Tag Archives: service - Page 3

Their Missed Opportunity

Posted by on January 26, 2016 No comments

It’s pretty ridiculous that I have to convince myself that I should be outraged about what happened and that I am justified in my outrage.  It’s a sad state of affairs that the level of service for just about everything has dropped to non-existent and when you experience non-service, it’s just a matter of, oh, that’s just how it is.

As I previously mentioned, someone broke the side mirror off my car, and I now have the replacements.  I want to get them painted, but who should I call?  In my former car incident, I had my bumper repaired and I was very pleased with the repainting job that was done.  So I emailed my contact at Progressive and asked who did the work so I could go back there.  They gave me the info, no problem, and were happy that I was pleased enough to ask for a referral.  That’s the high point of this event.

Yesterday, I headed to the body shop’s location after work.  Their business is in the heart of the downtown area.  Not the best area of town, and some of the worst traffic around.  Something like 30 minutes for 12 miles of travel (with no side mirror to help me change lanes).  So I’m a little frazzled by the time I get there.

I go into the office and a woman behind the desk is on the phone.  She tells the person on the phone to hold on a minute and asks me what I need.  I explain I want to discuss getting some mirrors painted.  She then says I need to speak to Carlos, who is not there right now (maybe at a dealership?).  She asks if I can come back tomorrow.  I reply, “Well, I’m in the area today…” hoping to get some help now.  She didn’t have any response, so I said (with a hint of sarcasm), “I’ll be back later” and left.  Fuck them.

There are so many ways this could have ended up differently, and a lot of them are just simple timing.  But, here’s the thing that I keep thinking:  There’s only one person in your entire business who can take care of my request and he’s not here, so effectively, your business is closed to new customers.  You have a shitty business.  Yeah, I’m sure they’re doing fine since they have partnerships with insurance companies and dealerships and so they don’t need me.  Well, I don’t need them either.

The other thing that gets me is, this receptionist has no interest in her employer’s business or in any potential customer’s needs.  First of all, the person she was talking to on the phone was either not important enough to give her full attention to or was more important than me.  Or, I’m just interrupting her phone call.  I could have waited a while to get her full attention, but she decided that wasn’t going to happen.  Next, she was completely useless for me.  She told me who I need to talk to and that was it.  She had nothing to say about the company, the service (ha!), what kind of information I would need, nothing.  She didn’t offer to let me talk to anyone else who might have more information for me.  And how about this?  She didn’t ask for my name or number so they could contact me.  No, I have to come back to them.  Her entire interaction with me said, “Talk to Carlos.  That’s not my job.”

The last time I got irked like that was many years ago when I was shopping for car tires (hmmm, an industry issue?).  I had stopped at a place and asked what tire models they had for my car.  The guy rattled off a few and I asked if he had some paper to write them down.  What I expected was for him to write the options down, but instead, he got a pen and some paper and pushed it towards me.  I was a little stunned by that.  As I’m recounting this, I’m thinking, why was I offended?  And it’s probably more than just the courtesy of him doing it for me, it’s the lack of efficiency involved.  This guy knows the tires and the prices and can jot them down quickly.  Now he’s made more work for both of us, because I have to ask him to repeat himself and maybe ask for spellings while I transcribe.  And he’ll probably be annoyed he has to slowly list these things.  I’ve never seen a case where laziness beat out “it’d be faster to do it myself.”

Gas Runners

Posted by on November 3, 2014 No comments

A few days ago, I was driving home and saw a couple of gas stations with different gas prices.  The one station’s prices were “cash only”.  It got me thinking about a couple of things.  First off, I thought that there isn’t any incentive to go to a cash-only station if the prices are practically the same.  I wondered if it was a desperate concession for the station owner to implement surcharges for credit cards.  This led me to consider gas stations as a whole business.

With any business, you have income and expenses.  You can play with these elements in any possible way to create profit, that is, more income than expenses.  When you are selling gas, you have one income source – gas sales.  You would have many, many expenses – licenses, maintenance, labor, taxes, utilities, and on and on.  One of those expenses would be credit card processing fees.  Like I said, play with these sources to create profit.  Eliminate CC fees and you may make a profit, or more of a profit.

With larger gas stations – ones with integrated convenience stores – you would have multiple sources of income, including food/merchandise sales and possibly lottery ticket sales commissions.  Your other expenses may go up too, but we all know that buying anything from a convenience store is not the cheapest choice.  You are paying dearly for the convenience.

So, by having the C-store, your profits from one sector can offset the expenses from the other.  You can absorb the CC fees because your C-store sales are subsidizing them.  This made me wonder how gas stations could even survive without solid c-store sales.  Maybe this is why they have to sacrifice CC processing.

So now, on to my idea.  You have a gas station with customized gas pumps.  The pumps have a large touchscreen that performs as a kiosk.  After you swipe your card to activate the pump, the screen allows you to purchase items in the store.  Within the store are one or more “runners” that will pick and run the items out to you at the pump.  That’s it.  A simple idea.

But more than just simple, this is an improved form of convenience – you don’t even have to go inside the store.  You don’t have to run your credit card twice – your gas and purchases are combined on one receipt.  The store doesn’t even have to be customer-accessible.  It could be optimized for quick-picking.

The ordering kiosk software could remember people by their credit card numbers and provide frequent, recent, and favorite item lists to choose from.  As with everything modern now, you could tie it to an online profile where the customer could review purchases and create lists of favorite items to be shown on their next visit.

If you haven’t determined it by now, this is how a small station could compete with a large C-store.  You have the extra income stream of the merchandise sales, but a much lower overhead of running a large store, including maintenance, taxes, cleaning, utilities, and more.  And, in some ways, the service level would be higher.  With so many people in a rush, saving the time of going in, shopping, and standing in line to pay (again), all that time is saved.

Advances in Management Through Nudity

Posted by on April 10, 2014 No comments

In other Florida news, a mostly-naked woman went berserk in a McDonalds, trashing the equipment and eating ice cream.  Yeah, that’s pretty much the headline.  But after watching the video, I had one primary takeaway.  It didn’t have anything to do with the nudity.

I have no idea what the woman was upset about.  That point actually doesn’t matter.  The thing that was the most informative in the video.  She calmed down after sucking on the ice cream machine.  She then made herself an ice cream cone and didn’t trash anything else.  Low blood sugar, maybe?

Regardless, here’s my idea.  With an agitated customer, the manager has to do two things: establish trust and defuse anger.  The first should be offering to meet on neutral ground to discuss the problem.  When a manager is behind the counter, there is a clear barrier between the parties.  This can allow the manager some safety and power over the situation, but it can also raise the perception of inaccessibility to the customer, which just intensifies the situation.  The manager can say, “Let’s sit down at a table and discuss this.”  There will still be a barrier between them, but the playing field will seem more level.

Defusing the anger can be easy.  Ask the customer if they want a drink, dessert, or ice cream.  Whatever they want, have someone immediately make it and bring it to the table.  The manager should not make or bring the request; the manager’s attention is solely on the customer.

If all goes well, the customer will be snacking and explaining the problem, maybe very aggressively.  But by seating them at a table, you’ve gotten the scene away from the front counter, where others would be subjected to the tirade.  Additionally, the customer may not back down from their argument in front of a bunch of spectators, but in isolation, may be more agreeable.  Everyone wants to look strong in front of others.

And if the customer is nude for all of this, it may be a blessing for some.