We Want to Hear from You

Good or bad, we want to hear from you.

Whether you are an authorized ADC dealer selling our product to the healthcare marketplace or a medical professional or institution owning and using that product, we want your feedback. While there is a natural tendency to get defensive in the face of criticism, I found out long ago that you learn far more from your mistakes and criticism than you do from your successes and flowery compliments.

It may feel good to read how great our products are, but the complaint about a sphygmomanometer bulb that became hard to squeeze or an eartip that fell off may help us to build a better product. Or at the very least help us understand what you consider important.

Which is why we encourage detailed reviews and critiques of our products.

We spend a lot of time designing and testing products, including field tests. But nothing puts a product through its paces like day-in, day-out use by tens of thousands (or even millions) of customers. It is only then that we can really learn how a product performs and holds up.

Some statistics purport to show that the vast majority of unhappy customers don’t complain or report a problem. They simply discard the product and find a new source. Although I believe that to be largely true, I think the surge in ecommerce, and the online reviews that come with it, has begun to change that dynamic. So do the extensive – often lifetime – warranties that we provide; we get a ton of product and service reviews when customers send products back for service or repair.

Some of the criticisms are misplaced, like blaming us for something completely outside our control. But we can learn from much, if not most, of what we glean from critiques and warranty claims.

A few notable cases in point:

• A number of customers complained about getting a cuff that was too small. We redid online and package copy to more clearly identify the applicable limb ranges of the different cuff sizes available.
• Dealers complained about shortages of small parts. We added a massive neon green “Parts Enclosed” label to any carton or bag containing these easy-to-miss items.
• Customers complained about Adsoft eartips that fell off too easily. Although the number of complaints relative to the number sold was miniscule, that complaint was one of the most common on the otherwise complaint-free Adscope line. So we decided to re-engineer the eartips to improve their security to the headset.
• We received complaints about the performance of our tuning forks. We added a detailed IFU (instruction for use) so new consumers understood how to use them properly. We also, after further investigation discovered that virtually every negative review was because a number of “unauthorized” online merchants were supplying counterfeits. We took aggressive legal action to rid the marketplace of these unscrupulous sellers.
• We received a number of complaints about the color of some of our products. We embarked on an extensive review of both color names and how they rendered on computer screens. We updated some names to better reflect the color most people identified it as being, and color corrected the online images of many of our products to get a more accurate reproduction. We also added a caveat reminding consumers that colors vary tremendously by screen type and quality.

I could go on, but I think you get the picture.

We investigate every single criticism/complaint we get. Every single one. And while not every report will result in a corrective action, every complaint, every criticism will get the attention it deserves. Because that “failure” mattered to our customer. And that is all that matters to us.

So if you buy and sell or use our products, let us know what you think. Not only can we handle it, it will most certainly help us to become a better company.