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For some
time now dealerships have been concerned with the level of
service they give to their customers. We have focused on "smiling"
on the phone, answering the telephone quickly, saying thank-you
- being polite, having mannersand performing the job at the
highest possible level of professionalism. Simple, isn't it?
Many have
changed our telephone systems to be more efficient. Many have
implemented an automated ring around to find the first open
line. Many have implemented voice mail (for better or worse).
Many now have twenty-four hour service seven days a week availability
using pagers and cellular telephones. Many dealers have gone
to multiple shifts in their service departments. But what
have we done to improve the information that we give to the
customer contact people? What have we done to upgrade our
information systems?
"Leadership
and the Customer Revolution", from Excellence in Training,
is a videotape that we use in Customer Service training that
focuses on this point. Gary Heil and Rick Tate, two prominent
advocates of customer service, present several illustrations
of changes in customer service. The one that I would like
to focus on here is Domino's Pizza.
Gary Heil
presents the story about Domino's. When you order a pizza
from Domino's, a Pepsi-Cola Co. company, the first thing they
ask you is "what is your telephone number." From entering
the telephone number into their system, the customer-contact
person on the telephone knows all manner of things about your
buying habits. They know what you order, how often you order,
when they have a problem and what they do about the problem.
As Mr. Heil says, they are not interested in share of market
- they're interested in share of stomach. They also have orders
taken through the Internet along the same lines.
Now contrast
that approach, with how we do business. The people at the
parts counter or in service are required to remember their
customers. If the customer is someone with whom we do business
regularly, perhaps we can expect the contact people will have
a relationship with the customer, remember their orders and
transactions. But that will be only for those orders or transactions
within their department. If it is a customer with whom we
deal randomly, or rarely, we really do not have that many
support tools, currently, to provide to the employees.
The parts
order process follows the same old "name please" approach
before we get to entering the part numbers. The customer wants
to know if we have it, how much it costs and how long they
have to wait before they get it. But we still follow the same
old data entry approach started in the 1960s.
In service,
it is even more cumbersome as we have to write it down first.
The foreman or service manager fills out a service request
form and then either enters it into the computer or sends
the service request to a service clerk to perform the data
entry.
We need
to align our customer service delivery system with our customer
service goals. What this means for me, in part, is the delivery
of what I call a "pop screen" to the customer-contact person.
Upon entry of some unique identification for the customer
to our computer system, up would pop a screen filled with
specific, pertinent and helpful information about the customer.
The information
provided should cover:
- Recent
equipment purchases
- Machines
that will be coming out of warranty in the next few months
- Recent
parts transactions
- Outstanding
back orders
- Machines
in the shop
- Machines
that require maintenance
- Outstanding
oil sample.
And many
other pertinent pieces of information about the customer and
his business.
All of
these items are to help the employee provide superior customer
service in this particular transaction. If there are problems,
they should know about them, up front and right away. The
more information we can provide to these employees, our "heroes"
(which I discussed in CED's September issue) the better we
equip them for their job. Isn't that an important aspect of
improving our business?
It is
fine to say that we are committed to providing superior customer
service-to say we want to consistently exceed customer expectations.
Those are the right words. But do our actions back up our
words? Do our customer service delivery systems align with
our words? Many will be unable to answer this positively.
Wouldn't
a "pop screen" be of tremendous assistance to our "heroes?"
Wouldn't it set us all up for success? I am positive that
it would!
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