Lessons from a Car shopping experience

Why is it not surprising that across the world, customers go through similar experiences while dealing with organisations (the people within) that sell products or services? Most of our experiences are far from satisfactory. What's truly shocking is when the product or service in question is among the biggest brands around the world. True, there are shopping experiences that leave us delighted. But they are few and far in between.

As the experience you are about read shows, trying to collect data, analyse it so as to achieve customer relationships actually leaves sour tastes in the mouths of most consumers. Why is it so difficult for firms to understand that its not about data analytics or database marketing, that its about man to man experiences that customers have while dealing with various personnel of a firm, from the greeting at the door to the sales pitch to the after sales service response?

Don't blame you, guess, its truly baffling!

Sample Brian's experience (from the FC blog) while shopping for a car,

...In my view, every interaction between an organization and an individual member of their audience is a transaction, of equal importance to the one immediately prior or the one to follow. Every review, every welcome you receive when you first enter an office, every e-mail or phone call to customer service impacts the decision-making process of your audience on an equally important level. Do that well, and you will be successful. Make mistakes and they will haunt you...

....A car dealer wants to sell you a car – I get that. But when we explain that we want to test drive a certain vehicle and will decide later about a purchase, the immediate response from the dealer should be to facilitate a test drive – not challenge our answers to a questionnaire, not wax poetic about the features of another vehicle. Just let us drive the damn car. In short, don’t differentiate by what you do, differentiate by who you do it for – and how well you do it. And don’t buy a Honda or Toyota at the dealership we visited.

Read the complete post here.

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