My wife and I recently purchased a used car in preparation for our first child (our current vehicle is not too car seat friendly). Within a few days, we noticed small spots of oil on our driveway. We called the dealership we purchased the car from, and received an extremely poor response: "Well, if it's part of the drive train it's covered under warranty, but if not, it would be a service fee."
Now I don't want to come across as entitled with this post, but we had had the car for less than a week, and noticed it leaking oil. It was a fantastic opportunity for the dealership to do the right thing and say something like: "We're so sorry, bring it in right away and we'll take a look at what could be happening."
Instead, after getting nowhere after a couple emails and calls, we took the car to a local authorized dealer, and they did an oil change which fixed the issue (apparently there's a gasket that needs to be replaced every time there's an oil change performed on these cars).
We let the first dealership know that was the issue, so that they didn't make the same mistake on the next sale, and a gain the opportunity to do the right thing was lost.
This is an event where the dealership that sold us the car could have created raving fans for their business, and potential referrals. Instead, if people ask us about our experience, we'll share our story about how they were unhelpful.
What does this all mean? We're in a time where we can no longer run businesses that are just "good enough." We're connected through our technology, and a bad customer experience can spread faster than ever. My thought is that we need to hold ourselves to better experience standards as businesses, not out of fear of backlash online, but because it's the right thing to do.
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