How much does not caring cost you in the long run?

[ryan.gerardi]

Picking up on a post by Seth Godin called Caring is Free (below), I was thinking this might make for a great discussion for Refresh Friday.

How are you investing into customer care in the long run? How important are the little day-to-day things that lay the bricks of a lasting caring culture?

Here's what he wrote:

In the short run, of course, not caring can save you some money.

Don't bother making the facilities quite so clean. Save time and hassle and let the display get a little messy. Don't worry so much about one particular customer, because you're busy and hiring more people takes time and money.

But in the long run, caring pays for itself.

Caring is expensive, but it also generates loyalty and word of mouth.

In the long run, an organization that puts in extra effort gets rewarded.

Not to mention that caring makes us all more human. Worth it.​

 

[DavidRozek]

Caring about your customers or showing empathy when communicating is key to all businesses. However, customer retention in the automotive field normally comes down to your dealerships culture and exceeding your customers expectations via positive interactions through effective communication. Having a process as to how to deal with consumers and the issues that can arise in any customer-dealership interaction is a must. If we treat people the way we like to be treated, then most things will resolve itself.

Successful dealerships have very few negative reviews online when we treat people properly (of course asking for positive reviews helps if you have a system) and when a customers writes a review on Google and/or Facebook, no matter if its Good or Bad you have to answer it. Your business has a small window in which to keep you online rating in tact and a few negative reviews can really bring you down a notch over your competition.

In business today's customers buy based on location, selection, price, reputation, and how you interact with them to satisfy their needs. Hit all of these strong points and your are guaranteed to outsell your competition, but you have to remember that the sale and the commitment to service is never ending when it comes to retention and marketshare. For car dealerships you can not go wrong with using an app like reputation.com and making a culture change with your sales staff and service writers by incentivizing them to ask customers for a recommendation. Of course you can not incentivize a consumer because that is illegal and another topic.

 

[Marc Lavoie]

In our program, we encourage dealers to answer to every single review, good or bad. This is far from new, but it remains very effective. We also came up with a great way to make sure all reviews are answered quickly.

You can also use your website to generate reviews vs Google and catch the bad ones before they go live. Sometimes having a different perspective makes all the difference. We've done it several times with success.

Most bad reviews can be turned over. :thumbup: