I have been known to rave or rant about customer experiences, especially those that either make me a lifelong customer of a company or give me good reasons not to do business with them again. Sadly it seems that it's getting easier to find rants and harder to find raves ... but maybe it's just me. I've raved about Delta Air Lines who seems to take pretty good care of its premium customers; I've ranted about cell phone companies whose customer support people have no idea what they're doing and couldn't be understood if they did owing to the unintelligible accent of their "customer service" reps. I've avoided ranting against auto dealers - it just seemed too easy, but that's about to change. Most importantly there's a lesson here for all of us on managing the customer experience!
I bought an upscale car for business last year. I assumed that first class service came with it. The salespeople told me all the wonderful benefits that would be mine as their customer. They sent me a really nice letter with all the details, like free annual reconditioning of my car, free safety inspections, etc. Even more, look at what it says on their website:
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<The owners> have earned <the brand's> prestigious "President's Club" award which recognizes top performing retailers who's hard work and dedication provide their customers an outstanding ownership experience. |
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<The owners> philosophy is a simple one............"Just treat the customer the way you would like to be treated yourself". They say this, because they're customers in their everyday life too and would expect the same! |
Now be honest, wouldn't you be impressed? I was until I took my car in for service and asked for all my free benefits, only to be told that because I was a lease customer, none of those applied to me. Hmmm ... so I'm a second class customer because we find it more advantageous to lease our business vehicles? It seemed that was the case. I was sure there was an error so last week I wrote the president of the dealership. Apparently there's no mistake because they didn't bother to call or even write me back.
Other than me venting my irritation, what's the point here? Well, there are several:
· When a sales organization - in any company or industry - treats its customers badly, it reflects on all of us as professional salespeople and makes it harder to create the all-important customer trust that is key to any value relationship.
· There are still salespeople and companies who believe in the disposable customer, i.e., losing a customer is no big deal since there are plenty more fish in the sea. Not a wise philosophy into today's economy!
· When we set customer expectations - by what we say, write, or even put on our web sites - we make an ethical contract with our customers to live up to them. When we don't or can't live up to them we at least owe our customers the courtesy of an explanation.
This experience reminds me that it's a good idea to ask myself what are the expectations I've set with my customers and am I living up to them. If I want to keep them I better be doing this!
Follow Up: I did finally get a call from the dealer from a service manager. Apparently the president didn't like getting complaint letters and all my "benefits" were reinstated. But does this really change anything when it's really all about the customer relationship?
