Stay small or specialise.

If you are small or specialised and offer delightful service, larger competitors may never match or threaten you. In fact it may pay you to examine large firms because large company failure offers opportunity to specialists.

Hardly a day passes without my seeing examples of good and bad practice of interest for this site. This particular little saga concerns a new Car which developed a fault while under warranty.

For me it illustrates the benefit available by keeping business units small and or specialised. As a customer it reminds me to deal only with people that really have a stake in their operation and an understanding that there is a relationship between the wellbeing of customers and the results a business generates.

When in full-time employment I have often been in sales or marketing type roles and often enjoyed the use of a company car. The benefits employers get from providing this apparent perk are multiple, including that their employees can always get to customers, that they do not waste time on car maintenance or admin rather can perform the primary function of their roles, usually selling products, supporting distributors sorting out business issues remote from the home plant or other tasks that require travel.

In this scenario there were a number of players with vastly differing service levels

1. Driver (A driver who drives a company car (me))
2. Employer (A company which operates a fleet of cars for some of its employees)
3. Fleet Service (A fleet management service organisation which supports drivers in the company.)
4. Manufacturer (A global car maker)
5. Main Dealer (The main dealer of a global car maker)
6. Small independent (A small local garage not associated with any manufacturer who maintains and services cars of any make.)

... the principles of this story could equally apply to private car owners and plenty of other circumstances involving other products or services.

On with the story.

I am going to mark my perception of "customer service received" as I go.
[10/10] will be the best [0/10] will be the worst.

I have used company vehicles for some time, with a well organised company one call to their fleet service folk was all that was ever required to get a car collected from anywhere to be serviced and returned to me wherever I happened to be.
[10/10 for the fleet service folk]

The fleet service people maintained a database of local independent garages which service vehicles. They monitored the satisfaction of users of each independent garage. The independents always did the job on the day arranged and always returned the vehicle freshly cleaned at the time they promised. They cost significantly less than main dealers and saved the company a pile of cash without compromising the service history or resale value of the vehicles.
[10/10 for the independent garages and the fleet service people]

At one point I had the use of a smart brand new car, alloy wheels, abs, traction control, air-conditioning, CD player etc, very nice indeed but sadly within the first 10,000 miles it developed a serious fault which rendered it unusable.
[0/10 for the manufacturer as I received no explanation as to the cause of the fault which put myself, my family and any other road users in danger.]

A call to the fleet service firm sorted collection and transport of the car to the local main dealer for repair,
[10/10 to the fleet support people]

Though the vehicle was under manufacturers warranty the manufacturers dealer did not offer a replacement.
[0/10 for manufacturer and main dealer]

A call to the fleet service firm arranged delivery of a replacement vehicle at the expense of the manufacturer.
[10/10 again for the fleet service people for looking after me]

But the main dealer is the main dealer for that manufacturer why did they not sort that out?
[0/10 again for them]

The main dealer informed me that the repair would take about 2 weeks as they could not get the parts.. they did not offer support on the replacement vehicle.
[5/10 for the main dealer because at least they let me know about the delay. (amusingly the support people got the same information to me before the main dealer)]

The fleet support folk sorted the extension on the replacement hire vehicle to be funded by the manufacturer while the new car remained off the road.
[10/10 again for the fleet support folk]

Earlier than expected the main dealer called to say the vehicle was repaired, could I come and collect it? wait a moment, this is their car, it was faulty and I have to come and collect it?
[0/10 again for the main dealer]

On arriving I had found the car parked behind many other vehicles, I doubted very much that the repair had just been finished, the car looked as if it had been parked for days.
[5/10 for the main dealer - at least they got it finished in a shorter time than they had advised and exceeded my expectations on something]

The car had been serviced and repaired, but in a marked contrast to the independent garages that had usually serviced the vehicles it had neither been washed nor returned to me, I had to waste my time to collect it.
[0/10 yet again for the main dealer]

I left the replacement hire car at the main dealer, they did not at first want to give me a receipt for it... "hey this is thousands of pounds of vehicle here and I am giving you the keys, I want a receipt..."
[3/10 for the main dealer because they eventually do write a note.]

A final call to the fleet support folk who immediately offered to sort out the issues of the hire replacement vehicle so I had no need to think any more about it.
[10/10 for the fleet support people yet again]

This is a real story. What does it tell me?

Well the simple things...

• I will never ask a "main dealer" to do anything to any of my vehicles as I am just a number to them and rather than "serving me" they seem to be "serving themselves".
• I will try to use local smaller companies with stake holders I can meet face to face, where my custom may actually mean something to the firm, like the independent garages, who because they want my business and because they go out of their way to do a good job and ensure that I can see they have done it (they even clean the car remember) make me feel wanted and valued.
• I will try to hunt out specialists like the fleet service company if I want someone to solve my problems and help me, rather than help themselves.

What might all this tell you?

Again perhaps some simple things

• If you have a large organisation where your customer facing employees are not enabled to delight your customers, where their esteem, satisfaction and perhaps personal commercial success is not linked to customer retention, consider making them into a small subsidiary with decision makers on the ground right in front of their customers.
• In fact if you are a large organisation serving small customers you may have an inherent structural problem. This may be true in reverse, if you are a small supplier serving large customers you may also have problems, getting paid is one that springs to mind from loads of examples in Britain :-)
• If you have a large organisation there will be plenty for specialists to chip away at, you have got to excel at something, perhaps being excellent at something is more important than doing "lots of things".
• If you have a small organisation study the big guys, the "main dealers" and "manufacturers", because there will be a whole pile of their customers whose needs are just not being met. You could find a specialist niche right under your noses which the large company will not even miss when you attack it because they do not even know it is there.

Which one is your business like?
the independent, the service organisation, the manufacturer or the main dealer?

[Author mark@sticky-marketing.net date 10/03/01]

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