is to solve their problems."

To make sure he can do just that, Harry had his desk moved from a back office to Aabon's front counter. Being up front, he says, allows him to interact with customers as soon as they walk in his store. "You've got about three seconds to convey confidence and competence when that person walks in the door," he says.

But Harry is not all business from the get-go. He has learned from experience that sometimes the best way to serve new customers is by distracting them from their problems. If the customer is a woman, for example, Harry will joke that he hasn't had lunch and ask if she has a sandwich in her purse. ("I've gotten boxes of raisins offered to me, pieces of candy," he says. "One woman even had a head of lettuce in her purse.") With men, Harry will tell them he's sorry but they just missed the free ice cream.

In both cases, Harry says, the customer's mood changes almost immediately. "I've taken all the emotion out of the situation," he says. "We're not so concerned about mom [being] in the hospital. We're friends."

Once he has shared a laugh with customers and earned their confidence, says Harry, it's easier to talk with customers about their needs and what can be done to meet them.

The Extras Count

At Aabon, taking good care of customers also means introducing them to the many extra features and nonmedical products that can make their lives more comfortable and convenient, says Harry.

"I don't have to create the need [for HME]," he says. "The need's there. What I'm really selling is accessories."

If one of his customers buys a lift chair, for example, Harry might also sell the customer on a small table that fits on the chair's arm, a handy spot to place a phone. Or perhaps a space heater to place near the chair and take the edge off a cold room.

Because the bulk of Harry's business is Medicare-based, these add-on sales - and cash items such as diabetic supplies, mastectomy products and aids to daily living - also pump needed cash into his coffers.

"If you're not [into retail], you're going to be out of business," he says bluntly. "You have to find another source of money. ... The toughest thing in this business is cash flow, and the only way to get cash flow is retail sales."

And the only way to generate cash sales - or any kind of sale for that matter, Harry says - is top-notch service to the customer. At Aabon, that's the real bottom line.

The ABCs of HME

When it comes to selling home medical equipment, customer education is all in a day's work at Aabon Home Health Care. Education is one of the things that sets HME retailing apart from other types of selling, says owner and president Robert Harry.

"We are big time into patient education," says Harry, noting he has set up dedicated education areas in three of his four stores. Each has a couch, a chair and a television for showing videos about products so that customers get a thorough introduction to the HME they'll be using.

"Price is really not the factor," says Harry. "I've got an emotional person I've got to deal with, and we've got to establish a connection. What I've got to sell is education and service."

Wonder what Aabon stands for? "It stands for being first in the phone book," says Robert Harry. A retired Army pilot, Harry came up with the name when he was about to leave the service and was looking to start his own business. Determined not to get lost in the crowd, he says, he made up the name so that it "would come first in the Yellow Pages."

>Features