Don’t Put Me on Hold!!

It’s no shock to hear that some company falls short on treating a client properly. It comes with the holidays! But when a Lexus dealer in Newport Beach, falls on its customer service face, that is a surprise.

My car has been in the dealer for a full week. Today I phoned to find out if the car was ready—I just wanted a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer.

A message to my service rep went unresponded (I later found out he was out of the office). So, at day's end, I called . . . time and time again. And, in each instance, I was put on hold: the first time 10 minutes. The second time five; the third two. The fourth time, I wanted to see how long an extension could ring without being responded to: 12 minutes before I gave up. The fifth time I called back, I said “I simply need a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer to whether my car is ready. That’s all.”

The receptionist went to put me on hold, I said, “Please don’t. I’d like to speak with a person. No one answers the phone…it just rings and rings and rings.”

To which she responded rather curtly, “That’s not our fault.”

I was so startled, I simply responded with a chuckle, “Excuse me?!?!”

You know when you hear “That’s not our fault,” you can surmise only one of two things the person on the other end of the line is saying: “It’s YOU, the customer who’s at fault” (we certainly don’t want to take responsibility for your discomfort) or, “We’re simply so unprepared to take care of customers, we can’t handle another call.”

Either way, that’s a disturbing response. Not just for what it says explicitly, but for what must being going on at that store to trigger such a response.

In great contrast, earlier today I had lunch with a group from work at Lucille’s in Tustin. It’s targeted to a lunch crowd and does a good job of delivering quality food in fairly short order. That’s not easy when you’re serving 150 meals in a short window of time.

I’ve eaten there several times before and usually you can get in and out in 45 minutes. But today, our food arrived an hour after we were seated.

The manager came by to apologize and said he’d comp our $7 appetizer which seemed a bit meager given the circumstances, but I figured something is better than nothing, and it's Christmas...let is pass. When the bill came, he actually took $45 off the bill…about a third of the total. It was far more than I would have even asked for.

Tha manager understood that he needed to something sizeable enough to get my attention. And he did!

The explicit message was “I want you to be happy.” The implicit message was, “I want you to be a customer for life.” I now know, anytime I go into Lucille’s, he will guarantee my pleasurable dining experience.

Big difference between two customer service attitudes.

Now here’s what I want to say: We’re all in the customer service business. Every time you touch someone, you send more than one message. The explicit one: “We need your financial help.” And the implicit one: “We’re doing the financially responsible thing by cutting our overhead everywhere. You can trust our financial management.”

You may think about what you say, but do you think about how it’ll be received? Usually, the later is a far more power message. It was for me today!