Digital Retailing: Lessons from the Winners Among my regular duties over the last several years, I’ve been working with OEMs and dealers to fine tune their digital retailing efforts. Throughout this time, I’ve seen everything from utter failures to smashing successes. The failures were most often due to a lack of buy-in and (believe it […]
Just Don’t Screw It Up: The Key to Delivering a Great Customer Experience in 2022 I’ve written before about how Chick-fil-A’s reputation for delivering a great customer experience is not about solving issues, it’s about avoiding issues in the first place. Add in some manners, speed, and efficiency, and you’ve got Chick-fil-A’s secret recipe for […]
Attack of the Karens: Irrational Humans and the One-Star Review Movement Perhaps it’s the result of lockdowns and restrictions; maybe it’s what we should’ve expected from social media; perhaps it’s the result of everyone getting a trophy; or maybe it’s an offshoot of screen addiction, where everyone now has a shorter attention span (and less […]
The Great Car-Buying Experience: Telling is Only Half the Equation Even before the pandemic, many dealerships were beginning to focus their marketing and messaging away from low prices toward providing a better customer experience. Certainly, the lockdowns and resulting (now fading) rush to at-home test drives and (still in its infancy) online buying sped up […]
Managing Expectations: Going from Happy Customers to Raving Fans A 5-minute wait. Is a 5-minute wait short or long? Of course, the answer depends on the circumstances. Waiting five minutes for a waiter in a busy restaurant to bring the pre-dinner drinks to your party of six is nothing. Waiting five minutes for a hotel […]
Our Sales are Through the Roof, So Does Lead Response Time Really Matter? Today, most dealers are selling every piece of inventory they can get their hands as desperate consumers willingly pay more for a new or used car, truck, or SUV than they would’ve paid a couple of years ago. This supply and demand […]
Priorities for the Modern Automotive Salesperson Are you an automotive salesperson managing not just Floor Ups, but also Phone Ups, Internet Leads, and perhaps Website Chats? If so, then you likely encounter times when multiple opportunities appear simultaneously, each requiring your immediate attention. The simplest idea, the one where you prioritize the person in front […]
Call Me Crazy, but if it Was My Dealership, I’d Want the Tail Wagging the Dog The biggest problem nearly every dealership faces today (as they did yesterday, ten years ago, and five decades ago) is turnover. Virtually every dealership I work with asks me about recruiting, hiring, and training good salespeople, service writers, and […]
Texting While Selling? Even I Was Shocked by This Behavior! This one is hard to fathom. Sure, I’ve been in an Uber while the driver carried on an extensive (and dangerous) text conversation with his friends. Of course, he wasn’t trying to sell me anything (though, perhaps, he should’ve tried to sell me on leaving […]
Duh Customer Service – How Thinking Improves the Customer Experience I’ve been there… you’ve been there. You enter the restaurant. You spy as many as 50 empty table and 6 tables with guests. They have two servers working. Where do they seat the guests? In clusters right next to each other. No spacing. No private […]
You Don’t Have to Hire Asshole Employees: Your Culture Will Create Them There’s a disconnect among those sitting in top leadership positions in some organizations. They want to create a Disney-Like Culture or become the Chick-fil-A of their industry. They’ve read about the terrific returns a great customer experience creates, so they mandate a great […]
For the Love of all Things Holy! Keep Your Frickin’ Word! A great customer experience – the kind that Chick-fil-A or Ritz-Carlton provides – involves just four things: Make “it” easy Manage expectations Keep customers informed Keep your word This simply means: Make whatever the customer wants (a chicken sandwich; a room for the night) […]
Delta Boarding Zones, Gate Crowding, and How the New, New, New Boarding Zones Might Be the Dumbest Alternative Yet Delta knew they had a problem. Their Delta Boarding Zone System (DBZS) was confusing and caused massive gate crowding. Inferior rivals, faced with the same issue (think United), didn’t wrack their brains solving it, they just […]
Gate Crowding: The Zombie Apocalypse – How Delta’s Passengers Are Blocking Even More Gates Since I first wrote about Delta’s Boarding Zones and the Ubiquitous Gate Crowders, I’ve left Delta for Southwest and returned. In my absence, Delta took an already confusing zone boarding system (one that caused most of the gate crowding) and made […]
The Customer Experience: Southwest Airlines Didn’t Even Try For context, I gave up Delta Diamond Medallion status a few years ago because I was tired of being treated like a king when I was lucky enough to receive an upgrade, while being treated worse than baggage when I was not. This was (and likely is) […]
The Best Car Selling Book Ever! Whether you’re brand new to car sales or been around for a couple of decades, today’s prospects pose a unique challenge to those using traditional vehicle-selling methods. Specifically, the buyers have evolved… but, unfortunately, the average road-to-the-sale has not. Ten years ago, actual new car prices were near impossible […]
Customer Service at the Counter – How to Manage the Unmanageable A reader asked a few questions that included coping with angry customers at a service counter recently that I thought made sense to share with all. When you are working at a busy place where there are constantly overcrowded lines, and impatient people, we […]
Pigs get Fed and Hogs get Slaughtered I’ve written a few times about the adage ‘pigs get fed and hogs get slaughtered.’ The meaning (as it applies to business) is simply that it’s okay to make a profit, but when that profit is the result of price gouging and/or taking advantage of people, you’ll […]
How to Solve 99% of Customer Service Issues: Empower your Front Lines If you’re in the service business, there’s a simple way to solve nearly every customer issue that you’ll ever create: Empower your front lines. Many of the issues, in fact, are created specifically because your front line is not (or does not feel) […]
The Goals of Your Internet Sales Process I read some posts from a well-meaning internet sales trainer in automotive recently that gave me pause. Basically, this trainer appears to be taking old-school phone-up cards and reconfiguring these for dealers to use as their strategy for their lead response processes. The trainer is telling clients and […]