RESPECTING EMOTION WITH EMPATHY IS THE BEST WAY TO ESTABLISH RAPPORT AND ACHIEVE A POSITIVE OUTCOME
Distressed customers involved in a vehicle accident can suffer a traumatic experience. This is simply due to the fact that this unplanned, unpleasant and unfortunate event can result in personal injury, health, disability and property/vehicle damage. Additionally, it can also affect them emotionally, socially, psychologically and financially.
Therefore, professionally managing and quickly satisfying traumatized collision customers is the biggest challenge and the most critical part of providing high quality customer care.
EMPATHY IS THE KEY
When you meet and greet your collision customers, you have to sympathize with them, hold onto your big smile and avoid phrases like “welcome back” or “see you again.” It’s common courtesy to first ask about your customers health and wellbeing after the accident.
Expressing sympathy by sharing feelings is much appreciated by anxious customers and creates the rapport that you seek with them.
It’s not so easy to deal with and satisfy collision customer concerns compared with those of preventive maintenance service customers. You cannot market to these types of customers by sending service visits reminders or depend on their retention ratings.
When someone is upset or very angry, they are not able to think clearly or reason well. As service providers, expressing empathy to any upset customer absorbs the emotion, allowing the agitated customer to think more logically.
Empathy can actually make the interaction with the emotional customer develop faster, with improved results, and allows you to connect with your customer, establish rapport and create a sense of teamwork between both parties.
“Once a customer realizes that you are on their side, they will be more willing to work with you to fix the problem, or will allow you the time to resolve the issue,” said Michael Hess, founder and CEO of Skooba Design.
This makes the resolution process go more swiftly because you are working together with the customer. The cooperation of the customer ensures that the resolution will be better.
GO THE EXTRA MILE
Once you’ve empathized with the customer, you can then proceed to fix their damaged vehicle back to pre-accident condition. If you simply solve the problem without making an effort to soothe their irritation, they probably won’t be fully satisfied.
You can compare dealership fixed operations to those of a hospital. The service department can be viewed as similar to a regular health care ward, the parts department to a prescription pharmacy and collision care as the emergency room/cosmetic surgical ward.
On the staff side, we can compare the service advisor/appraiser to nursing staff, parts advisors to pharmacists and certified technicians to doctors.
Procedures to deal with patients having a common cold or in need of surgery are not the same. However they must be treated politely, fairly, with dignity and respect — regardless what brings them to your dealership collision centre.
Recently, an angry customer came back, complaining about noisy front brakes, following a rear bumper replacement as the result of a minor accident. The customer claimed that the brake noise was a result of the accident and that it would cause them to be involved in another accident.
After listening attentively, I explained in a soft tone that noisy front brakes have no relation whatsoever with the rear bumper replacement and it’s not a part of an insurance claim either. It’s a similar concept to complaining about toothache after hitting your foot at the doorstep, and blaming that as a root cause when going to your dentist about the toothache.
OBJECTIVE APPROACH
When you’re dealing with angry and difficult customers, you have to act as a benevolent referee and sometimes you need to be both the judge and jury. Often, you don’t have the luxury of making a wrong verdict given the impact it could have on your collision business.
Your first step is to determine whether the problem is real or imagined. In the case of the customer mentioned above, as a goodwill gesture we did perform a free brake inspection and found both front rotors were rusty (surface rust could have built up over time due to the vehicle being parked for extended periods, while waiting for approval or parts).
After witnessing brakes and tires that were unsafe, the customer understood and approved a complete brake job along with installing a set of winter tires and thanked us for performing the work.
Being an automotive customer service provider requires many different talents, such as a positive attitude, patience, effective communication with active listening skills and a keen sense of discretion.
Ultimately, the bottom line of your collision business depends on the service providers/appraisers working on the front line. Those that truly care about their customers, tend to be part of businesses that are far more lucrative than those that don’t.
