Whatever Happened to GREAT Customer Service?

When were you last wowed? 0:00

[Steve Shaw] Welcome back to Fixed Ops Focus with Steve Shaw and Mr. Dave Rogers. What's on your mind today, Dave?

Dave Rogers: How you doing there, brother? Everything's on my mind. It's been a busy week. It's crazy. It's only Tuesday and it's still crazy.

Steve Shaw: Halfway through the month, give or take?

Dave Rogers: Date-wise, almost, but not working-days-wise. I'm not counting Labor Day, because we didn't have every store open, and even where we were open it wasn't a full day, so it's twenty-five days this month. I guess today would have been the twelfth, so I guess we're crossing over the halfway point. We were talking the other day, I think on one of our last episodes, and I wanted to talk about your wow. You had mentioned we're lacking the wow in the car business. It was something we chatted about briefly, and I know a lot of this stuff is fresh on your mind. I want to hear what you have to say, because you're not in a dealership every day, so you have a very unique look at it.

Steve Shaw: I will tell you, I am in a state of not being wowed. I was looking back, thinking, when was the last time somebody blew my mind in the customer service arena? And I could ask you this too: when did you last go, "Wow, that was cool. That was an amazing dinner. That was the best service I've ever had"? I can't think of one in at least a year. I could tell you the brain surgeon wowed me. He wowed the heck out of me, and everybody in the hospital was a wow. But since a year ago, last October, I can't think of being wowed anywhere. A resort, a car dealer, you name it. I can't even think of the last time I was wowed. I think it's just gone.

And I don't even know what to do about it. I'm supposed to be a trainer and talk about that. And I hate to say it, but with some of my clients, there's a lack of the wow in their world. I will tell you about one dealership a little later that gives me about as close to a wow as I'm going to get. But it's rare. What happened to all of that? What happened to going out of your way for somebody when they bring their car in?

No wow anywhere, not even buying a house 2:40

[Dave Rogers] It's not as common as you'd think it would be. I've experienced a little bit here and there, different instances. But I was thinking, when you were saying it, that sometimes the wows you get now are just because people did a little bit more than average. They've lowered the standard of what a wow is, right? You just bought an eighty-some-thousand-dollar vehicle, so you understand that. I bought a house in the last year, and I will tell you, I thought the real estate side sucked. There was no wow at all. I thought the mortgage company people sucked. That's as major a purchase as you can get, and there wasn't one wow moment in buying it.

And it's everything down the line. Calling the heating and air conditioning company to come over and do the annual service: zero wow. Zero. So you're right. There has been no wow in at least the last couple of years, since COVID. I think COVID got rid of the wow.

Steve Shaw: My realtor, when I had my house up for sale. Talk about a not-wow. I don't even know what you call that. It was the worst experience ever. In fact, he sent me a snarky email about three days before our listing was expiring. I think he was drunk. Listen, I'm not going to tell you I don't ever go on a rant or get upset. People I know, people who are close to me, even clients, have done things I have not liked. But I certainly wouldn't tell them that, and I certainly wouldn't be anything but professional with somebody. It's a scratch-your-head moment.

One of my buddies in the business says, "Don't get mad at your money," right? If somebody's paying you to do something, you do your job. And I always say "yes, and right now." "I will absolutely do that for you." I try to, as much as humanly possible. But gosh darn, there's not much of anything in return. Your real estate agent sucks, the mortgage people suck. I'm working on printing my book. I'll show it without the cover. It's five hundred pages, and the inside is gorgeous, but they didn't wow me. I spent a lot of money. I said, "Here's what I want my cover to look like," and they sent me back a blue cover. Blank. I just gave you guys a lot of money, I gave you a design, I said this is what I want, and you send me a blank book with 546 pages in it. So it's not just the auto industry. It's rampant in the service field everywhere you go. And I don't know if there's something that can be done about it.

A tip for opening the refrigerator 5:49

[Dave Rogers] If you look at it now, you go to a self-serve kiosk to order a coffee, and the first question it asks when you go to pay is about a tip. We've lowered the bar so much that somebody gets a tip for what? Nothing, right? Can you imagine doing that at work? A little tip jar for my service advisors or my technicians? A technician just replaced the transmission in your car: "Well, I could really use a tip for doing that." The bar, the benchmark, has been lowered so much that anything slightly above normal I consider a pleasant experience. But it's not a wow. It's really not. It's stupid.

Steve Shaw: Like you said. I'm standing at a bar in Key West, literally a bar no bigger than my bathroom, right? I ordered a couple of waters and some beers for some friends. The guy turns around, and the next thing on the screen when I slide my card: twenty percent, twenty-five percent, thirty percent. I'm like, you just turned around, opened the refrigerator and put something on the counter, and I'm supposed to give you a thirty percent tip on an already overinflated price?

Dave Rogers: It's not like you made me a nice smoky old-fashioned or something, right? You hand me two beers and two waters, and you want a thirty percent tip. Listen, I think the benchmark has been lowered. I don't know if it was COVID. I don't know if it was happening before COVID, I don't remember. But it seems to be a lot worse since COVID. The level of service you get anywhere is just not there. I've been to California, I've been traveling a lot, and I haven't been wowed anywhere I've been. Not even hotels. They're not bad, it's not terrible, but I wouldn't say there's been a wow moment once in the last year, traveling as much as I have.

Why go where nobody's nice? 7:53

[Steve Shaw] No. And if you'd asked me ten years ago... I can remember being out to lunch with two fixed ops directors, clients, and we were talking about Amazon. These two guys loved Amazon, even back in the day. And I said, "You know what? I'm never shopping on Amazon. I like the local mom-and-pop, and I'll spend a couple bucks more to go to the local mom-and-pop." I'll tell you what: I haven't been in a grocery store in over two months now. I'm not going. Why would I? I've got to go to the checkout counter and check myself out, do all that, and the people aren't nice at the grocery store, even. Why would I go? I'm going to shop on Amazon, buy everything online and have it dropped off at my front door. I don't have to tip Amazon.

Dave Rogers: That's probably one of the reasons why there's no wow anymore. Everybody's remote. You DoorDash, right? If the guy puts the bag next to your front door, you're giving him a tip because he put it in the right place. The standard is just terrible. I think ninety percent of the hospitality business out there right now would do their job remotely, with a kiosk, if they could. If they didn't have to actually talk to people and say hi to people, they probably would. And they still want their thirty percent tip. But how do you get it back? What's the mathematical formula to get back a wow? Do you have to pay more? What do you have to do? I don't get it. But you're right. Even at the premium stores, where's the wow?

Somebody has to own it 9:32

[Steve Shaw] I always say somebody's got to own it, right? The manager, the owner, the general manager. Somebody's just got to walk back there and say, "Enough. Enough." I was talking to a buddy of mine, a fixed ops director in the Midwest, and he was saying we've got to get back to the days when you'd do something for free for somebody. When you'd put wipers on for free, or, I don't know, set the radio. I mean, how come, Dave, really, does it cost me $300 to have my key fob programmed? That is insanity, for something like that. And it just tells our customer we don't really care about them. That's the worst not-wow ever.

Dave Rogers: Well, the biggest problem with that is that the key fob itself is two hundred, two hundred and fifty bucks, because there's so much crap in a key now. You've got to put all this stuff in there. You can't put your hand in your pocket, pull your key out and hit the unlock button anymore, right? God forbid you put a blade in something. We can't do that anymore. Everything's got to be hands-free. So there's so much stuff in there, and it takes the technician thirty minutes to program the thing. So yeah, you're paying three hundred dollars, but two hundred of it is the part.

I was just thinking about the last time I got wowed. We're going to New York City in a couple of weeks for Gina's birthday, to Wolfgang's Steakhouse in Manhattan. The last time I was there, my daughter met us, Gina was there, our kids were there, and that was a good old-fashioned wow. The waiters fell all over you, the steak, the service, everything. But that is Manhattan, and it's been a couple of years now. Now that you've got the new mayor in there, the socialists and the politicians, I don't know what to expect this year. We'll see if we can make it there safely. But that was probably the last time I was wowed, a couple of years ago, and it was at a high-end restaurant.

Steve Shaw: Well, there's a steak place here in Marathon, Florida, that generally has amazing food, and I always sit at the bar. So maybe I'll go down there on Thursday and see if I can get a wow experience out of a steakhouse, right? Now, it is Marathon, Florida, so you do have to temper your expectations versus a New York City steakhouse. But it's a pretty good place. So let's see if we get a wow out of that one.

Dave Rogers: Good luck, right? Hopefully you get it.

Steve Shaw: Listen, my favorite hamburger joint is less than a half mile from me. I think it's got the best burgers in town, the best burgers I've ever had. It's called Burdines, so here's a free plug for Burdines. They've got the best French fries, real potatoes, real fries, and the burger is off-the-chart amazing. I love to go there for the burger. But I can tell you this right now: they suck at customer service, right? You sit at the bar and they're too busy to deal with you. They're just too busy. And it diminishes the experience so much. I love their burger so much, and if anybody ever asks, "Who's got the best burger in the world?" Burdines. "Who's got the worst service?" Burdines.

Killing 'em with kindness in Jersey City 12:53

[Dave Rogers] Expectations are down. I just really wish that anybody out there in a customer-facing job would put a smile on their face. A long time ago I was in Jersey City. I always bring Jersey City up, right? I got there in 1994, I think it was, and it was cold, gray, never sunny, and it stunk. There was a trash incinerator next door. There was a sewage plant in Newark, not even ten miles, five miles south, and you'd get a whiff of that every once in a while. I was up there six years, and I think we saw the sun twice. It was always cold, clammy, gray. It was just very unfriendly.

And at my Chrysler store, which I was running from '96 to 2000, my point when I ran that store was: kill 'em with kindness. Kill everyone with kindness. We were going to be the only people in Jersey City who were happy to see you. And we used to do it. Somebody would come in the door, and we'd fall all over them. "How you doing today? Welcome to the store." And when I tell you, Steve, this was the biggest shithole store... I used to be amazed that people would drive their forty-five-thousand-dollar Grand Cherokees, at the time, into this hole we were in. You went in the garage door and you went down, because the floor had sunk. It was built on a parking lot, and over the years it just sunk. And if it rained, rats came out of the drain in the shop. That's how bad it was. It was terrible.

But we were the friendliest people on the planet. If you came in, we killed you with kindness. And we became a Five Star dealer inside of about six months. I think it was a 4.0 scale, and our CSI went from like two to 3.9 or something like that inside of three or four months, because all we did was be nice to people. And nobody in Jersey City was nice to people. It was amazing, right? So we raised the bar. But it taught me something back then: you don't have to be the best. You just have to be better than your neighbors, better than everybody around you. That's really what it is.

Steve Shaw: Is that like when you're being chased by a bear? You don't have to be the fastest. You just have to be faster than the last guy.

Dave Rogers: You just can't be the slowest. You can be the second slowest. That's right.

A smile doesn't cost a thing 15:19

[Steve Shaw] Listen, I smile all the time. I'm generally always in a great mood. And look, I don't expect people to be jovial Steve. But a smile doesn't cost you a thing, and having a great attitude doesn't cost you a thing. I have a buddy who always says we chose this job, right? Nobody forced you to be a service advisor or a service manager. It's not Russia in the eighties. They didn't say, "Your job is to grow up to be an advisor." We chose this position. And this position is customer service. It's customer friendly, it's smiling, it's having a good attitude, and it's always, "Find a solution for me." That's all.

Look, we're going to screw up. I've screwed up royally on a lot of things. But there's always got to be a solution. There's always got to be a good attitude. I made a snarky comment, like, look, if you're not going to do X, Y and Z at your dealership... I was watching Caddyshack, right? Judge Smails, Ted Knight, said, "The world needs ditch diggers too." There are other things you can do in this world besides being in the service industry, so go do that. If putting a smile on your face doesn't make you happy, go out and do something else. It's going to be okay.

Dave Rogers: It's a shame how we've built this business around people like that, who are just miserable and never smiling, whatever the case may be. It's a shame that we tolerate any of this stuff. If somebody walks into the store, they should be treated with a smile. I don't care if it's a Hyundai or Kia store, I don't care if it's a Mazda store, a JLR store, Mercedes-Benz, BMW. All customers should be treated the same. You should be happy they're there. We shouldn't look miserable. I think that's half the battle. If we could do that, I think we'd be semi-wow.

Steve Shaw: Is it like the ShamWow?

Dave Rogers: Yeah, it'd be like a ShamWow. There you go. I like that. That's what I want to be. Not a scam wow, a ShamWow. But I think we should do that. We should work our way back up to wow. That's going to be the goal. That's going to be my goal for 2027: to get some more wow in my stores. It's a great point, if you think about it.

Steve Shaw: And listen, I love it when I come up to Jersey once a year to visit, and everybody's always pissed off, right? So it wouldn't take much. If everybody's at this base level of mad, and you're just not quite as angry as everybody else, you would blow people's minds up there. And I think that's the same really anywhere. If we just kicked it up one notch, just one little notch, and were better than our neighbor, better than the other guy... Man, I think we could get to, "Who cares what you charge me?" I just don't even care what you charge me if you're going to give me a wow experience, if you're going to get me to a yes, if you're going to get me to right now. "Hey, look, man, my checkbook is open." And I think there are still people who'll go along with that. That's the value side of the equation, right? And you say it all the time: if you keep telling me no, why am I going to open my pocket when you ask me a question?

Make somebody's day 18:32

[Dave Rogers] Right. You're never going to do it. That's the insanity of what we do. How about you just try to make somebody's day? How about you try to do something for somebody once a day? Do something for one of your customers, one of your coworkers, I don't care who it is. Just try to make somebody's day. And they'll probably buy you flowers and buy you lunch in a week, because they won't expect it. It's so true, though. We have this negative attitude now. Everybody wants to say, "No, we can't do that. No, we don't do this." What about yes, right now? What about making their day? Just make somebody's day. Say yes for once. "Absolutely, Steve, I'll get you a loaner car, no problem. What do you want? You want the Escalade out back? You want my car? What do you want? I'm going to give you the big boat." Do something.

Steve Shaw: When I used to travel all the time, I was that guy. I was not a nice person in the TSA line, right? I won't go into all of the conspiracy and the detail. But when I went through TSA, I was not nice. I didn't like to be patted down, all of that. I'd be nice, smiling, everything, and then I'd get to the TSA line and put my growl on, go through, and be happy again on the other side. And then one day I just said, I want to be the guy where your day's better because you've interacted with me, right? I just changed my mindset. I want your day to be better because you interacted with me. "I don't like you, and I don't believe in what you're doing, but I'm going to go with it." And I'm just not going to be a jackass anymore going through TSA.

So I stopped. I still go through, but I don't give those guys a hard time. They've got a job to do. Okay, fine. Maybe you don't even like your job, but that's what you've been sidelined to do. Fine, whatever. But I'm not going to make your day worse because you interacted with me. And I think that would be the first step, right? Just make people's day a little bit better because they interacted with us. That's the perfect thing.

GM tip: set the example 20:36

[Dave Rogers] I would think that would be the GM tip of the day right there. Just try to make somebody's day once a day. Let's practice on our family. Let's practice on our friends, right? It doesn't even have to be a customer. Then start working your way up. Maybe try to make your dog's day. Let's start slow and work our way up. But I think that's what everyone should be trying to do, especially if you're in a customer-facing situation. You should be trying to bring a smile to somebody's face. Take some of the edge off. You don't know what people are going through.

And you know what? It's not going to work every time. You're going to get a miserable fuck. You're going to get somebody like Steve who just wants to make somebody's day miserable, right? But just know that you did your best and tried. And GMs out there, why don't you try doing it with some of your employees? Set the example. That's what I would say. Because everybody is miserable out there now. I don't know what the hell it is. We need more wow, man. We need more wow. Not a scam wow, not a ShamWow. We need wow.

Steve Shaw: We need wow. Let's end it on that note right there. Talk to you next week.

Dave Rogers: All right, brother, I'll talk to you, man.