Category Archives: Reviews

Jimmy Johns and the Customer Service Fail [UPDATED]

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Jimmy Johns is a local sandwich joint. This was our experience on Customer Appreciation Day. They deserve every bit of this criticism. You never know who that customer you’re mistreating is or what they know how to do. Spread the word and show them that they should pay better attention to social media. It’s a two-way street. You cannot control the conversation, nor can you ignore it.

Here is a picture of the sandwich she was given:

 

 

 

 

 

 

“We went to Jimmy Johns on “Customer Appreciation” Day. My friend ordered by number with NO special directions. She got a sandwich that was LITERALLY turkey on bread. Nothing else. She called to see if they’d replace it and the response was “sure, but you have to wait in line again. We have lots of other customers.” I posted to their Facebook page hoping that someone at their corporate office would care but all they did was delete my post. (edit: they responded after I wrote this). I guess they didn’t care. This was more like anti-Appreciation day. My office is in the same building as their store and we eat there A LOT. Do they care? If you want a sandwich fast that may or may not be what you actually ordered and don’t care about customer service and want to support a corporation that could care less as well, then feel free to patronize this establishment. If, on the other hand, you appreciate customer service, quality food and a caring business, I wouldn’t waste even a dollar here. The impression we have of them was completely ruined on the one day that they wanted to “appreciate” their customers. If this is how they treat customers when they want to appreciate them, it’s all downhill from there. Thank you, Jimmy Johns for caring about us, your customers, on your Customer Appreciation Day. Good thing Subway isn’t far away!”

[UPDATE 10/26: Jimmy John's corporate office sent me a $10 gift card and apology letter. I must admit that the letter didn't seem like a form letter so it did seem sincere. The store itself didn't (and still hasn't) acknowledged that the problem even happened.]

iPhone 5 and iOS 6: My Thoughts

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I’ve had the iPhone 5 and iOS 6 for 5 days now so I thought I’d write a mini-review of my thoughts on both. This is certainly NOT a comprehensive review. Many of those exist already. These are just my personal impressions.

It’s light. – The iPhone 5 is certainly lighter than any previous iPhone. I like this feature as I typically carry my phone in my pocket. It’s hard to feel and sometimes I can’t even remember which pocket it’s in. That being said, I don’t get the impression that it’s less durable. In fact, one of the biggest complaints about it, according to Gizmodo who analysed the chatter about it, is the fact that it is too light.

It’s fast. – I can tell the difference in speed between the iPhone 5 and the iPhone 4S. I also had a Samsung Galaxy S III and it is certainly on par with that. This is in line with Mashable’s recent article comparing the speed of the two.

LTE rocks. – The one thing I LOVED about the Samsung Galaxy S III was the LTE ability. The iPhone 4S still used 3G and it was very slow. Sometimes painfully so. The new LTE integration rocks. Seeing as I recently moved to Chapel Hill, NC (which has great LTE coverage presumably due to UNC and it’s student body), I have excellent LTE coverage. Being that I did not where I lived in California, I love this.

It’s unlocked out of the box. – Not that I ever want to do business with or have a phone with service on AT&T but, according to the Huffington Post, the Verizon version of the iPhone 5 comes unlocked straight from the factory. It’s nice to know but I doubt I will ever need it. However, that being said, when the iPhone 6 (or 5S) comes out, I have double the market of people to sell it to, which is nice. Personally, if I were going to pay full price for the phone and I had AT&T service, I would buy the Verizon version and use it on AT&T since it comes unlocked whereas the AT&T version does not.

Facebook Integration. – Being a social media guy, this was a huge deal for me. The iPhone Facebook app sucks. Really sucks. It’s painfully slow. The ability to post to Facebook straight from my phone is great. It’s easy and painless. You can also use Siri to do it just like you can with tweets. I don’t really use Siri but it’s nice to know that I could if I wanted to. Another benefit to the Facebook integration is authorizing apps. In previous versions of the OS, when you wanted to authorize an app to access your Facebook account, it would flip open a Safari page and you had to type in your e-mail address and password to complete the authorization. In iOS 6, it still flips open a Safari page but because your Facebook account information is on your phone, it authorizes it and returns to the app, similar to what happens with logging into a website or connecting a website to Facebook while logged in to Facebook on your computer.

Do Not Disturb – I love this! It’s very nice to be able to set DND for specific times and not get an e-mail received alert at 2am (since the early morning hours are typically when retailers seem to think is the best time to send e-mails). If you add people to your favorites, it will allow those calls to come through (like your wife, kids, or whomever else you like) and block the rest.

Maps. – Suck. Yes, they do. Very much so. I attempted to get directions to a place that was about 5 miles away or less. It gave me directions to a place in Texas. Yeah, big fail. No matter how hard, or how specific, I got. Texas came up every time. Apparently, Apple is a Texas fan. Maybe it is because everything’s bigger there or they didn’t want to mess with Texas.

App Store – I like the new presentation of the iTunes/app store. It’s easier to navigate and you get more information without jumping back and forth between the search results list and actual information about an app. You just flip through the search results similar to how you would in the Music app on the phone with the information right on every result.

EarPods – I have yet to open or try these but they look cool and come with a storage case. It’s hard to want to use them in lieu of my Beats by Dre Studio headphones. Just saying.

New connector – Personally, I don’t have any issues with it. Yes, I know it is inconvenient and forces you to pay $29 for the adapter (assuming you want to use your old accessories with your new iPhone). I like that you can insert it into the iPhone 5 any way (ie. there’s no “right way” as there is with the old connector. My guess is that Apple got sick of replacing damaged iPhones from people attempting to force the 30-pin connector upside down. Of course, it could also be about money. Or both.

Cases (or lack thereof) – I’m not a fan of cases so I don’t really care. If you’re a case fan, I’m sure there will  be plenty of cases available for you soon. Personally, I think the iPhone 5 is very well designed and nice looking as is. By adding a case, you increase the phone’s weight and that is one of the features I like the most. If you tend to drop your phones or are just a paranoid person, buy the insurance from your phone carrier (typically $8-$10/mo) OR and even better (and cheaper) way to insure your phone is to add it to your homeowner’s policy as a rider. In the past, I have added my previous iPhones to my State Farm policy with a zero deductible, replacement value policy for $24 PER YEAR. Beat that.

Screen – It is longer. The best benefit of this is that you can have 5 rows of apps on a page versus 4 from before. For those who have a lot of apps or have a lot that they use often, it is nice to be able to stick those extra apps on the home screen. As for “brighter” and “more vibrant” – well, I can’t really see much of a difference. It’s still a nice screen like the iPhone 4S, however, and it seems a little more responsive since the touch functionality is integrated into the screen now rather than being a separate layer.

iCloud – I had this on my 4S. I paid the $25. It’s nice that it backs everything up and, when I got my iPhone 5, I was able to immediately restore all my apps and settings via iCloud over wi-fi so I didn’t have to wait until I got home to sync my phone. One of the features that I don’t like (and never have) is the inability to actually sync your music and physically have it on your phone without having to stream it and/or download every freakin’ song straight to my phone from iCloud. It would be much faster and more convenient to just be able to put it on my phone, as you could in the past, and not be dependent on having a wi-fi connection or eating up allocated data over LTE.

Anyways, those are my initial impressions. It ended up being longer than I anticipated, and there are plenty of features I didn’t cover, but that’s mainly because I have never used them – like AirPlay and AirPrint, etc.

Should you upgrade from your iPhone 4S? That’s up to you. It’s very similar to the decision you may, or may not, have had to made when the “New iPad” came out and you owned an iPad 2. I, personally, chose to keep my iPad 2 and NOT upgrade it. In this case, however, I chose to upgrade (obviously). Partially because I use my phone WAY more than I use my iPad and partially because I like having the newest technology (I am an early adopter. Very much so.). The choice is up to you but there are TWO features that made my decision quite easy: lighter and LTE. That was enough for me.

 

When Customers Attack

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Dealers are continuously struggling to keep customers happy. Most dealers want their customers to be happy as a happy customer can lead to more sales through word-of-mouth and referrals. CSI scores in both sales and service are essential in many ways to dealerships and can cause a multitude of problems if they’re not up to par.

Sometimes dealers are unfairly treated by customers for minor things, however.

I came across this video on YouTube quite by accident and was absolutely astounded.

I wasn’t searching for that particular dealership nor was I searching their brand or even searching their area. I’m about as far away geographically from the dealership as you could get so I can’t even blame geographical relevance. In fact, I had very broad search terms. This video still showed up on Page 4 of a Google search.

The video’s description makes this even more astounding:

“The dealership provides free Wi-Fi internet access to it’s customers, while waiting for their vehicle to be serviced. One problem: It doesn’t work.
Watch me walk around nearly the entire dealership, only to get a signal enough to grab a few bits of data, and crap out. There was a point I got a good signal, but it never returned.
It’s very hard to see, but you can see that the signal meters remain red pretty much the whole time, until the media player shut itself off. At that point, I gave up. My car was about done anyhow. This is the ONLY part of Ron Bouchard’s that is not good. Sorry Ron. :(
EPIC FAIL Internet.”

Seriously?

This YouTuber knows the power of the internet. He’s uploaded over 1,500 videos and has amassed over 2.5 million views. He’s in a dealership that he even agrees on video deserves its 5-star rating and states in the video description that this is the only part of the dealership that is not good yet he feels compelled to make a video complaining about the lack of free wi-fi despite it being advertised in the service waiting area. It’s obvious that he didn’t “mean” any harm but this dealership now shows up ranking high for search terms like “car dealer” and “fail”. In the comments, he follows up TWO YEARS LATER, stating that the wi-fi still didn’t work.

Reputation management begins with knowing what’s being said about you.

This is completely unfair to the dealership but it’s a perfect example to illustrate the importance of perfection in your customer’s dealership experience as well as the importance of monitoring what people are saying about you online.

What would you have done had this video been made about your dealership?

All Salespeople Are Liars

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For almost 3 years, I have been posting a comic every day on my Facebook account. I do this because I like to think I bring a smile to at least one person a day. I look through comics every morning in my attempt to share a “good” one. Yes, believe it or not, I do put effort into choosing which comic I post. I’ve started noticing a disturbing trend. Many comedians use reality-based comedy and it seems this also translates into comics. Syndicated comics, by their very nature, are designed to be funny and appeal to the masses. I see comics like these below on a regular basis and, personally, I do not find them funny. In fact, quite the opposite.

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We all know that the history of sales (especially car sales) has earned us a bad and, some would argue permanent, reputation amongst consumers as being deceitful, manipulative and… well.. liars.

I think everyone can agree that, as an industry, there have been a lot of changes in how car dealers do business. Some of these perception-shifts have been due to the fact that consumers not only have more access to information but also because they have access to more dealers. In the past, consumers were limited to dealers in their local area. The number of dealers they could realistically get prices from and shop was limited by how many they could physically visit and how much time they had on their hands.

The increase in the amount of information available to consumers brought the ability to access more dealers in less time. It has also brought consumers a quick and easy way in which to analyze not only different prices via internet quotes but also to identify who they want to do business with. There have been many debates and opinions over time in various automotive industry forums on how dealers should interact with customers and how much information they should share as well as hostility towards consumers, vendors, OEMs and websites for sharing information which effects a dealer’s ability to profit from a sale. In my opinion, this only fuels the stereotype. Consumer’s have access to this information and it isn’t going away. Attempts to take it away and/or make it less available only serve to promote the negative image. Consumers already don’t trust dealers. Hiding (or reducing) the amount of information available to consumers will only make them trust dealers less.

No matter what you do, you will not be able to change this stereotype for our industry as a whole. You can, however, change how you do things at your store… which is a step in the right direction.

Here is my opinion on best practices:

  1. Be transparent. If a customer asks for information, give it to them. It doesn’t matter if they ask you in person, over the phone, via an e-mail or via a 3rd party lead submission. Chances are they already know the answer. Any attempt to dodge, evade or avoid answering the question will make the customer think you have something to hide.
  2. Establish and maintain a solid online reputation. Yes, consumers are increasingly looking at the various review sites and using that information to help decide whether to do business with you.
  3. Give consumers “real” numbers up-front. Many consumers already know most of them anyways. Don’t try to undervalue trade-ins or manipulate numbers on a pencil. The days of “scraping them off the ceiling” are over. This is an “old-school” mentality and its only outcome is detracting from your dealership’s integrity. They may still buy the car but they won’t leave with a great impression of your salespeople or dealership. Of course consumers are looking for a “good deal” but, I believe, they appreciate honesty.
  4. Get rid of bad apples. If you have salespeople or management staff who lie to customers, play games, or fudge numbers or information. Fire them. They will only hurt you in the long run. Customer don’t have loyalty because you didn’t earn it from them.
  5. Take care of your customers. Your customers are your life-blood. Dealerships have more income potential in fixed-ops than in sales. Treat them like royalty and they will come back.
  6. Pay attention to your customers. Many dealerships never contact customers post-sale until the dealer believes they may be in-market again. Follow-up processes should not simply be about selling them another car. It should be about appreciation. Call them on their birthdays and anniversaries. You have a better shot at selling them another car by not trying to sell them another car.
  7. Stop treating salespeople as expendable. Most customers don’t expect their salesperson to work at your dealership long. Be a company people want to work for. Reward and encourage employees to stay around. Get rid of managers that are quick to replace salespeople. Customers will notice.
  8. Engage your customers. Don’t just pop in and out of their lives to tell them about your upcoming sale. Once you’re in their lives, stay there. Use social media, blogs, newsletters, customer appreciation events, and any other tools you can to remain not only in their lives but in their minds.

While doing these things won’t change the perception of our industry as a whole, it CAN change the perception of the most important person in existence….

Your customer.

How Reviews Stop Buying Decisions

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First, it’s been way too long since I’ve blogged. For those who care, I apologize. I’ve been very busy in my new role with a great company, 3 Birds Marketing, and I’m very grateful that they invited me to join their team.

We all know that reputation management is mandatory in today’s digital world. Consumers have increasingly more information at their fingertips and there are more choices than ever out there. With auto brands barraging consumers with marketing, consumers are continuously relying on reviews to help make buying decisions. Studies show that consumers have more confidence in reviews left by other consumers than any other type. Everyone knows the importance of building and maintaining a solid, balanced reputation across all the review sites.

When can reviews actually stop the buying process?

I’m NOT talking about someone choosing WHO to buy from necessarily. Part of the problem is that consumers are so overwhelmed by reviews about your PRODUCT that not only is it essential to maintain a great reputation as a DEALER but to also pay attention to reviews about your brand and models.

Here’s an illustration I found that details pretty accurately what can happen:

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Has this ever been you?

How do you prevent consumers from progressing past panel #1 in that comic?

Imagine this scenario… A customer comes into your dealership. They find a car they like. They go online on their phone to see if they want to do business with YOU. While reading your dealership’s reviews, they also come across product reviews from consumers saying positive things not only about YOU but also about the car they are trying to decide upon. After deciding they are comfortable with you, it’s possible that a consumer wouldn’t then feel the need to progress to product reviews on other sites and it could help avoid the progression illustrated in the comic.

In addition to not only building a solid reputation online across ALL review sites (not just focusing on a single site or two), why not also encourage your customers to say great things about your BRANDS and models?

There’s no reason why you can’t ask your customers to write a review about the car they purchase from you. Not only does this add to your reputation but it provides relevant and fresh content that could assist your dealership in not only appearing in name searches on Google but also brand and product searches.

There’s no reason why you can’t leverage consumer product and brand reviews on all of your review sites that can assist your dealership in gaining exposure that your competitor wouldn’t have.

If a consumer is trying to make a decision NOT on whether to do business with YOU but on whether to purchase your PRODUCT, a good mix of both types of reviews can certainly help prevent consumers from progressing to indecisiveness.