Car Wash Blues

Two competing car dealers returned from a “Customer Satisfaction Seminar” determined to delight their customers.  Coincidentally, both decided to offer free car washes to every service customer after every service.

While the offer was the same, the way in which they promoted the special offer was radically different.

The first dealer promoted their free car washes across all their advertising avenues. The other dealer chose not to promote it all. They simply provided the service with no mention of it.

The dealer that promoted and promised the free wash with every service received countless complaints about the wash not being up to the customer’s expectations. Complaints about spots being missed or leaving water spots on windshields left the dealer wondering what he had to do to delight his customers.

The other dealer, however, received numerous thank you letters and appreciative phone calls following his unadvertised free car washes.

He discovered what we call “The Value Equation”.  The Value Equation is simply this:

VALUE  = 

The Customer Expectation

 +   or    – 

The Customer Experience

The Customer Experience must always exceed the Customer Expectation if they are to perceive good value.

The first dealer built an expectation of a free car wash through his advertising that the customer experience could not live up to when his clean-up crew missed the smallest spot or left watermarks on the windshield.

The second dealer, however, could miss these same spots and his customers still left happy because they unexpectedly got their car washed.

Some call the value equation “under-promising and over-delivering”. Others call it “value added with every sale”.  Whatever you call it, you need to surprise and delight your customers to keep them coming back. Just doing what you promised is not enough to excite customers enough to generate more repeat business and valuable word-of-mouth advertising.

If you would like to create more customer satisfaction or “value” with your customer base, click here and we will deliver our 12 Moments of Truth to generate more word-of-mouth advertising.