On treating customers right August 5, 2007
This afternoon I rode over to
Wagner
Motorsports International to get my oil changed. For those of you keeping
track that’s a 46 mile drive to change your oil. They’re the only ones around
here who have any idea how to deal with my Aprilia scooter. You see, Aprilia is
one of those fancy high end Italian brands that hardly anyone has, which means
the only place that sells or services them is filled with similarly fancy
European motorcycles. Which brings me to the part I can’t figure out: why is it
that the only places that really treat you right are the places that sell the
high-end stuff? I’ve seen it with cars, motorcycles, stereo equipment,
furniture, so many things… and it’s an incredibly seductive technique. There
wasn’t a single thing that they did today that a common dealership couldn’t have
done but they’re the type of things that make a huge difference. Let me give you
some examples:
I told them I needed a duplicate key, and as with most vehicles, it’s not just a
matter of going in the back and grinding out a copy. Sometimes you have to send
away to the manufacturer, some manufacturers want different info from the owner
to make sure you’re not trying to get a key to someone else’s vehicle. Chris,
the guy in charge of service, said he’d figure out what was needed. A little
while later I’m siting out on one of their picnic benches they set up under a
tent outside and out walks Chris and hands me a blank, explaining that Aprilia
doesn’t make you send away and wait they just provide dealerships with blanks.
And then he hands me the blank and tells me to keep it safe, because obviously,
keys are easy to loose (otherwise I wouldn’t need a duplicate).
Now, think about this for a moment. I haven’t paid them a penny. He just treats
me as if I’m a trustworthy sort of person who’ll pay for it. Sure they have it
written down in the list of items on my bill but that’s not the point. The trust
is. Also, he really didn’t need to walk around and try and find me to give me
this blank. He could have just put it with the paperwork and given it to me at
the end. But he did.
There was a guy there checking out some of the BMW bikes. A nice guy, who’d
obviously been in there before. They treated him with smiles and casual touches.
When he took one of the bikes out for a test drive I watched them double check
all the mirrors and assorted other little things that hang off a motorcycle,
check the air pressure in the tires, and then at his request, quickly softened
up the suspension for him before sending him on his way. He didn’t come back for
at least 45 minutes but at no point did the salespeople look at each other and
say “is he back yet?” They just trusted him to do so, and trusted that their
vehicle would be fine when he returned. When he came back it was similarly no
big deal.
When Chris had made sure he knew everything I wanted looked at on my bike and
had taken my key he looked at me and asked if I wanted some coffee or soda or…
Which by itself isn’t to unusual, but there were two important differences. One,
he managed to convey that it actually made a difference that I had something
while I waited, and Two, there were no vending machines.
My oil change took a while and while I waited I took a few strolls through the
showroom checking out bikes. They had two salespeople and three rooms of bikes.
I was frequently out of sight but no salesperson ever came over and tried to
explain the wonderful features of whatever I happened to be looking at. Here I
am weaving in and out of $15,000+ vehicles, easily capable of knocking one over
and causing a domino effect that would give their insurance company nightmares,
but I was trusted to not do that. In fact, other than a compliment about my
orange Converses from one sales guy and a “Hi. How you doing?” from the other
(In a casual greeting to a nice person you happened to pass kind of way) they
totally let me be. Anyone who came in and expressed a desire to talk to them was
instantly helped, but otherwise given plenty of space to explore on their own.
In the two main showrooms the bikes were generally spaced out enough that you
could stand between them and imagine what it would be like to own it from all
angles. In the stores I’ve seen around Boston they seem to want to see how many
they can possibly fit in the showroom leaving no space to stand next to them and
making it essentially impossible to sit on one and see what it feels like. Guess
which stores I never really pay much attention to the bikes in? With the space
Wagner gave them it was a “This could be yours…” kind of feeling. At the
stores near my house it’s more of a “Row of shiny things that would be a pain in
the ass to actually examine…” kind of feeling. Obviously floor space is a lot
more expensive in Boston but they’re not going to sell me anything at all
because I can’t check anything out. High end audio stores have figured this out
too. You can fit a *lot* of stereo equipment in any given space but the stores
that sell the good stuff fill their stores with… space.
Speaking of audio stores and stores and trusting your customers: a friend of
mine is an audiophile. He’s the kind of person that will spend a few hundred
dollars on the wires that connect the stereo to the speakers. Now, I’ve never
had a system good enough to tell the difference speaker wire can make but
apparently it’s a big one. Well, once upon a time he was shopping for new
speaker wire and one of the stores handed him some wire to take home and try out
no charge. I’m sure they had his credit card number before he left but the point
is that they didn’t charge it. They trusted him to come back in a week or so
after actually using it and then either buy it or take some other brand home for
another test.
Wagner Motorsports treated me with the trust and respect that you’d extend to
anyone you’d happily invited over to your home. And, as a result, they’re the
ones I want to buy a bike from next year and they’re the one’s I’ll bring my
scooter back to to spend a couple hundred dollars on a tune up without worrying
that I could have gotten a “better deal” elsewhere.
I think that this sort of treatment is due in no small part to the quality of
the products they sell. Customers aren’t going to go home and feel they didn’t
really get what they wanted. The high end products aren’t going to be nearly as
prone to problems, and when they are the place you bought it from generally goes
out of it’s way to make things right. This applies to cars, motorcycles,
stereos, and service industries too. But, you can’t do business like that if
you’re selling inferior quality products. A well made product affords its
sellers certain advantages. You can mark it up more so you don’t have to hustle
to make as many sales. When something does go wrong your profit margin was high
enough that you can afford to fix it. Business comes to you. Good products
engender evangelists. Good service does too. Even without full blown evangelists
you’re still going to get great word of mouth. There’s also a very noticeable
difference in the quality of your customers when your items have a higher price
tag. Throughout my professional career I have seen this lesson repeated again
and again: the people who are looking for the cheapest price are the worst
possible customers. They’ll screw you, ask for unreasonable things, and
generally make your life miserable. The people who are willing to pay for better
quality are also, generally, the people you love doing business with.
P.S. Yes, I readily acknowledge that there’s always the risk of winding up in a
place that puts on the airs of quality and value in order to screw you out of
the maximum amount of money. Tales from people who’ve hired IBM’s “consultants”
to write software for them come to mind…
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