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Letter to the Editor

If Mom Is Your Customer

Our feature this month highlights an essential factor for any consumer service industry: satisfying customers. During the current tense and difficult economic downswing, I would be willing to wager that most customers will be a bit grumpier than normal. How-ever, smart collision repair facility shops know that it is essential to their businesses to know what it takes to produce both a quality repair and a contented vehicle owner. A happy customer is still the best advertising tool available to our industry.

A seasoned veteran of the customer service frontlines gave me a piece of advice many years ago. He said that his well-known success in handling even the thorniest customer service situation was based on one simple image. His uncanny ability to train customer service representatives to be star performers started and ended with this advice: Treat the customers standing in front of you or on the phone as if they are your own mother.

Note, as you read the J.D. Power analysis of the CSI data, how the happiest customers were treated during the repair process. For example:

• Customers like to choose a shop: Our fathers always said, “Ask Mom.”
• Customers link insurers to the repair if using an insurer-recommended facility: Mom warned us that we are known by the company we keep.
• Customers want repairs done quickly, and when promised: Mom said, “I asked you to take the trash out now, not five minutes from now.”
• Customers want to be informed during the repair process: Mom always wanted us to keep in touch, and to phone her often.
• Customers want to be contacted after the repair process is completed: Mom always insisted that we write thank you notes. No child she raised was ever going to seem ungrateful and impolite.

So, treat your customers well. You may not get a batch of chocolate chip cookies, but you will make some loyal customers, who will tell their friends about how great you are. Make a mom (and yourself) proud!

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