FROM THE EDITOR
What Customers Really Want… listen! I
have a great customer service semi- nar to tell you about. It’s chock full of great real world content, specific
to transmission and auto repair businesses in your area, you can take whenever it’s convenient for your busy schedule, and best of all, it’s absolutely free — no strings attached. Interested? I thought so. For the sake of full disclosure, it’s not
really a seminar, but the learning potential is as great as any seminar I’ve ever attended. I’m talking about the social online review sites. You know the ones: Yelp, Mahalo, Yahoo Answers, and others. Most shop owners I know spend some
time on these sites to make sure that noth- ing negative has been posted about their shops. If something is posted, they want to respond, to tell their side of the story. Sometimes shop owners employ web ser- vice companies to monitor these sites con- sistently, for the same reason. That’s all well and good — no one
wants bad reviews or negative publicity for their businesses. And by at least responding to the situation you might help alleviate a potential customer’s feelings about calling your shop. But the real potential for learning via
these sites is what’s in the positive reviews. Reading what makes customers satisfied might seem like a no-brainer to you. We all know what customers want, right? Fair price, honesty, competency, some-
one they can trust, sincerity, and all the other adjectives we tend to throw around when discussing what our customers expect from us. Here are some excerpts from such positive onsite reviews pertaining to trans- mission repair that seem to have a recurring theme with positive reviews: “Totally trustworthy and honest.” “…is professional, efficient, knowl- edgeable, and very nice…”
2
“Great communication.” “You never feel like they’re ‘finding’
things to charge you for, but are just taking care of what needs to be done and are hon- est about things that don’t need to be fixed right away.” Most of the reviews are stories from the
customers’ perspectives. All of them have a common thread — actually two: emotions and expectations.
Let’s take a look at each thread: Emotion — Our emotions are linked
directly to our actions. In fact, I could argue that without emotion, there would be no action. This is true from both a negative and positive perspective, as most negative reviews stem from an emotional outburst of “beware of this shop or person.” The same is true with positive reviews.
Why else would customers take time out of their busy schedules to write reviews about your shop unless they’re emotionally moti- vated do to so? They wouldn’t. If emotion is the motivator for custom-
ers to sing your praises for all to hear, then how does one evoke such emotion? The answer lies in the second thread common to all reviews on the sites: expectation. Expectation — If you’re constantly
meeting your customers expectations — fixing their problems for an agreed amount, completing the work as promised, and delivering exactly what you said you were going to — then you’ll soon be out of busi- ness.
Out of business? By giving them what
they expect? Yep. Because today, the key to grow-
ing your business is to do more. You can’t just meet their expectations; you have to exceed those expectations. There’s simply too much competition and not enough cus-
by Rodger Bland
members.atra.com www.atra.com
tomers for that model to work in today’s marketplace. And this isn’t unique to our industry. The simple fact is that, if you want to
grow your business to the level of success your hard work deserves, you’ll have to consistently exceed your customers’ expec- tations. To do this you’ll need to focus on it. Every customer you and your company comes in contact with needs to feel (remem- ber: emotion) that their expectations were exceeded. If they don’t, you’ve missed a onetime opportunity to grow your company. If you fail more than you succeed at
this, it’ll only be a matter of time before you run out of those opportunities. Your focus, your intentions, your goals, need to be whatever it takes to exceed every cus- tomer’s expectations, every time they have an encounter with you and your business. Doing this doesn’t guarantee the posi-
tive reviews on those sites, but not doing so can almost assure you of getting more than your fair share of negative ones; doesn’t seem fair, I know, but it is the reality. The story of how Whatever It Takes
transmission Parts (page 16) provides us with a great, real-world example of what constantly exceeding customer expectations can do for a company. Dennis Madden talks about the importance of putting people before profit in our What’s Working column (page 40) and how doing so gives you a leg up on your customers’ emotional meter. So do yourself a favor next time you’re
surfing the web, and bounce over to one of the online review sites. Focus on the posi- tive reviews shops are getting and remember that, in addition to fixing cars, your business is all about emotions and expectations. Do that, and I am sure you’ll agree that it’s the best customer service seminar you’ve ever attended — or your money back!
GEARS March 2012
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