Car dealerships are known to have terrible reputations
Not to mention, their salespeople love to pull shady tactics on you. Some of them being:
Bait and switch
Eternal waiting
Guilt tripping
But it doesn’t end there. Some of their customer service can be pretty terrible too.
Listen to this:
On a podcast episode I listened to not too long ago, a guest (named Julia) was telling a story of how she dealt with a frustrating customer experience with a dealership she bought her new car from.
After she signed the papers and bought her new car, the dealership told her to wait around three months for the DMV to send the license plates. In the meantime, the dealership gave her a temporary license plate.
Two months in, she still hasn’t received her license plate and her temporary plate expired. So she called the DMV and they told her that they weren’t informed about anything regarding her car. Then she called the dealership and they told her that they’ll find out what’s going on and call her back.
Two weeks go by,
No update from the dealership. So she called the DMV again and they told her that her car was accidentally registered under someone else’s name. And when she asked the dealership how long they’ve known about this issue, they said they’ve known about it for two months. Two months, and they never bothered to communicate with Julia or give her any updates about the issue.
For the next five months, Julia consistently followed up with the dealership (and got ignored). But eventually, she got her renewed temporary license plates.
This whole situation happened even though the dealership promised her that all she had to do was sign the paperwork and they’ll take care of everything else.
The good news is:
To make up for all the troubles, the dealership offered free gas, oil change, car detail, and tire rotation.
Overall, I’d give the dealership a -3 out of 10 for customer experience. It would’ve been a -5, but they offered an apology gift at the end.
Once again, there’s a perfect example of how not to provide customer service. Especially the part about ignoring your customer’s serious issue is just unacceptable.
But I can almost promise you that your customers and clients are going to have a complete opposite experience. In other words, a great experience. So great that they’ll probably stick around for a long period of time.
And you can learn how to give your customers that great experience by implementing the knowledge taught in Vance Morris’ Tales From The Customer Service Crypt, which you can get by clicking on my affiliate link below.