A quick Customer Service training session from VW

On Monday, I spent the day with my good friend Simon Mannion who runs AIM Web Design. Although we had originally planned a business meeting, things changed and we ended up doing a full day of rugby coaching with 50 children at my son’s school. It’s national sports week and with fantastic weather, it was a good chance for us both to catch up casually in the sunshine whilst giving a load of 8-10 year olds a good time.

When we finished the rugby training sessions, we returned to my house for a drink and to write up the things we’d managed to cover during the 4 hours we were there (it’s amazing how much you manage to talk about when you choose an unusual ‘meeting’ environment).

As we were sat in my kitchen, my wife burst in ranting and raving about problems with her car and needing to use my car to collect the kids from school. It transpired that her hazard warning lights had come on without warning (ironically) at the petrol station and wouldn’t switch off again. With every other driver on the road beeping and flashing her on the journey home, she was understandably stressed.

Simon and I offered to take the car to the local VW garage who had agreed to have a quick look at the problem while we waited. We figured that rounding off our meeting in a garage was no stranger than starting it on a school playing field.

When we arrived at the Service Counter and interrupted an argument between two staff, I feared the worst from a customer service perspective. However, our service assistant efficiently booked the car in and told us to help ourselves to coffee while they looked over the car.

There was then over an hour of communication blackout as Simon and I talked over as much business as we had energy for, drank our body weights in coffee and water, looked at every new car in the showroom, read a few magazines and paced impatiently worrying about our evening plans and (in my case) the cost of the repair.

Eventually, after 1 hour 20 minutes I decided to ask the service assistant when we could expect the car back. Her response was “Oh, it’s ready – they’re just washing it for you now. It was a faulty hazard light switch.” – she naturally said this with a big, pleased with herself smile.

I think that one of the most reliable ways of measuring customer service is through the customer’s heart rate – and mine was pounding at this point.

My internal dialogue was screaming something like….

“You ask me to pop in so you can have a quick look at the car and you leave me here in a boiling hot showroom for over an hour without telling me what’s going on and then you have the temerity to tell me that you’ve spent most of the time washing a car that, if you’d bothered to check, you have back in on Thursday to repaint the bumper where my wife backed it into a van which she couldn’t see because it was the same colour as the post office…..…..arrrrrgggghhhhh”

I was annoyed that our time had been ‘wasted’ by the garage deciding to do something that they assumed I would appreciate but which I did not value at all.

My question to Simon while we waited for the freshly washed car to be driven around was this…

Have the garage provided good customer service or not?

We agreed that it was bad service. They had not sought to understand our needs and could have asked whether we had time for the car to be washed. We were quite adamant that, good customer service is about understanding what a customer wants and delivering it, not over delivering and assuming that’s what the customer wants. After all, there’s no such thing as a free lunch and we’d pay for the car wash in some way.

We were still violently agreeing when the service assistant walked over with the car keys and a smile and said “Here are your keys Mr Browne, the car is parked outside. There’s no charge for the repair – we’ll see you on Thursday.”

On the drive home we agreed – good customer service - they had over delivered and it was free.