Customer Collaboration | CorkSport Mazda Performance Blog

August 8, 2013August 8, 2013

What does Customer Service Mean to You?

What makes a customer service experience great? What does it take to make you happy when things have gone sideways?

Every single eCommerce company in the world has customer service issues, it’s what they do about them and how they handle them that makes them different. Are you put on hold for hours at a time? Do you have to get past the first person to have anything resolved? When you get off the phone do you feel better or worse.

At CorkSport, we really try to treat every person who calls as if they were us having issues. I’ll share my latest story as an example.

I ordered a wireless AC router from an un-named company, we’ll call them “Sysknil”. I ordered this item on a Thursday, probably after the shipping cutoff so I didn’t really think about it. I had a busy Friday so I didn’t even check on it or really remember about it. On Monday, I went to check the status of it to see where it might be or when I could expect it. I was met with a message that said it was processing/picking/possible ship. Obviously, I was a little bit confused by that status; which one was it? I decided to call and just ask if it had been shipped or not. I have a bit of experience with shipping so I assumed the item had shipped but the tracking hadn’t been updated. When I called I sat on hold for almost 15 minutes. Then I was finally picked up by a gentleman who after asking nicely said he could not tell me the status of my order but would forward my question to the shipping department and they would call me back in 24-48 hours. I told him that I was without a router and I needed the internet. I would like to know now so that I can either know that this is shipped and wait for it or cancel the order and go out and buy a router in a physical store. He told me that was the only option available. I asked to speak to his supervisor.

At CorkSport, if you are ever put on hold for even 5 minutes, ask for Joel and I will get involved and get you to the people that can best help you.

Enter the supervisor

I sat on hold for another 10 minutes and was passed on to the supervisor of the day. In the beginning he asked all kinds of questions about the order and what I was looking for. I could hear all kinds of typing so I really felt like I was getting somewhere. He kept telling me “don’t worry about that because shipping is going to call you back”, and “you don’t have to worry about that, I will forward your message”. If I wasn’t “worried”, I would not have called. After another 10 or so minutes… I was transferred to the manager.

At CorkSport, everyone here has the power to help you with any issue you are having. If it’s trouble with an install or a part that just isn’t working out for you.

Manager

The Manager quickly took control of the conversation (after a brief 10 minute wait). She quickly ascertained my issue and then was able to calmly tell me that if I could hold on, shipping could be notified and would get back to me… in 24-48 hours! At that point, I was boiling mad, I kept it all inside and mentioned to her in my best Zen-like voice, that I was not able or willing to wait that long and that I was concerned that I might not be available for the phone call (God forbid I go to sleep and have my ringer off). She then asked if I should cancel the order, I tried to remind her that I couldn’t really cancel the order if it had already shipped. She breezily told me if I wanted to cancel she would just have the package turned around. That was one of the final straws for me, I know for us, stopping a package is at LEAST $25.00 or more. The fact that she was willing to light $25.00 on fire, rather than putting me on hold and calling someone in shipping and just asking them about the order told me all I needed to hear. I cancelled the order and let them eat whatever they were willing to eat as well as losing the sale.

Now I realize I am only seeing this from my side, but that’s exactly how every customer sees things. We just want people to help us, and if they can’t help us, at least feel like they did the absolute best that they could have. I didn’t get that feeling from Sysknil. I really felt they did whatever they could to get me off the phone. Being in the industry, I really feel like as long as you are being reasonable, you should be treated well. If I called up and said I wanted free shipping and a 2^nd router for free I would assume that I would get none of those things and a “Have a nice day sir”. But no… I just wanted to know the status of my order and they wanted me to wait for up to two days to get that information.

At CorkSport we make it a priority to treat your issues as our issues. We won’t be perfect, but we’re trying every day to make sure you get taken care of the way we would like to so that you don’t have to feel the way I did recently. To us here at CorkSport, our customer service is just as important as our parts and we want to prove it to you. If you ever have an issue that you feel wasn’t resolved to your satisfaction, email me at joel@corksport.com and I’ll do whatever I can to make it right. This isn’t just lip service or an empty promise, if we have an issue we want to know about it and we want it to be the last time we ever have to deal with it, for both our sakes.

Cheers,

Joel

July 8, 2013

Inside the upcoming CorkSport Blow Off Valve

When you look at the blow off valves (BOV) and bypass valves (BPV) on the market today you see many examples of the same thing with little to no innovations. For those of you that aren’t aware, BOV’s and BPV’s are valves that vent pressurized air in the tract between the turbo and the throttle body. This prevents the turbo from suddenly stopping or slowing as those can cause unwanted bearing wear on the turbo. A BOV vents this pressurized air into the atmosphere (into the engine bay). A BPV vents that air back into the intake just after the mass air flow (MAF) sensor. Venting back into the intake allows the ECU to correctly meter that air that it has already accounted for. Many times when venting to atmosphere you can get a momentarily rich condition because the ratios are off.

We were talking about innovation though, the last great innovation in valve technology for turbos was probably years ago with pull type valves like the SSQV from HKS. Many years have passed since then and not much has changed, outside of the few valves that partially vent to atmosphere and route the rest back to the intake tract. Typically now you just see one copy after another of someone else’s idea. SURE, it can be hard to innovate in the blow off valve market but we were convinced there was something exciting we could do.

We speak often about your ideas sparking our innovative minds, this project was started by just one of those customer suggestions. We started with a customer submission of using wave springs that led us to design a new valve design to reduce the size and weight of the moving parts.

Key Features of the upcoming patent pending CorkSport Blow Off Valve:

Reduction of spring height

With the use of a wave spring we are able to reduce the spring height by 50%. The traditional spring sits at 40mm and the CS wave spring sits at a 20mm height. These springs both provide the same force and will move the same distance before experiencing coil-bind.

Reduction of piston size

Because the spring is 50% smaller we are able to reduce the piston and still maintain the same amount of movement. As you can see, just changing to the wave spring we were able to decrease the piston by 33%!!!

What does that all mean?

The reduction in mass is all well and good, but just being smaller isn’t the only benefit (even though that is pretty cool). With the force (F) being the same and the mass (m) decreasing by 33% we can see how the mass relates to acceleration (a) in the formula F=ma. Rearranged, this becomes a=F/m. This means we have accelerated the actual speed of the valve, which means the valve is able to react much faster than a larger valve with a traditional spring (33% faster!) Because the blow off valve is a safety feature to protect the turbo from premature wear, this increase in acceleration can help increase the longevity of the turbo and the system as a whole.

What does all this innovation look like?

With the reduction in the size of these key parts, we can reduce the body size. This can be especially helpful in situations with airboxes, custom turbo and intercooler kits or even in universal situations where space is at a premium. Below you can see a comparison of similar BOV’s, the spring chamber on our design is significantly smaller but the function is not lost; in fact, we improved it!

To maximize flow, we pushed the piston area out to ensure a larger venting area, this reduces the time it takes to vent the air and allows larger turbos to vent more efficiently. As a blow off valve, this certainly pushes the envelope, we think we can find even more applications for this kind of innovation. We are very proud to be able to offer things for the Mazda market we helped create and will continue to engineer parts that push the scene for you.

June 25, 2013

My Life as a CorkSporter: A Case Study in Cooperative Product Development

It is a funny thing how fate throws people together; this is my story of the past few years and how being a sponsored driver with CorkSport changed my life. All kidding aside I have been married (blissfully) going on 19 years now and prior to my relationship status change I drove everything from muscle cars to motorcycles and all the way to V-dub campers following the Grateful Dead around or was it the other way around?

In 2010 I was driving a hand me down Audi A4 B5 from my wife and the transfer case blew. So it was time to look for a new ride, I luckily decided upon a MS3 and the moddiction started. A stage two intake from CorkSport was ordered and is still in use on the fastest Pu in the kingdom. I had the pleasure of meeting Derrick and Kelly from CorkSport at the OCC meet in New York in 2011 and a friendship/partnership began. I started buying more parts from CorkSport and the other great vendors that support our platform. CorkSport came out with a front sway bar that I purchased and proceeded to break. They fixed this bar and while they were re-working that part, I was sent a set of lowering springs to test out for them as a gesture of good faith (good business in my opinion) while I waited for the redesign and I did some testing on it. After that I asked if they had a sponsorship program, they said they did so I sent in an application and that is where it all started.

I heard back and was excited to find out I was in! I asked for a suspension focused sponsorship package and received many of the handling parts I wanted and even got a set of the Speed 3 specific coil-overs a full six months before they were released! The relationship has been great being able to give feedback and suggestions that CorkSport actually listens to and incorporates into products that make it to market. Being able to help a company bring new and exciting products to fruition is rewarding and is a symbiotic relationship. As well as being a professional relationship I have become friends with some really cool peeps at Corksport and people in the Mazda community through being a sponsored driver, from Texas with sponsored driver Matt Kellogg at the CorkSport track meet at Harris Hill Raceway to Brock, Dan, Dave and Paul the Canadian boys at the TorontoMazda3 Mazda only Meet.

It is also fun to be in on the stuff that folks outside the fold of sponsorship don’t get to hear about and test. There is a ton of good stuff coming to market soon and some projects still on the drawing board. Getting to test these or just having advance knowledge of them keeps me fresh and wanting more. Being a sponsored driver is a working relationship though so you need to be prepared to work. You don’t get something for nothing they say; you are in essence part of their marketing team and with that comes responsibilities both to your sponsor and to your fellow platform mates be it in giving some support to someone doing an install on a weekend when CS can’t be reached to talking or going on Skype to help out a mate in Australia or the UK or driving over to someone’s place to help extract and install a downpipe. Being a Nator member this comes naturally though. I’ve let folks drive both my cars to feel how the suspension upgrades performed and what they could look forward to with CorkSport parts on my car. My good friend from Mexico, Luis Herrera aka Ganque on MSF, loved the ride when he was up for a visit in April. So if you aspire to be a sponsored driver for CorkSport or another supporter of our platform be prepared to bring something to the table as being an ambassador is fun but hard work too. At the end of the day, being a sponsored driver for CorkSport is very rewarding though.

Respectfully,

Steven Kritzberg

June 18, 2013

The Summer of CorkSport

At CorkSport we are working hard on innovative new products. We know that you want to see parts that push the envelope and make you excited. We strive to be the go to source for everything you do to your Mazda, and to do that, we are working on new exciting products that the other guys aren’t going to be able to copy. With our team of engineers and our experience as the #1 Mazda performance company we are working tirelessly to bring out the best products on the market this year.

We’re calling it: “The Summer of CorkSport” and you’re invited. In the coming months you will be seeing some of the most exciting and inventive parts available on the Mazda market. We’ve reached out to you, asked questions, found needs and we’ve listened to make these parts a reality for you. Stay tuned for the next few months to see the most releases the Mazda community has ever seen in one year from any company.

Also, make sure your voice is heard by visiting our website and submitting your own product idea!!! https://www.corksport.com/product-ideas.html

May 9, 2013

CorkSport invades Orange County Choppers!!!

This weekend Derrick and I left the eerily sunny northwest on a red-eye flight and touched down to a sunny Newark (seriously, what are the odds?)
After collecting our Dodge Avenger from Enterprise we set off for Newburgh New York. A short 70 miles and many conversations about how Chrysler is still in business we arrived at the Hilton Garden Inn which thankfully is within stumbling distance of OCC.

A quick shower and a change of clothes later, we crossed the parking lot only to be met by some of the finest Mazdas in the area along with some of the finest tuners and tuning companies for the Mazda community. We met up with a few of our sponsored drivers (Steve Kritzberg and Matt Kellogg) and then touched base with the leader of the event, Storm Sasaki and set out to talk to some fine folks.

As you can see by the pictures, OCC featured almost every kind of Mazda you could imagine and really brought out a lot of cars. Obviously with the popularity of the Mazdaspeed 3 in recent years, that car was VERY well represented. The atmosphere at OCC is very laid back, with everyone anxious to see what the next trends are and hoping to meet some of the people they have befriended on the forums in real life. I personally was able to finally put some faces to names of some very incredible people and felt very lucky to encounter a few other that I didn’t know but now am proud to have spoken with.

After a short lunch at the OCC cafe (which has a surprisingly good Rueben sandwich) we were back out into the sun. With over 200 cars on hand, there was quite a bit to keep any Mazda fan busy.

After the raffle (where lucky contestants won everything from CorkSport gift certificates to a new set of tires from Continental) with the sun sinking low into the sky we headed to a restaurant and spent a good few hours having a great time with many other Mazdaheads. The rest of the night went very quickly with a parking lot roundtable discussion and somehow ended with us partying with a group of newlyweds at the Hilton.

The next day we hit the road to head to the famous Long Island (pronounced Lon Guyland) to hang out with Steve and Matt. Steve showed us the amazing repairs he had done to his house after hurricane Sandy and then showed us the destruction to the famous boardwalk that has yet to be repaired. It was truly amazing what that storm did to the town, but even more amazing was the way the town pulled itself back up and seemed to be just as New York as it had ever been!

Finally, before we headed back to the airport, no trip to New York is complete without a visit to a Kosher deli. Luckily, Steve knew just the place. The Lido Kosher Deli left Derrick and me speechless. The pickles, the slaw, the hot pastrami on rye… If you’re ever looking for a discount on CorkSport gear, you can get both of us to do just about anything to taste that food again.

It was with heavy hearts (and bloated stomachs) we got on our plane knowing that this was the last OCC meet and that we had to leave New York behind, but Storm is already planning the next meet and you can bet your short ram intake that we will be there! Thanks again to everyone who made this possible and everyone who came out… and anyone who wants to overnight us some Pastrami…

Cheers,

Joel