Aligning your organisation systems, customer experience and employee engagement to your strategy can create a truly customer focused business. Misalignment can leave your customers shaking their heads… and for some organisations this must happen on a daily basis.
My car was playing up last week – intermittent, but potentially hazardous. After a couple of days of believing I must have been at fault (customers do that all the time!) I decided to call the service department of my local dealer to see if they could check it out while I was in the area. Bear in mind, this claims to be a premium brand, and the car is only 12 months old…
The Service Advisor was helpful, concerned, and could see the potential safety issue. When I suggested I could bring it in for a couple of hours later in the day for an assessment, his response astounded me:
“Hmmm. You could bring it in before 1, but we go on lunch at that time so we wouldn’t be able to look at it.”
Stop. Hang on. ‘We’ go on lunch? What? Everyone goes on lunch together so no one will be able to look at my car with a safety problem? “Yep. You’ll have to make another time”.
The problem is, I know that this isn’t unique – most service departments are driven by rosters and a desire to avoid overtime rather than supporting the customer to stay on the road. In this case, a poor rostering system is destroying the customer experience of a premium brand.
So ask yourself, are your systems enhancing, or destroying your customer-focused business?
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PS… for the record, my car broke down 3 days later. Das auto ist kaputt. My respect for their brand is pretty kaputt too, so they’re going to be working very hard to gain it back! No doubt there will be a few more blogs in this customer experience journey!
