When it comes to creating a five-star customer experience, can your dealership take a few cues from the restaurant business? Curious? Read on.
In a restaurant, the owner is the final mile between source, distributor and execution for the customer. The way a restaurant markets, organizes, receives, prepares, cooks and delivers its product is paramount.
Your dealership isn’t any different. You have to master your business and that starts with your menu. Once you've mastered the menu, you work on speed. Once you've mastered speed, you work on consistency.
That's the magic: excellent products that can be delivered consistently with quickness. And just like in the restaurant business, this demands serious investment from everyone involved.
We all struggle with discipline to some extent. That's OK. What's not OK is to deliver a service as integral as yours without making your own mark, in your own way.
Without being committed to your role in these three areas — mastery, speed and consistency — your success will be limited. You can read all the books about service and leadership that you want. There are no three other ingredients that will separate you from the rest than those.
So where do you stand? In a kitchen, the execution of individual roles culminates in the customer experience. From host/hostess, server and order expediter to line cook, salad prep, dessert prep and head chef, the roles are defined. Flawless execution of each role is paramount. Any breakdown in execution is a failure for both your team and your customer.
When it comes down to it, no one really cares if you're a service advisor, technician, store manager or owner. They care about how much you care about your role.
If you need inspiration, I encourage you to talk with your peers. No five-star restaurant owner ever created a five-star menu without having sampled a five-star menu elsewhere.
The same goes for service advisors, technicians, your store manager and the rest of your team. You and your customers deserve it.
Once again, the goals are simple: mastery, speed and consistency. You have to figure out how to get exactly what you want out of each role within your system. And you have to hold each other accountable to a standard. Isn't that what your customers really deserve? They want the most out of their dollar. And the value of their dollar is dependent on your mastery, speed and consistency.
We all saw examples of how not to do things watching the recent Netflix series, “Tires.” Some of us laughed and some of us got pretty upset at how tire dealers were depicted in this show.
It's sad that our industry doesn’t command the respect it deserves, especially to be selected as the theme of a sitcom. The bad service represented on “Tires” also is a call to action. Where does your shop stand? We can all be better than we are today. It's vitally important you own your role in creating that five-star customer experience. We should demand the same of those around us, too.
Are you a master with speed and consistency in your role as your dealership’s owner? If any one of those three qualities isn't solid, you're off the customer’s menu. It's a package deal. You're either a professional, working towards being more of a professional, or you're just working a job.
It's with pride, commitment and straightforward honesty that I say that you — and the rest of us — are capable of so much more.
Visit a successful restaurant, watch the kitchen and the execution, taste the product and tell me I'm wrong.
