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Net Watch Article - Hoover Dodge
Putting Service back into Customer Service?

For the past several months I have been observing business etiquette when related to customer service. I grew up hearing the phrase “The customer is ALWAYS right” and my father, in particular, was a stickler for good customer service and customer satisfaction. My observations of late, however, have not proved the above phrase to be true! In fact as you will hear in one of our stories we even had a manager tell us we were unrealistic in our expectations and we were wrong, something I was told was NEVER to be said to a customer/client. Here are some accounts of what I have noticed and what I would like to see changed.

Let’s start with the most recent purchase as it’s most fresh in my mind. Rick and I had been looking at potentially trading in our van.

We wanted to: lower our monthly payments get a new warranty (as the one on our present vehicle was about to run out) get a NEW vehicle (if possible) get better gas mileage and basically see if we could better the financial position we were in.

We traded in our old van and bought our current 2000 Dodge Grand Caravan SE at Hoover Dodge in Summerville in March 2002 for the purchase price of around $19,000. This was an impulse buy. We were in the area, had a salesman like a bulldog and we were fresh bait. We had extreme buyers remorse the next day however as we realized we’d more than doubled our monthly payments for the same vehicle just slightly newer with less miles and more gadgets. Don’t get me wrong, we loved our new van, but we definitely went through buyers remorse with this vehicle. Our remorse was compounded by the fact that not 2 months after having the vehicle it broke down leaving us stranded with a non-functioning transmission sensor - NOT covered by the extended warranty. They fixed the transmission for $200. Shortly thereafter we noticed the van had a severe hesitation in hot weather. We took it in to be fixed and were again irritated by the fact that this too was not covered by the extended warranty. This problem was never resolved.

In Nov 2003 (18 months after we purchased the 2000 Dodge Grand Caravan SE at Hoover in Summerville SC) we went back to the same Hoover dealership to see what they could do for us to help us reach the goals we had with hopefully changing vehicles.

Our first statement to them was that we wanted to give them our information and then we were going to go shopping while they worked out some kind of financial plan for us and gave us options for vehicles suitable to us. Our salesman said “Wal Mart is open 24 hours a day, just give us 5 minutes of your time”.

I was not impressed!! This man seemed to think that OUR time and OUR plans were not as important as buying a car at Hoover Dodge. This should’ve been our first clue to RUN! RUN and don’t look back!! We sat patiently waiting, we went for a couple of test drives, then went back to their office to discuss options. This is where the 5 minutes that it was supposed to take turned into over 4 hours! After telling them what we were willing to spend they worked out a ‘plan’ and brought it back to the table.

Considering we purchased the van from them not 18 months earlier, we thought they would give us a good trade-in for it. They came back and offered us $5,000 for our van and said that it had been in an accident and been sprayed over. When we purchased this vehicle from them 18 months earlier this was not mentioned to us and we had never had an accident in the 18 months during which we owned it! Also, my husband does his homework before making any large purchases and he’s aware of the difference between black book, blue book and NADA. (I however am clueless so will leave him to explain all of that in his version of this article). The trade-in value of the van on black book was $7,500 blue book was $9,000 and NADA was $10,000 so the offer of $5,000 was an absolute insult. This was our second clue to run… The salesman, understandably, was now pretty desperate for this sale as it could’ve been the last one for the day. However since we had come in with our requirements and they were not able or willing to meet any of them we told them we weren’t interested. After haggling and haggling and haggling and haggling we were told by the salesman “I’m trying to help you but you’re not trying to help me”. This made me see red!! I am not paid a commission to help the salesman sell me a car, he is however paid a commission for selling me a car at a deal I can’t refuse where all parties win. I was fuming mad and we left with more than the salesman and manager irritated due to more than 4 hours of wasted time.

Moral of this story? We were very up front with our goals. When the salesman did not value our time, it showed us he did not truly value us as customers. The appropriate approach would have been to listen to our needs and our goals and tell us plainly whether or not we were being realistic in our expectations. Had the salesman taken this approach, he very well could’ve made a sale. Obviously a salesman’s job is to sell. But his job is also to try and meet the needs of his customers. If they were truly concerned about customer satisfaction and meeting our needs he would have spent more time listening and less time talking. This is good advice for all of us who own small businesses. Our job is to exceed the expectations of our clients, not just put money in our pockets.