It’s Your Business
- Author: Terry Greenhut, Business Editor
- Subject Matter: Customer service
- Issue: It’s easier to tell it like it is
I lease a 2013 Jeep Grand Cherokee. It has about eight months to go before I turn it in. It’s been a wonderful SUV and I will more than likely opt for another at trade in time. I haven’t had any real trouble with it except that recently the navigation system refused to boot up, and often when I lock the doors and walk away from the car the locks pop open again. Hating the hassle of bringing it into the dealership, I would have lived with the door locks because I did find a way around the problem that works most of the time, but I needed the GPS so off I went to the local dealer. It was my first visit since I only recently moved to the area. If I were back in New York, I would have taken it to my cousin’s Jeep dealership where I had previously trained all the service advisers myself a couple of years ago, so I know I’d have been well treated; but here I am in a brand new place, so I have to form new relationships. Off I go to the closest dealership.
Upon arrival I noticed that all three service advisers were on the telephone. There were no other customers waiting at the counter. I could overhear their phone conversations and it didn’t sound to me like any of them were talking with customers about their vehicles, yet not one of them bothered to greet me or cut their conversations short. Standing there that way for what seemed like an eternity made me feel very out of place, but I wrote it off. After all, I’m new to the area. Maybe that’s the way they do things here.
When I finally got the attention of one of the writers I began to explain the conditions I was experiencing. He told me I had to leave the car for them to run diagnostics but warned me that there probably wasn’t anything they could do about the door locks, which translates in my mind to: “He wasn’t even going to look at them because he had already decided they can’t be fixed.” What he should have said was, “Sure, we’ll take a good look at them.” That would at least have given me hope. Instead he gave me that classic line that so many dealership service writers use when they don’t have an answer. “Most of them do that. There’s nothing to be done. It’s a proximity problem. You’re so close to the car that the system thinks the key fob is still inside, so it unlocks the doors.” Bulloney! Am I supposed to believe that Chrysler has a few hundred thousand Jeeps out there in which doors randomly unlock and they haven’t done anything about it? Not likely. In fact, my last Jeep was a 2011, same model and same generation body style. It didn’t have that problem.
On my way out the door I mentioned that I wanted an oil change while the car was there and he agreed to take care of that. So I left to go home after being told that because I came in without an appointment they wouldn’t get to my car right away so it would probably be late in the afternoon before they would call me. I didn’t have a problem with that. Forty-five minutes later as I walked into my house the phone rang. It was one of the service advisers; not the one I had initially spoken with. She told me that I could come and pick up the car; that they had special ordered a new radio for me to take care of the GPS problem and that they had completed the oil change, and as I suspected, that there was nothing they could do about the door locks.
My first reaction was to be quite annoyed with the fact that although they told me the car probably wouldn’t be ready till late in the afternoon or that I’d even hear from them by then, within less than an hour it was done. If they would have told me that, I would have waited for it and let my wife go on her way. As it was, I had to get her to drive me back there again, and I could tell by the look on her face she wasn’t real happy about that.
One thing I took note of that struck me as strange was that although my vehicle had 27,000 miles on it, no other services were recommended, not even a tire rotation. My conclusion was that these service advisers were service writers. They were either never trained to sell additional services or they were just too lazy to do it. All they did was write down whatever the customer wanted and that was it.
After checking in and signing the necessary paperwork, I went out to my car to find that they had parked it under a tree. It had rained in the past half hour and there were berries and sap on the hood, and I had to wash it all off when I got home to keep it from eating the paint. So far I counted at least four mistakes.
Since in the past it’s been brought to my attention that, at some dealerships and garages as well, when a customer asks for an oil change it doesn’t always get done. A new oil sticker is placed on the car but the oil change never happens, so I got into the habit of checking the oil before going in for the oil change and then again after. I’m not fanatical enough to climb under the car to mark the oil filter like some would do, but I figure that checking the oil before and after might tell me what I need to know. When I checked it before I went there it was dirty and a quart low.
The next morning with the car cold and parked on level ground I checked the oil again. It was a quart low and dirtier than you would think it should be when it had just been changed. Could they have forgotten to change it? They didn’t forget to put the sticker on the window. Maybe they just didn’t fill it up all the way. Could it be they don’t know how much oil a 5.7 liter hemi takes? Anyway, I figured I’d mention it when I went in to get the new radio installed.
Two days later I received a call telling me that the new radio had arrived and that I needed an appointment to have it installed. The woman said that I should bring it in the morning and leave it because the installation takes quite a while. She did tell me, though, that there was a free shuttle service available to take me home and bring me back again when the job was done. Curiously they didn’t mention that the last time. I made an appointment for the next morning.
Arriving at the dealership, I was taken care of by yet another service adviser. At least I thought it was. He turned out to be the service manager. I mentioned the oil-change situation to him. He said he would look into it. I said, “OK I’ll leave the car with you.” “No,” he said. “You don’t have to leave it unless you want to. It takes less than an hour to install the radio.” I decided to stay and wait but thinking, “These people either don’t have a clue what they’re doing or there’s no communication between any of them.”
Forty minutes later the service manager came and found me. He said the car was ready and that he had checked the oil personally and that it was full and clean. Amazing! So rather than admit that a mistake was made, if that’s what really happened, he made it sound as though I was either lying or out of my mind. I’ll leave it to you to figure out how the oil went from being a quart low and dirty to full and clean.
I wish this was the end of the story, but it isn’t. I specifically asked the service manager at that time if the new radio was already activated with Sirius/XM or if I needed to do it. He assured me it was already done. Of course when I got into the car and turned on the radio it had no satellite stations because it had not been activated. I went back inside. The service manager blamed the technician. The technician said he was never told to do it. A half hour later it was finally done and I got to leave.
So when the gal from Chrysler called to ask about my experience at the dealer service department the only word I could think of was “FAIL.” It’s a shame that this dealership’s service department can’t get its act together, especially because in a few months I’m going to have to decide where to get my next car. Do you think it will be there?
I don’t consider myself to be a demanding customer, just a knowledgeable one. Maybe some dealership service writers think that their customers don’t know the business so they can say whatever they feel like and get away with it. They might be right in the short term. They might indeed get away with it for a while, but who suffers in the long run? The owner of the business. He or she are the ones who lose customers and, if it happens enough, go out of business while the culprits go on to their next jobs telling their new bosses what a wonderful job they did at their last place of employment.
How’s your memory? If you’re going to lie, you better have a good one, because there’s an awful lot you’ll have to remember not to get caught. The beauty of telling the truth is that there is nothing at all to remember. You just tell it like it is. If you screw up, if you don’t fulfill the promise, be up front with it. Apologize for the inconvenience and offer the customer something that will compensate for their trouble. Even if you lose money on this particular sale, next time around you can get it back in additional sales and referrals. If you lose the customer because he or she thinks you’re trying to cheat them, you lose any chance of ever making money from that person or any of his or her friends and neighbors again.
