Don’t let your customer service go flat.
TL;DR – A customer service parable about the difficulty of buying tires from a car dealer versus the ease of buying from a national chain of tire stores, and the comparison of one’s poor and the other’s excellent customer service! You can read the specific takeaways from this saga here.
I need a new set of tires for the pickup truck we use to tow our Airstream around the country; the stock tires are less than mediocre and barely able to tackle ubiquitous dirt and gravel roads throughout the heart of Santa Fe.
The truck was in for service last month and I mentioned my need for new tires to my service advisor who advised me to wait until October because that is when the manufacturer has a buy-three-get-one-free promotion. I lauded her for this “customer first” attitude and promised that she’d hear from me.
Fast forward to last Wednesday when my Reminders app informed me that it was time to call about those tires. I went to the dealer’s website and found that I could not obtain a quote for my desired tires there, so I called the Service Department number at the top of the page. The line rang for a long time and then their off-site call center answered. I asked to speak with my service advisor and was told she was not available at the moment but that they could send her a message for immediate follow-up. I gave my info and waited for a call that never came.
I called back the next day and was immediately connected to the call center. I again asked for the service advisor but was told she was busy. I left my info again. I also went onto the website and sent a message, supposedly directly to my service advisor since I chose her name in the form, and asked her to contact me with a quote for the specific tires I wanted.
Friday arrived and I had no calls or emails from the dealership. I rooted around through my files and found the invoice from my recent service at the dealership where I found a different phone number, called it, and finally got to speak with someone who was on-site at the dealership! She informed me that my service advisor was, “no longer with us,” which I assumed meant that she is working somewhere else rather than, well, you know. I told her what I wanted and she transferred me to the Parts Department.
Who answered, asked if I could hold, and then kept me on hold for more than 15 minutes.
Once I finally spoke with a Parts Advisor, I carefully told him which exact tires I wanted (make, model, size, application, and year, model, engine, and drivetrain of my truck). He looked up the tires and then asked if I wanted a tire for a light truck or a passenger car. Huh? I went back and carefully explained what I was looking for once again. He asked me the same question. I told him that I didn’t understand what he was asking because I had quoted the exact tire I wanted. He got impatient with me and demanded that I answer his question. I asked for him to be calmer and less aggressive, to which he responded by telling me that I was aggressive and said he would just look up whatever tire came up and give me a price. Once I had the price for each tire I asked for the total, out-the-door price including installation, tax, etc. For that, he said, he needed to transfer me back to the Service Department. Argh!
A few more minutes on hold and I was transferred to the voicemail of the Assistant Service Manager. Once again, I carefully explained what I needed, told him that this was the 3rd day I’d tried to obtain this information, and kindly asked him to call me back that day with the quote.
He never called me back.
Frustrated, I checked the website for a dealership in Albuquerque (an hour away) and was able to obtain a quote on their website (hooray!). I also checked the website for the local outlet of a national tire chain where I was also able to obtain an instant quote (double hooray!). This particular chain of tire stores offers a price match guarantee, so I dutifully filled out their online form neither expecting an answer on a Friday afternoon nor a price match for this buy-3-get-one-free promotion. To my surprise, they got back to me in less than 5 minutes and said that they would honor the price. I immediately called the local store, made an appointment, and had my new tires installed shortly thereafter.
You will not be surprised to read that I never heard from the local dealership about those tires. As a result, they’ve lost me as a customer. I’d rather drive farther for good service than patronize a company that doesn’t value me or my time.
So what should we take away from this story and how does it relate to any and all sales and customer services organizations? There are five takeaways below. Don’t feel deflated if you haven’t implemented all of them already. I am definitely not trying to pressure you. With the end of the year approaching, there is no time like the present to start working on these tips to ensure that 2023 is a “Goodyear” for you and your company.
Pump Up Your Customer Service Team with this Set of Four Takeaways and a Spare:
- If you’re going to use an off-site call center (not recommended!), make sure that they are informed of personnel changes as soon as they occur. Unless they know what’s happening, they might send messages to an empty email or voicemail box. By the way, while off-site call centers may seem less expensive, studies show that using one can lead to a decrease in the quality of customer service and a decrease in customer satisfaction.
- Use your CRM to track response rates to inbound messages (via phone or web) to ensure that your team is following up promptly with customer inquiries. This one should be a no-brainer, but many companies fail to set up and use reports, workflows, and escalation rules to ensure that customers feel well taken care of and that your sales and customer service teams are meeting expectations.
- Don’t make your customer talk to multiple people to get a price. That kind of complexity can confuse and frustrate a customer, causing buyer fatigue and pushing them to go elsewhere for their desired products and/or services.
- Follow up on website and phone inquiries within 5 minutes and you have a significantly increased chance of making the sale. According to HubSpot, following up with web leads this fast makes you 9x more likely to engage with and sell to prospects. Why? The prospect is thinking about the purchase at that time, motivated to make a deal at that time, and sitting at their desk at that time. Don’t make them wait or they may go elsewhere for the same or similar products or services.
- Everyone in your organization contributes to sales and customer service, so invest in training to ensure that they have the tools, training, and expectations to put the customer first, solidify customer trust and loyalty, understand why customers buy (and why they return), and how to grow your company’s revenue and profit. Customer service is not something innate; it needs to be taught, re-taught, cultivated, rewarded, and celebrated!