Is Your Customer Service This Great?
The first thing I said when I got home was, "I am never going anywhere else except Donny Hitch for body work on my car!"
This week I have had several customer service experiences. Four were horrible, and two were very pleasant and have won my customer loyalty. The most outstanding one, I must pass along to you. My question is, what could we do for our client that is comparable?
I had to get body repair on my car this week, and I used a company recommended by my insurance agency, Donny Hitch, Oak Ridge, TN. I had never heard of him, but I just wanted to get the work done. I determined to use him, as long as his estimate seemed reasonable. I walked in without an appointment, and within 5 minutes he looked at the car. Less than ten minutes he had my estimate ready, and I said I wanted him to do the work. They made all the arrangements for Enterprise Car Rental to be there on my scheduled day to pick me up and get a rental car. They estimated that the work would be done by Wednesday afternoon.
On Monday, I dropped off the car for the repairs. As before, there was nothing particularly spectacular. They just did their job efficiently with friendly faces. I got a call about 12 p.m. on Wednesday that the work would be done at 4 p.m. When I arrived, I briefly looked at the car and could tell the work was great, which was what I had hoped. They could have stopped there, and I would have been a satisfied customer.
They gave me the key and the paperwork, "Oh, and by the way, there is a lifetime warranty for that paint job," said the friendly but professional receptionist. I was totally shocked by that, since any other place has only warranted paint for one year.
As we continued to deal with the paperwork, the receptionist started giving me instructions about how to 
care for the car to protect the paint job. "You shouldn't wax it for three months, but in three months we give your car a free wax. We clean your car and wax it and check to make sure the job still looks all right." Would you like to go ahead and schedule it?" I did; I was so please. They were booked solid until the end of January. I picked a day, and I was off.
When I got to my car, it looked to me as though the carpets had been vacuumed and the windows cleaned. A tag was hanging from my rear view mirror that had tips about how to take care of the paint job. And I had a paper rug under my feet. Still reeling from the lifetime warranty and the free wax job, something else kept catching my eye. Hanging on my light knob was a "thank you" bag with a bottle of matching paint. I was forever hooked as one of their clients.
I want my clients to feel the way I felt when they are through with me. What are some great things we do as real estate agents to create the same customer loyalty?
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