Customer Service on a Saturday Night

Does serving your customers come natural to you and your staff? Or do you have to train them to over and over to do the right thing?

A few weeks ago my wife came home from work on a Saturday afternoon and asked me to check out one of her tires that was a bit low.

Kathy had just driven 30 minutes on a nearly flat tire with a nail in it.

I decided to get it patched if it was possible and while she was unwinding from work and preparing for our evening out, I drove off and went to the nearest tire store, a Goodyear shop a couple miles away.

Good news: They were open until 7pm and it was only 4:45.

Bad news: They were short handed and couldn’t fit me in until Sunday.

Good news: Chris, the service manager would check a couple other Goodyear shops to see if they can repair the tire and he found one a few minutes away.  He filled my tire and off I went.

15 minutes later I walked into the New Haven Goodyear shop and Augie was waiting for me.  He found my wife’s car in the Goodyear computer network and discovered that she bought 2 tires nearly 4 years ago and they were covered under a warranty.  We had a 2 out of 4 chance that the nail was in one of those two tires and it turns out it was.

Another 20 minutes later and they handed me the keys along with a copy of the no charge work order and a quote for new tires since these were going to need replaced in a month or two.

Altogether, it took a little over an hour from the time my wife came home and told me about her tire and I was back with it all taken care of and we were out the door again on a Saturday night.

The customer service that Chris and Augie provided was not dictated by a training manual.  Or if it was, they did it so effortlessly and naturally that it was genuine customer service by real people, not a corporate memo.

Take a step back and look at what they did:

1. Chris told me he could not solve my problem the way I wanted him to. (Fix my tire.)
2. Chris offered a couple solutions. (Fix my tire the next day or find another shop that could fix my tire now.)
3. Chris found a shop that I could drive to and that would fix my tire now.
4. Chris filled my tire with air so I could safely drive to the other stop.
5. Augie was ready to fix my tire when I arrived at his shop.
6. Augie checked to see if my wife’s car was in their system and it was.
7. Augie informed me that depending on which tire had the nail in it, it might be covered under warranty and if that was the case, it would cost me nothing to repair.
8. Augie got me in and out quickly and provided me with a price guaranteed for 3 months for new tires .

Each of those 8 steps built upon the previous step.  If Chris had simply stopped at step 1 without offering any alternatives, he would have done his job, period.  But it was the true customer service that happened next that made a difference worth sharing.

Learn and apply this lesson yourself.