A company’s competitiveness in the market comes in roughly two forms. One is explicit — it shows directly in the financials, the products or the marketing. The other is implicit — built through the organisation, the people and the customer service.
Within that implicit competitiveness, customer service can be improved by listening carefully to customer feedback and actively meeting customer expectations. By constantly improving the service experience and getting closer to the customer from more angles, you can truly understand what customers need — and so provide better service and better products.
Picture a driver coming to our station to fuel up. From the moment he drives in, to the moment he drives out after fuelling — or after trying the free wash with fuel — how long has it been since we talked to him? How long since we listened to his feedback, or asked what he needs? Whether the station is busy or quiet, the attendants and the managers alike have lost the enthusiasm to talk to customers, and have closed the channel for hearing what customers need.
The car wash industry is the same. After a customer buys a machine, the department they talk to most is customer service — yet most companies’ customer service can only do one thing: fix the problem at hand. As for understanding customer needs and listening to feedback, very few manage it at all.
Listen to feedback, focus on feedback
Whether it is a gas station or the car wash industry, you need to know exactly what customers need before you can give the most effective answer and meet their expectations. From real feedback — positive or negative — a company can spot problems it normally misses, focus its limited service energy on what customers care about most urgently, solve problems fastest, and improve its own service or products. That is how implicit competitiveness grows and supports the company’s development.
Improve service, meet expectations
Gas stations and the car wash industry can improve customer service, focus precisely on what customers care about, build a process for improvement, and meet customer expectations to the fullest — creating value for the company.
The author recalls the example of Toyota during the 2008 global financial crisis. To deal with falling sales, Toyota reportedly took a number of steps, including having technicians take part in vehicle sales. The idea was that technicians understand a car’s performance and features, so they could help customers with questions about buying and using a car, and raise customer satisfaction. Toyota began having technicians join vehicle sales at some dealerships in Japan and the United States. The technicians received sales training, learned the sales process and its skills, and worked with salespeople to give customers more professional service. The move had some effect, helping Toyota steady its market and hold its sales share.
In the author’s account, when the economy recovered, those technicians returned to technical roles, bringing with them the feedback they had heard from customers and the needs they had come to understand — and so designed cars that satisfied customers better and met their expectations more fully.
With electric vehicles growing fast and the number of gas stations falling year by year, the gas-station industry and the car wash industry are both entering an era of competition for existing customers. Only by listening to customer feedback and meeting customer expectations can you keep your customers — and serve them well.