One summer, I worked as a saleswoman for a luxury car dealership. They instructed us to not judge clients by their appearance. It was often the customer who drove a used car and wore torn jeans that entered our showroom and paid for their luxury car in cash.
Our job was not to sale the car. By the time our customers walked into the dealership, they had a good sense of the quality of the car. Our task was to establish a relationship, in which the customer would buy the car, return to service it at the dealership and make their next car purchases with us as soon as possible. Typically, this courtship would take a minimum of 2 hours. Our brand was rated the best customer service provider in the industry.
Some customers knew however that we were penalized for any customer service feedback that was below 95%. They would use the threat of rating my service low as leverage in negotiating the car purchase.
The threat of loss became a distraction from the enjoyment of making relationships with my customers. Honestly, sometimes haggling over a few hundred dollars off of a luxury car didn’t make sense, when I had a used car sitting on empty and for which I had no money. Though my general manager would not allow such customer manipulation, it wasn’t easy to trust that the people I took care of would take of me.
The biggest lesson that I learned from retail customer service is:
I had to invest in the long- term relationship before the customer made a purchase or promise to buy anything from me.
I now have a lot of compassion for those who are in the service, care giving, and hospitality industries. I often think about the faceless and nameless people who serve us well, while in need. The waiters and waitresses who serve us with empty stomachs. Ministers of the gospel doing youth advocacy, while working multiple jobs to keep their services going and pay their own bills.
Servants give without any promise of returns…
I believe that if we were to observe the lives of the servants we can learn 4 key lessons…
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