I like to think I'm easy to get along with. All I ask these days is to complete the transaction without major blunders and without being insulted or jacked around. When I feel mistreated, I don't complain. I just don't come back. Ever.
That said, it's no picnic dealing with the public. There are morons with personality disorders on both sides of the counter.
I alter my buying practices based on customer service. It depends a lot on what I'm shopping for and how much of a premium I'm paying for the service.
Things I do for hobbies, I generally want better service. Basic needs things, I do not expect as much customer service. I don't need a buddy when I go to the grocery store for eggs or Old Navy for a couple shirts.
I'll spend extra for good shoes or camping gear at REI because, not only are their products excellent, but the customer service is top notch. I know I will be guided to the best thing for my needs.
When homebrewing beer, I have stopped going to a particular supply store. The owner is a jerk, and his assistants don't know anything about brewing. I got really irritated when I told the assistant I needed 1/4# of a specialty grain, and he told me it was easier to just buy a pre-measured 1# bag. I said, "Maybe easier for you, but then I'm spending money on grain I won't use and still have to go through the trouble of measuring it myself." So, I started frequenting a new store that spent a while figuring out their supply schedule. However, the owner is knowledgeable and friendly and I think takes better care of the goods he has (he sometimes runs out of certain things, because he doesn't want to sell items that have gone bad).
FlightService wrote: The survey's are another thing. I rarely give a perfect score on a survey. I am not trying to be as ass just precise and accurate. Also on surveys that are a 1-10 or 1-5 you can not get precise data. 1-7 is the only scale a human can resolute to. (if anyone wants more data on this ask.)
I'd be interested on why the 1-7 scale.
It is the same reason we don't have a third political party in this country. If all the berkeley wads would stop thinking "I am throwing my vote away" Then they would vote some one else in.
Not true. When our country started, there were several political parties. It eventually evolved until there were three, and finally two. Two parties is a natural result of a "winner-take-all" electoral system. The only way to change that would be to completely overhaul our electoral system and change it to some version of a parliamentary system. I honestly think that's a better system for truly representative democracy.
Conquest351, John Brown and I all do the same job. Everything they say is 100% true. I can't count the number of times I got dinged on a CSI score over something done by someone else.
One of my favorites was the day a customer locked her keys in her car and tried to blame that on me. The funniest part of that was I saw her push the door lock button down and start to close the door, I said 'No!' or something similar, stuck my hand out QUICK trying to get my hand in between the window frame and body so she couldn't close it, she shoved the door closed even quicker and then realized what she had done. I got my ass hauled into the service manager's office along with her and the owner of the place, they were ready to cut me loose until she finally admitted, in a very small voice, that yes she had caused the problem, not me. At least she finally had the guts to admit it.
Or the guy who was advised that we had a long wait for oil changes (an hour and 15 minutes) due to a backlog of 'walk ins', we made the promised time etc but on his CSI score sheet he said we 'held him hostage'. He was a VW customer, for whatever reason they seemed to be the worst about crap like that.
I bust my ass to provide the best possible customer service I can. The unfortunate thing is many people have what I refer to as the 'fast food syndrome', to wit: McDonald's can fix their screwup in 30 seconds. We can't, due to the nature of the work itself. So we are automatically behind the eight ball of their expectations coming out of the gate. Add to that all the instant gratification of the Internet and it's no wonder it's harder and harder to do.
But yes it is the #1 driver of revenue and thus profit. You keep plugging at it, trying to keep 90% of them happy.
Customer service means many different things. It's not a simple brush to paint a business with.
I've got a good example here, with two different lunch shops downstairs.
One is a family run business. Super friendly and cheerful, top notch food. They know your name, remember what you like. And they can only move about 20 customers an hour. Efficiency is not their strong point. You don't go there unless you're willing to wait a long time to actually get served.
The other is a Subway. You're not going to get chatted up, they don't remember your name, and really don't care. But they make a perfectly good meal, and they will get you served and eating in nothing flat.
I know which one I want to like. I also know which one I tend to go to. One is super friendly, but you're going to starve waiting for lunch. The other is impersonal, but you actually get your food.
Which has "better" customer service?
The main thing I hate about retail automotive repair (that's what it is) is the fact you have to instantly defuse the customer the second they walk through the door. You are seen as the enemy. You are the person who's going to lie to them, cheat them, and steal from them. They hate you. You have to make them trust and love you by the time all is said and done. Not always possible.
When I worked at Motion Dynamics (Ford performance shop in Austin) I LOVED my customers. They LOVED me. The second they walked in they basically handed me their wallet and begged me to take their money. Of course they wanted to do all the cool stuff to their cars too. LOL
Thinking more about it, the easiest way to word how I view customer service is, it's up to the customer. It's up to the customer as to the level they get. If you're a jerk, you get none. If you're cool, then I'll go above and beyond to do what I can for you. I guess I follow the Golden Rule though. LOL
I always start at 100% and then leave it up to the customer. If they just want to be in & out, then I'll be quick and professional. If they start off with small talk, then I'll be very personable and professional. If they're a complete asshat, then I do the bare minimum. I know it should be more, but after 12+ years of this stuff, it gets old.
Customer service is that warm squishy thing between the irresistible force and the immovable object.
Here at Harrah's Atlantic City.. we have what we refer to as "seven stars" members. These are our customers who drop hundreds of thousands of dollars in our casino.
Basically.. we are told to say Yes to these people no matter what they want. They used to have the ability to have anybody fired too.. but thankfully that went away.
Some of them are nice.. but a large majority have that entitlement thing going. "I pay your salary"
madmallard wrote: I don't think true customer service is represented by the initial contact. Customer service is what happens after you mess up.
............and that is the reason that when Mrs. Orphancars needed a new car to replace her Mazda 3 that was totalled, it wasn't another Mazda from Hiley.
2 weeks after we bought her car it was making all sorts of noises. Noise from the dash, the cowl, and the headliner. Service manager was sorta helpful, but not really.....kinda dragging his feet getting the car looked at and fixed. I called the salesguy to see if he could assist with getting my issues resolved. After 2 weeks, he didn't even remember selling me a car! Once we got over that hurdle, he then told me that he couldn't help me because, you see Mr. Customer, sales and service are 2 separate departments here. WTF? Really??? Your relationship with me ended once I signed off on the paperwork??????? We exchanged some more words, then when I went to pick up the car I made a point to see the store manager to discuss his attitude.
Bottom line is that my experience with the dealership was lukewarm at best. I had to give them info on what parts to order to stop the cowl noise (mazda TSBs, info from forums, etc.) and I wound up pulling the dash and headliner apart because they really didn't have any info on what Mazda said were approved fixes for problems like that.
Fast forward to recently and we are very happy owners of a Jetta Sportwagen. The car has been decent so far (shush all you VW haters ;-) but really, the dealership has gone the extra mile and then some for us pre- and post-sale. I had the best sales experience ever -- salesguy gives me the keys and says come back with questions. They did a dealer trade and then found out that the car was scratched all along one side -- no problem, we have one coming in on a boat, just take a couple more days. We were given a loaner car for a month while they did some adjustments on the rear gate, replaced the upholstery on the back seat, and took care of a door ding. Actually the car was done in 3 weeks, but when I went to pick it up I wasn't completely happy with the paint repair for the door ding. No problem -- they took the car back, gave me my rental back, and redid the work on the door. No wonder the next car we buy will be a VW. The car is decent, but the CS received from the dealership made me very happy!!!
TRoglodyte wrote: Customer service is that warm squishy thing between the irresistible force and the immovable object.
I think that's actually the customer 
Honesty is the best policy . These days with the economy you have people trying to mow down companies with petty claims . Mountains out of molehills when back in the day a screw up was an opportunity to get more business because it felt good to help a customer and they Thanked You for it .
Keith wrote:TRoglodyte wrote: Customer service is that warm squishy thing between the irresistible force and the immovable object.I think that's actually the customer
I only wish. I need to practice with a ZAV to make sure i'm prepared.
I went to firestone to get an allignment done on my 300sd after rebuilding the suspension, and I told them I had just replaced everything and paid for a lifetime allignment (thats why i went there, its cheaper if you are going to keep the car a while). and when i picked it up the steering wheel was way crooked. I went back and asked them about it, and the allignment tech said that it wasnt his problem, and and he would do it again if I wanted after he did another car (in 2 hours, when the rack was empty at the time), but it was my fault for installing new tie rods and he wasn't going to try to get the steering wheel straight. The manager agreed with him, and said I would have to come back another time 9or wait 2 hours). I called the corporate office and told them that I had just paid for an allignment that the store was unable to complete properly, and i went back the next day to ask them to do it again. the same manager was there and she was very angry with how i had handled the situation, but had a different tech allign the car (after telling me that the firs person who did it was the best tech in the area), and when I got it back she said the steering wheel was straight, but the car was pulling to one side. When I got in the car and drove away, the car tracked perfectly straight, but the steering wheel was offset the same amount as before but to the other side. Would anyone else be a little annoyed with the people at that shop after that? lol
I had a race prep/body repair shop for 30+ years and had a number of customers who were with me for the majority of that time. I had one family with seven cars that had one or the other of those cars in my shop for two years running because I was always straight forward and honest with them. I could not have lasted all those years without good customer service. Big businesses seem to tend to forget about the benefits of good service and follow Barnum's " There's a sucker born every minute" philosophy. I think it makes a difference when your paycheck is totally dependent on satisfying your customers and not focused on constantly finding new customers.
Or how about when Walmart charges me $150 to pull bald tires off a set of rims, pulls new tires off the set of rims I don't want, puts the bald ones on the rims I want, and balances them?
Thankfully, the guy acknowledged his screwup. He did the whole "I wrote down what you said thing" and it looked like he scribbled one line. I told him I didn't want to tell him line by line to write down what I was saying first thing in the morning when I came in, as I figured he would have a handle on it (apparently I was wrong). Only took another 45 minutes to fix the issue, but the price was also a sticking point; it's normally $60 for a seasonal changeover 
I am in the middle of a customer service "situation" right now. Just went to pick up my parts at the powder coater--about two dozen pieces total--and one tiny part was missing. Ruh-roh!
But guess what? They photographed everything when I dropped it off, realized there was a problem when I came in to pick it all up, and stopped the works to find it. End result: It was a tiny piece that somehow got left in the sand blaster this morning.
The girl in the office apologized. The sand blaster guy apologized. In theory the part will be ready for me later today. They cared, they fixed it, and I'm still happy. They did excellent work and cared about my stuff. They have my business next time I need to powder coat something.
The total bill? That's secondary. (Actually, it came in under estimate by a bit.)
I had a great customer service experience just the other day.
Like many people, I am extremely hesitant to go to a mechanic. It's not necessarily because I think that I will get screwed; no, I think that reality will just screw me. I also don't like the possible variability in pricing that can occur.
About two weeks ago, I changed my rear tire on the SV650 at a local shop. In the process, the mechanic told me that he had bad news. Sometime in the past, someone did not install a few parts that belonged in the rear hub. Because of this, the free play caused the existing spacers and bearings to wear irregularly.
So they ordered the parts, and quoted me a labor rate that I was more than happy to pay once the parts came in. I priced the parts online, and the shop beat the online prices for every part. They also charged the exact amount that was quoted for the labor.
All in all, it was a great experience. They took a lot of the unknowns out of the equation, by showing me exactly what was wrong, why it was wrong, and what it would cost to fix it, all up front. There's a good reason that they have developed a great reputation in the short time that they have been opened without advertising.
I am in sales and customer service and see both sides of the story.
The other day a customer called and said the parts we shipped to a construction site almost 11 months ago was missing some threaded rods as they just looked into the boxes and that we should step up in the name of customer service and send $600 worth of free stuff. We checked the parts weight and it all matched that we originally sent the parts.
What should we have done?
Eleven months is a really long time. Is the client a repeat customer? Was it a large order? How easily would your business absorb $600 in losses?
I have worked in customer service for nine years myself, but I work more on the sales floor rather than returns/direct sales.
With the internet, The belief that "happy customers talk to one person, unhappy customers talk to ten people" is a bit out of date. Customers are empowered to say whatever they want about a company, and these opinions have the power to reach an audience of thousands or more with close to zero effort. These reviews can be truthful or verging on fictional, but favorable word of mouth is always ideal.
MitchellC wrote: Eleven months is a really long time. Is the client a repeat customer? Was it a large order? How easily would your business absorb $600 in losses?
Since nobody looked in the boxes for 11 months and it was delivered to a large construction site project; we really had the upper hand. Stuff gets stolen on construction sites when they sit long term. Yes, $600 is a lot of material for us to eat.
I offerred them a discount off the standard pricing to help ease their pain of having to buy more rods. They understood but were obliged to call and ask for free parts from us anyway.
my 2cents. Having ran meineke's I always had used the opinion of make them happy do only what is needed and they will come back. well the owner decided he wanted out and sold the stores in the area back to corporate. Upon warrantying something questionable for a customer (long time customer 5 vehicles) i was told my the corp office to not do that. ok whatever me being me i ignored them.... do another warranty claim on something i could have gotten out of but who cares not a big amount out of the stores pocket to make a customer happy seems smart to me. next thing i know i have the vp of the company on the phone yelling at me telling me just get as much as u can from each customer and move on. there are plenty more customers available. Ok. well i quit a few days after that and they sent down thier handpicked manager..... needless to say store at first jumped 25 to 30% in sales.... but after about 4 months..... its down 50% from when i left so 9 grand avg from 18 a week.... and they are apparently talking about closing down that store. proof that customer service matters.
I view shops in two classes:
Maintenance Shops
Repair Facilities
Maintenance shops sell you fuel induction services every 15k miles and repair facilities will wait and sell you the injectors when needed.
and some shops will take the time to remove your injectors and flush them for u and reinstall while doing an engine replacement just because the tech isnt happy with how it runs. i will say i have seen some engines that do benefit from induction cleanings frequently like that. but most dont. The problem ive always had with shops is instead of recommending what is needed they are far to qquick to reccomend what is easiest and most profitable. very frustrating... you know the shop that will sell someone a new rear axle instead of rebuilding the current one. cheaper to rebuild but take more time in the bay.
Boy, do I have intimate knowledge of this discussion (20 years in automotive, 16+ yrs in insurance claims). Lots of truth posted here already.
My business (insurance) is truly one of those where you are the enemy before you ever meet the person. I can usually turn them around pretty quickly because I'm a nice guy 
provided I've had adequate caffeine or morning ease-in time. I know an assclown when I meet one, and since I know they won't score me well on a survey I don't tolerate their nonsense. Like the guy last week who said "After you do your thing I'll show you what a GOOD estimate looks like", meaning the one from his shop (that he told them what to put on it, I found out). But let's not dwell on that...
What the spectators out there need to realize is that the CS survey has become THE BIBLE of the businesses we're in. My employer uses the 1-10 scale for surveys. Except, not really. The only scores that matter are 9 and 10. I got a survey with several 8's this week and it decreased my overall score dramatically. Someone said earlier that we are set up to fail with these surveys, and they weren't kidding. Achieving the goals (90+ percent in our case) is nigh impossible with the few surveys they actually do every month. You get one bad one or two mediocre ones and you're screwed. They are directly tied to our performance review/compensation, so my getting a raise or not is truly at the whim of the people I deal with. When they first started this (moronic) system I didn't understand that it wasn't actually a 1-10 scale and wound up in the low 80s. I was placed on work improvement (which meant, giving me even more work so I had less time to spend with my customers...brilliant), had to sit in on 'training' conference calls (really just bitch sessions where management told us how we mustn't really care), etc. Future employment was threatened unless we begged customers for a 10 score. I'd been in this business for 10 years already and under prior (legitimate) scoring systems had never been out of the 90s. So I implemented my own plan. 
Instead of getting down on one knee and pretending I was Oliver Twist begging for the 10, I simply replaced their cluttered, ugly and instantly tossed CS form we handed out with every claim with one I made up that says in big letters across the top "An important message from your claims adjuster". I then described the importance of the survey and how the scores are actually computed. I reminded the customer that we wanted their honest feedback, but to keep this scoring system in mind, and that it only applies to me and not the chuckleheads in the main office or the people who fix their car. Want to guess what happened? I didn't change a single thing about how I did my business, yet I'm now the second highest scoring person in my region in CS. I am, however, waiting for someone in corporate to figure out I'm handing out a not-approved piece of paper and flame me on it, but until then I don't care.
Point being, when companies make CS into a 'game' where you have to outwit, outlast and outplay your own employer, the worker no longer gives a crap about the true meaning of CS. In their quest to achieve numbers, they have ignored what actually makes honest CS scores: service.
Oh, and a last point about my rant above...the guy who achieves the highest score in my region has told me point blank he "buys" the score by giving people pretty much what they want. He's become so disgusted with how the company treats us in regards to this he's got no problem spending an extra $50,000 a year of the company's money to get his 2% raise. He believes that's what they want, so he gives it to them. I'm not quite that jaded, but I see his point. It's become a matter of survival. In this economy, they feel they can abuse you as much as they like because where you gonna go? I've shopped around, and pretty much every employer in this business is pulling the same crap.
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