Me!

As you’ll see as you go through my videos and materials, I totally practice what I preach and can hopefully help you to continually think outside the box!

Let me explain – in Carl Sewell‘s book Customers for Life he talks about an incident where a customer had been away on holidays for some weeks, leaving his car to be stored after being serviced.

When he came to collect his car, he found that the brace of pheasant he had left in the boot had totally exploded and they couldn’t get the smell out of the car.

The customer insisted he had gifted them to the Service Technician who in turn, knew nothing about it.
They didn’t hesitate and gave him a brand-new car!

Some of these things we read in books often seem larger than life and I think we sometimes question whether they really happened, or if the truth had been stretched a little to make a good story?

Well, as I know from personal experience sometimes they do happen – as I once gave away a $42,000 car as a customer service gesture – that was many years ago and the same car today is anything up to $70,000+!

A customer had bought a Subaru manual sports car for his wife and they were having continual problems with clutch which the Dealership was unable to fix and it was reaching the point of not just frustration, but explosion.

Having just taken over as General Operations Manager, it fell upon me to sort this out!
After determining how many times the same issue had been tackled without success, I spoke with the Subaru Manufacturer’s State Manager and shared my proposed course of action, which he agreed upon.

When the customer came to see me, he was angry, frustrated and scared about what the outcome would be, obviously fuelled by his wife as well, urging him not to back down.

I said to him “At the moment, the Manufacturer has the car and they feel everything will be fixed. However if over the weekend, or any time in the next 30 days the problem recurs, I will give you a brand-new Subaru replacement, as long as you are happy with a white one”.

The customer was so relieved it almost seemed like he melted in front of me – he was so grateful and reassured me that he was sure everything would be OK and they would keep the car!

Guess what!

Over the weekend the problem recurred and I gave him the brand new car for his wife!
They couldn’t believe it – absolutely a customer and advocate for life!

Even though the Subaru State Manager then took the car for his drive car it still cost us a lot – but did it?

As I cover in my video regarding Complaints, we need to look at the “cost” of resolving a Customer Service issue, not as a cost but as an INVESTMENT which we take out of the advertising budget, a totally different way of thinking!

And this investment paid off – the number of cars we would’ve sold as a result!
This customer came to every Subaru Event or promotion and was always shouting the praises of Subaru and the Dealer – with the end result far outweighing our costs!

Only because of two things, the way we were totally focused on the customer regardless of the perceived cost and also, with it coming from the advertising budget, it was already allocated and wasn’t seen as a negative on the balance sheet!

What was really interesting!
Later, it was found someone who had fitted a piece of aftermarket equipment had used the wrong [way too long] bolt!

And you may have guessed it, that bolt was actually interfering with the clutch cable, so it was never the Dealer’s or Subaru‘s fault.

But at the end of the day that didn’t matter, the issue was satisfying the customer in such a way that they would be advocates forever and that’s what happened.

Check out my video that talks about “Complaints your best call” as it will certainly make you money!