How Globalization Has Affected Us

In early April, 2002 while we were traveling on the island of Corsica in the Mediterranean we had a problem that made Verna’s bike inoperable. If your interested in the details of the physical problem you can read about it here. What we would like to talk about here is how the problem with the bike was resolved and what role globalization played in the resolution.

Think about this - here we are, two Americans, riding motorbikes manufactured in Berlin, Germany that were exported from Berlin to the USA where we purchased them in California. Three months after purchasing them we traveled with the bikes to Europe. Does this make sense? Not really, but we did not have a choice. Why not? See the Vehicles and Licenses page for more information about why we bought the bikes in the USA.

So, we two American’s on two German motorcycles traveling in Corsica experience an equipment failure on one of the bikes. We were really surprised to find a BMW motorcycle dealer on the island of Corsica. Surely they cannot sell so many BMW motorcycles in one year that they operate at a high level of profitability for BMW. Yet, here they are. Why? Well, given the number of people who travel to Corsica every year to ride their motorbikes it makes for very good customer relations for BMW to have a facility on the island where people who need service and or repair work can go. Think about it. The only alternative for us was to have the bike trucked to either France or Italy and then try to find a BMW dealer to do the repair.

Once we got the bike to the dealer we learned the next day that the problem was much more serious than we had first thought. Replacement parts would be needed that the dealer did not normally stock. When he told us this we thought that it would be a minimum of one week, perhaps two before he would have the parts. We were very relieved when he told us that he had ordered the necessary parts and they would arrive on the 4 PM plane that afternoon and that he would have the repair completed the next day. Now that’s good customer service. Would that have happened 30 years ago? 20? 10? And, the repair was authorized by BMW France as a warranty repair under our three year warranty. We did not pay a Euro cent for the repair!

This is good customer service. The only reason this is possible is businesses doing business world wide - oh ya! Globalization.

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