Episode Description:

Two incredible companies that have changed the world at Tesla and Amazon. Taking a queue from the tech-world and creating incredible processes of automation to provide an incredible customer experience. But, what if your problem isn’t described in their drop down of possible issues? Uh oh! This episode explores the ugly side of automated customer service and challenges you on how to solve it!

Action you can take right now:

1. Ok, I admit I don’t have all the answers here, but a good place to start is mapping your customer journey, especially as it pertains to service and support. Check out Season 1 Episode 16 on more information about Customer Journey.
2. Do you have a preferred order of support? In other words you expect your customer to look at your webpage first for the answer, then maybe an email /ticket. Perhaps that escalates to a chat-bot, than a live-chat, than a phone call.
3. Define an escalation process for problems your automated systems can’t handle. When support doesn’t know the answer where do they turn? Where do they direct the customer?

Episode After-Thoughts:

You have the opportunity to CRUSH IT!!! This is where a small business can really shine and big corporations are too bloated and slow to adapt to the changing landscape of service. There is nothing wrong with automated customer service, until you have a round problem in a square hole!

Episode 47 Transcript

00:00:01 

This is Falcon 9 rocket to Mission Control or onboard. 

00:00:05 

Computer systems seem to be UN operable at this time, please advise. 

00:00:10 

Thank you for calling SpaceX. 

00:00:12 

How may we help you today? 

00:00:14 

I am reporting that our onboard computers and Falcon 9 aren’t operational at this time, please advise. 

00:00:21 

Are you having a technical issue? 

00:00:24 

Please submit a ticket using your onboard computer system goodbye. 

00:00:31 

How frustrating is it when you can’t get a hold of someone when a simple question can’t be answered or when you get a runaround, it can really ruin a customer experience. 

00:00:41 

Automation can create an incredible experience, but only sometimes that more coming up on the marketing and service.com podcast. 

00:01:00 

Hey Justin Varuzzo here from marketingandservice.com podcast, the podcast designed to help you build your business by creating incredible customer relationships. 

00:01:10 

If you find value in this episode then please take a moment to follow or subscribe. 

00:01:13 

And if you want to do me a huge favor, leave a 5 star review. 

00:01:16 

It means the. 

00:01:16 

World to me and I would love to hear from you. 

00:01:19 

Hit me up in the marketing and service. 

00:01:20 

On Facebook page, what marketing challenges are you having with your business and what would you love to learn more about? 

00:01:27 

Let me know and I might make a show just for you. 

00:01:30 

In today’s episode I want to talk a little bit about automated customer service because there are some things that make for an incredible experience. 

00:01:39 

When you have automated service and there are some things that don’t make for such a great experience. 

00:01:45 

When customer service is fully automated, a few examples I can think of is something as simple as. 

00:01:51 

If you have an issue with something on your iPhone, for example, you can open up the iPhone app. 

00:01:56 

You can get support right then in there you can schedule a time to go to the Apple Store. 

00:02:00 

Now, this doesn’t guarantee that your issue is going to be resolved, that everything is going to work out. 

00:02:05 

But the actual process of getting to the point of being able to schedule a service appointment is pretty much fully automated, and it’s very easy to do, and it works well and gets you the appointment you need at the time you need it. 

00:02:16 

Now again, doesn’t mean it’s going to solve your problem, but that first step in trying to find a solution to your problem makes for a positive customer experience. 

00:02:25 

We all know, and we’ve all been in the position where you call a company. 

00:02:29 

And you get into some automated phone tree that makes it impossible to find the answer for the problem that you’re having. 

00:02:36 

Either you can’t get ahold of someone, or you’re put on hold, or you get this run around, or you have a very simple question. 

00:02:42 

Now you got to go through 900 menus and seven different phone calls to get the answer to it. It can be incredibly frustrating. 

00:02:49 

In today’s episode, I’m going to pick on Tesla, and the reason I’m doing that is because I am seriously considering buying a Model 3 Tesla and I’m also seriously considering Tesla solar panels on my roof. 

00:03:01 

And naturally, as someone who tends to turn to the Internet to find reviews. 

00:03:05 

Of companies. I was quite surprised to see the reviews that I did. So for example, consumer affairs has an overall rating of 3.8. 

00:03:13 

For Tesla, this is primarily for their car division. Trustpilot, on the other hand, has 46% of their reviews negative. 

00:03:21 

I notice that these are much more globally based, which could be part of the problem. 

00:03:25 

A lot of posts. 

00:03:26 

France and Germany and other countries, which I didn’t really notice so much on consumer affairs. 

00:03:31 

But what was interesting is the content of most. 

00:03:34 

These the issues weren’t that people were having a particular problem. 

00:03:38 

Everyone kind of accepts. 

00:03:40 

You’re going to have problems when you’re living in the future and you are driving in that early adopter stage. 

00:03:45 

I think most people can accept that things might not be absolutely perfect, but the hope is that when you spend money, especially a lot of money on a new car, if you have an issue, it will get resolved. 

00:03:54 

And this is where Tesla is really strong. 

00:03:57 

There’s some things that they do very, very cool in the app. 

00:04:00 

For example, the entire purchase process of the car happens inside the Tesla app. 

00:04:06 

There’s almost nothing you can do in person. 

00:04:08 

In fact, during the peak of COVID, when all the dealerships were closed, you could buy the Tesla and you would simply pull into the parking lot and drive away in your new car. 

00:04:17 

Really touchless and without having to interact with the human being with everything being done within the app, this is the epitome of very cool and very incredible customer experience is built around software and automation, but like we just discussed, the real issue is when you have a problem that falls outside of the scope. 

00:04:37 

Of perfection and what I mean by that is if you have a. 

00:04:40 

Incredibly routine purchase process. 

00:04:43 

You’re doing a loan through Tesla. 

00:04:45 

You got your car in the expected timeframe. 

00:04:47 

Everything is going well. 

00:04:48 

The process works perfectly and it works flawless. 

00:04:52 

Lee beyond what any other car company could ever ever accomplish within a single app on a phone. 

00:04:57 

But when you look at all the complaints, the issues are things like. 

00:05:01 

Someone signed up for Tesla financing, but the car showed up 60 days late and now that financing is no longer any. 

00:05:07 

Good, now the app could have said hey just by the way your financing expired, but instead people would show up to the dealership and find out there were no keys in the car. 

00:05:15 

They thought they were going to get because they couldn’t close the deal because of the financing problem. 

00:05:19 

This was a very common complaint and one that seemingly seems like it would be easy to fix and put that timeframe right into the app to remind people. 

00:05:27 

Hey, these. 

00:05:27 

Pre approvals for loans are only good for 30 days or 60 days or whatever it might be. 

00:05:31 

The problems go on and on and on and on. 

00:05:34 

Now I’m beating up on Tesla because that’s on the top of my mind and that’s what I’ve been looking at a lot lately. 

00:05:39 

I’ve had the same experience and I’m sure you have two. 

00:05:41 

If you’ve ever shopped with Amazon. 

00:05:43 

They make some things like returning something so incredibly easy, right? 

00:05:47 

It’s customer centric. 

00:05:48 

You can print the label, they’ll come pick it up. 

00:05:50 

Usually they pay for it. 

00:05:52 

They make it just super super easy. 

00:05:54 

But if you have a problem that lies outside of the scope of one of the options that you can pick in a drop down menu, you’re going to. 

00:06:02 

Have a really. 

00:06:04 

Our time getting service that is going to be satisfactory in that situation and I can give a personal specific example of where this happened. 

00:06:11 

I actually lost some weight and my wedding ring no longer fits, so I wanted to buy a new band that was a little bit smaller so I had ordered one and it turns out the one I ordered was still a little too big so I ordered a second one that was a bit smaller and that one. 

00:06:24 

Was perfect somehow when I was trying these on and comparing them, I actually ended up sending back an empty box to Amazon and I noticed it about two days later after I got my refund for the thing that I returned with nothing in it. 

00:06:38 

That I had done this and I had the ring and I put it in the box that the one I was wearing had come in by mistake. 

00:06:44 

So I basically just sent back the wrong box so I get on with customer service. 

00:06:48 

After a little thin angling and trying to figure out how. 

00:06:50 

But I did finally get to someone and I said, hey, listen, you know I I have this ring it one. 

00:06:55 

I don’t want to get in trouble for this two. 

00:06:57 

It was an accident and three I do want to send it back. 

00:06:59 

How do I go about doing that and they gave me an address for a return center and said I could ship it there, but with no box, no barcode, and no nothing else. 

00:07:09 

I can’t possibly imagine how that would have gotten returned. 

00:07:13 

And when I asked about this, the second person said just keep it or throw it away. 

00:07:16 

We don’t want it back. 

00:07:18 

So the interesting part here is that with all the technology that Amazon has, what they don’t have is the ability to do something if they can’t run it through an automated scanner, which is the same issue that we’re talking about here, they created incredible automation. 

00:07:33 

Not just in the service center, but in the fulfillment in the distribution in the stocking and the pricing control in the inventory systems. 

00:07:40 

Everything is highly, highly automated. 

00:07:43 

Someone is not sitting there trying to figure out how many iPods they have to stock at Christmas time. 

00:07:48 

Those types of things are completely automated. 

00:07:50 

Looking at historical sales data to make estimates for the future. 

00:07:53 

This is why when you have one of these service issues that don’t fit into the confines, it’s almost impossible for. 

00:08:00 

Someone, no matter how zealous and over achiever they are at Amazon or Tesla, it is almost impossible for them to resolve the problem for you because they don’t have the mechanisms in which to do it. 

00:08:12 

And when you have a company that’s so large with such big scale, it’s really, really difficult to do things that aren’t strictly by. 

00:08:19 

The book, so to jump back to Tesla, for example, Teslas are fairly sophisticated vehicles, right? 

00:08:25 

We all know that they’re really kind of a car of the future. 

00:08:28 

They are more of a software company than they are a hardware company. 

00:08:32 

As crazy as that sounds, you know what makes a Tesla. 

00:08:36 

A Tesla is that software, the screen and all the things that it does. 

00:08:40 

That, and in a lot of ways that’s made Tesla a more nimble and more effective company than traditional car companies, especially right now with this chip shortage, Tesla is able to just source chips from anywhere because they just need one chip to power their computer and that powers the entire car where traditional cars have hundreds of chips that control everything from windshield wipers to power seats to all that. 

00:09:00 

That stuff, Tesla has all that, but it’s not controlled by modules within those devices. 

00:09:05 

They’re literally all triggered by software on the main computer of the car, which again, automation. 

00:09:11 

The processes are amazing. 

00:09:12 

The downside if anything goes wrong with that particular computer, your entire car is now dead, where obviously you can have broken heated seats. 

00:09:20 

You can have broken lights. 

00:09:21 

You know all sorts of broken things on a car, traditional gas car, and it’s going to be just fine, unless it’s something that significantly impacts the drivetrain, like the engine or the transmission, then you might be in. 

00:09:33 

But that’s just an example. 

00:09:34 

Again of these automated processes that create incredible experiences, but can also create the incredibly frustrating experience. 

00:09:43 

So one of the most common things is that the people on the phone don’t have the product knowledge that they need to have to serve the customer. 

00:09:50 

This is especially true with the Tesla cars. 

00:09:52 

Now that kind of makes sense if you think about it, an operator giving Technical Support at a level one in Tesla is probably not driving $120,000 Model S, yet they’re answering questions about that car all day. 

00:10:05 

Day long, and because those people don’t have any practical experience behind the wheel of that car, they really don’t know what they’re talking about. 

00:10:12 

They rely on databases and Q&A’s and other things that is common in all service and support mechanisms, especially in large companies you can’t expect that everyone in the service department is going to have a full understanding of every single product in feature. 

00:10:26 

That a company puts out. 

00:10:27 

But when you have a company like Tesla that only makes 3 different models. 

00:10:31 

With very few configuration options, it should be a lot easier to train staff to really understand all of the feature sets within that vehicle. 

00:10:40 

And clearly Tesla has failed to do this because the most common issue is that the operators and the phone support cannot answer any questions and no matter what, we’ll just say Oh well. 

00:10:51 

We’ll do a mobile service where with a Tesla, because there’s not a lot of dealerships they’ll come to you and fix the car if you are outside of one of their service areas, but of course that service is limited to certain things and. 

00:11:03 

For the people who own these cars, you would usually know if something is limited to a mobile service where someone can just come out and say, oh hey, I’m going to hit this button. 

00:11:11 

I’m going to reset this and you’re going to be good to go versus hey, the motor fell out of the back of my car. 

00:11:17 

You can expect that a mobile service Rep is not going to be able to just Jack that up and fix it in a parking lot of your work. 

00:11:23 

And one of the complaints is that no matter what, it’s just, Oh yeah, we’ll do a mobile ticket and someone will come out and take a look at this. 

00:11:29 

And it’s like, wait, no, I know this is not something that can’t be done. 

00:11:31 

It’s got to get back to the dealership. 

00:11:33 

No, don’t worry about we’re going to send out the mobile tech, so I see that over and over and over and over again and again. 

00:11:38 

I understand the complexity of this situation here because now you’re what you’re really asking. 

00:11:43 

Is for an operator or a phone support person. 

00:11:46 

To determine what is actually wrong with the car. 

00:11:50 

So my guess is Tesla wants to air on the side of caution, it’s probably much more expensive to send out the mobile Rep to just say hey, this is something silly you didn’t plug it in or the battery is dead. 

00:12:01 

Or any one of the common things that anyone in tech support deals with 90% of the time. 

00:12:06 

But you see, that’s the problem. 

00:12:08 

Is that it’s the 10% of the time that drives people nuts. It’s the 10% of the time that leads to 46% of the reviews being negative when it comes to service. 

00:12:18 

It’s that 10% of the time that takes a company from five stars to three stars. That 10% is the part that is the challenge. 

00:12:28 

And that is also the part where you can really turn things around and be the winner in that customer service equation. 

00:12:35 

And that’s what I want you to think about with your business is what are you doing for the 10%? 

00:12:41 

Maybe you have no automation. 

00:12:43 

Maybe you’re very small business and you deal with every single customer personally and that’s amazing. 

00:12:47 

But then your challenge is going to be, how do you scale past that? 

00:12:51 

If you’re the gatekeeper of all service and support at some point? 

00:12:55 

If you’re running your business and you’re growing, you’re not going to be able to do that anymore. 

00:12:59 

You’re going to have to trust someone else to do that, and the person you’re entrusting with that is not going to have the knowledge that you have, which means that you’re going to have to build out some type of mechanism or some type of procedure that’s going to cover a lot of the common issues so that person is able to adequately respond. 

00:13:14 

The other issue is that you will still need that escalation process, because if someone does get stuck and they say hey, you know I look through everything I have here and I don’t think I can find the answer to this particular problem. 

00:13:24 

Where does it go from there? 

00:13:26 

And this is one of the other big issues and complaints that I see for both Amazon and Tesla. 

00:13:31 

And again, I’m just picking these two companies because I’ve had personal experiences. 

00:13:34 

So far with them that are at the top of my mind. 

00:13:37 

But this goes for any tech company really it’s the tech industry. 

00:13:40 

It kind of really drove the whole idea. 

00:13:42 

Of community support and no customer service, and I think that’s pretty much always been the case in tech. 

00:13:48 

I mean, I go back to when I was six or seven years old and dad brought home the first IBM PC. 

00:13:54 

I don’t think there were phone numbers on the back of those software packages where you could call and ask silly questions like how do I turn this on? 

00:14:00 

It was expected you were going to read the manual and figure it out. 

00:14:03 

And back then there were no updates either. 

00:14:04 

What was final was final. 

00:14:06 

If you bought something that was it, it is what it was you were going to get updates a month later fixing a bunch of things that were broken, which in one way made them set out to take their time and really make things right because the software back then worked pretty darn. 

00:14:18 

Well, for what it did? 

00:14:21 

And today we take that for granted because we get things so fast and so quick, and we’re eager to get a new feature before the kinks are worked out and willing to deal with it, knowing that the hope that the fix will come. 

00:14:32 

But as we’ve seen, there’s so many things that happen that we really never get caught up. 

00:14:37 

There’s never a time where everything is just perfect because we’re constantly adding new features that we quickly. 

00:14:41 

Rely on while they’re still trying to fix old things, and it just becomes a big jumbled mess. 

00:14:46 

And this really is still something that is unique to the tech world and you don’t see it in other industries quite as much. 

00:14:52 

Not to say it doesn’t exist, but really the tech world is the one that drives this self-serve self community and we’ll fix it later attitude. 

00:15:01 

There’s a lot of physical things that you buy that you just can’t do that. 

00:15:04 

I mean things like clothing. 

00:15:06 

Food yeah, it just has to be right when you get it, you can’t just say oh by this pair of pants. 

00:15:11 

I we know everything is broken, but you know, in three months we’ll push out an update and you’ll get a new zipper in the mail that just doesn’t work in other industries, but tech world gets away with it and. 

00:15:19 

We deal with it because quite frankly, a lot of the things we have have changed our lives and makes for a really incredible experience and saves US time and saves US money. 

00:15:28 

We think maybe maybe not. 

00:15:31 

I know I spend way too much money on tech stuff. 

00:15:34 

Nonetheless, there has to be a way to balance the automation of customer service. 

00:15:39 

With personalized service. 

00:15:42 

And I think part of the issue that Tesla is suffering is the fact that they have this staff. 

00:15:47 

You get a sales advisor who’s a real human being when you purchase a car. 

00:15:51 

The problem is, is that person really is not enabled or empowered, and I’ve talked about this a lot in other episodes of this podcast about the importance of empowering employees. 

00:16:02 

And one of the other primary complaints that has driven a lot in negative reviews is estimated delivery date. 

00:16:08 

This is something that is fairly unique to Tesla because the demand is so high right now and they’re still relatively a young car manufacturer. 

00:16:17 

They are not pumping out the quantity of cars that Toyota pumps out or that Honda pumps out. 

00:16:22 

It’s just not happening. 

00:16:23 

They produce the cars much slower. 

00:16:25 

They have very fewer factories than these. 

00:16:29 

And they are still facing the supply chain issues, even though particularly not the chip shortage, but they certainly use a lot of components in making a car that they still have to rely on other vendors, and they are in the same position as everyone else in the car business, so they have been short. 

00:16:45 

Basically, since they’ve been making cars from day one, they’ve always been behind the April. 

00:16:50 

Elon Musk does an incredible job of promoting things. 

00:16:52 

He collects a lot of the money up front and then he has to deliver a product and unfortunately that product always comes a little bit later than he thought it would come. 

00:17:00 

Although it always does come. 

00:17:02 

And of course the demand is always higher I think than anticip. 

00:17:06 

Especially now with gas prices through the roof, Tesla is really strained with delivery dates and some of the inexpensive cars like the base model, Tesla three, you’re going to be waiting just about a year now dates are out to September 2023 on some combinations, and that is obviously just a decision of dollars. 

00:17:25 

And since it’s much more profitable for them to sell the expensive cars and deliver those first and collect the bulk of the money, and then when everything is done and caught up, start working on the least expensive cars and selling those, because obviously they don’t have nearly the profit margin that the more featured vehicles. 

00:17:41 

Have what this is done for the consumers. 

00:17:43 

Put them in a spot where they are constantly looking at this app every 30 seconds to see if they’ve got their car yet, and then. 

00:17:49 

Eventually those dates start shifting. 

00:17:52 

They bought the car. 

00:17:52 

They ordered the car and it says the date is going to be three months later. 

00:17:55 

Then two months later, it puts it out another month later. 

00:17:58 

Then they might see that it’s going to come three weeks later. 

00:18:01 

But then the date changes again and these dates keep flopping around. 

00:18:05 

I don’t know why. 

00:18:05 

I don’t know what those dates are based on and for me to even speculate would be insane, but it doesn’t matter because this is something that is being incredibly frustrating for people. 

00:18:15 

I read these reviews over and over and over again. 

00:18:17 

So many of them are just about blown delivery dates. 

00:18:20 

And part of it is, I think, a little bit of that consumer entitlement like we’re cry babies. 

00:18:25 

I’m gonna whine if I don’t get my car when I think I’m going to get it. 

00:18:27 

And you know another month goes by my whole life is over and my life is ruined and everything I tried to work hard for sucks now because I didn’t get my car when I thought I was going to get it. 

00:18:36 

That that definitely plays a little bit of a role. 

00:18:38 

I don’t know what the. 

00:18:40 

Expectations are with other vehicles. I’ve never looked at a car that really had a long back order or something that I would ever pay a premium for. I see nowadays people paying 1520 thousand, $30,000 over MSRP for. 

00:18:54 

Trucks and vehicles that they really don’t have a choice. 

00:18:57 

They have to get them and they can’t and they have to pay whatever price they have to get to do their job or get to work or perform the functions and duties that earn them a living. 

00:19:05 

And one of the beauties with Tesla is you don’t have dealership middle men and they don’t artificially inflate the price around demand. 

00:19:12 

Now of course, yes Tesla has. 

00:19:14 

Increase their price over and over and over. 

00:19:16 

Again, that Model 3 was originally going to be the $30,000 car, and now it’s pretty much a $45,000 car and nobody really cares. 

00:19:25 

It didn’t really make a big difference. 

00:19:26 

They just decided that it was worth more than that, but at least you know that you’re getting it for the same price as everyone else. 

00:19:32 

And you’re not just getting gouged, so again, there’s pros and cons to all of this. 

00:19:36 

But the moral. 

00:19:37 

Is that you need to look at the processes that you have in place. 

00:19:42 

And think about again, how will you handle and now at 10% some number I made-up? Maybe it’s 5%. 

00:19:47 

Maybe it’s 1%, maybe it’s one in 1000. I don’t know what that is, but there is always that there’s something. There’s always a percentage that is not going to fit into whatever process and procedures you have in place and you really have to think about how you can handle that. 

00:20:02 

Centage, and maybe it’s a special team. 

00:20:05 

Think of it as like the special OPS of customer service. 

00:20:08 

The ones that go in there. 

00:20:09 

The seal team. 

00:20:10 

Six of customer service goes in there and solves the problem that no one else can solve. 

00:20:14 

Whatever it is, you really need that escalation process to be clear, not necessarily to the consumer, because you don’t want consumers bypassing basic. 

00:20:22 

Level 1 support. 

00:20:23 

When they have basic level 1 questions because they think they’re going to get it faster or easier. 

00:20:27 

And I understand that is also an issue that always happens in these customer service routines. 

00:20:32 

So you want to make sure that there isn’t a clear escalation procedure for a level 1 sub. 

00:20:36 

Person to when they can pass it to level 2 and I think the threshold should be fairly low, maybe lower than it is now and again I’m not in that world and I’m going to try to get some guests on that have more experience with large customer service centers that oversee those types of numbers and might have a little better insight on the statistics. 

00:20:57 

But I do think there has to be a better balance because at the end of the day, companies are continually prodding themselves on customer service, customer satisfaction. 

00:21:07 

And the thing that’s crazy is Tesla drivers are all really satisfied with the car now. 

00:21:12 

Trust me, there’s probably a few out there who bought lemons. 

00:21:15 

I think in any brand just about any brand, you’re going to see that, but the people who drive they love their car. 

00:21:22 

They love it. 

00:21:23 

I mean, obsessed with it, it is really cool and you don’t see that with a lot of. 

00:21:27 

Other brands in my experience when someone that obsessed with something they generally will overlook little things here and there because they’re so overwhelmed with the experience of that product or service. 

00:21:38 

When it gets so far that these people are now the haters, and they’re regretful, and now their entire experience is. 

00:21:44 

And ruined then you really have to take a look and figure out how do we fix this. 

00:21:48 

So one of the other Tesla issues is parts. 

00:21:51 

It’s a car that’s really brand new. 

00:21:53 

It’s high demand again, not unique to Tesla. 

00:21:57 

If you buy a new model, new design car from just about any manufacturer and you drive it off the lot and it gets smashed. 

00:22:04 

Buy a truck. 

00:22:04 

There’s a good chance you’re going to be waiting a very, very long time for parts. 

00:22:09 

I had probably about 10 or 15 years ago, an Acura TL that was a brand new lease. 

00:22:15 

It was the first year of a redesign and after a week I had a plow come around and swiped the side of the car from back to front and it took almost two months for them to get parts because no one had them. 

00:22:27 

There was no place to go except Acura. 

00:22:29 

It was a brand new car. 

00:22:30 

They probably hadn’t even started shipping parts yet for it, and it makes for a difficult situation. 

00:22:35 

Now take that same thing with Tesla. 

00:22:37 

Most of their cars are, you know, young and no. 

00:22:40 

None of the generations, I think are even more than three years old at this point. 

00:22:44 

So and they’re so far behind, they are also very far behind with parts availability. 

00:22:50 

So one of the big complaints is if someone does have an issue. 

00:22:53 

The first one I saw was somebody hit a pothole and it was so bad it actually ripped the tire and damaged the wheel. 

00:22:59 

The problem is is nobody had a wheel or a tire that would fit that car, and that person was. 

00:23:04 

Had a car for almost. 

00:23:05 

A month just because of a wheel and tire, and because Tesla is Tesla and it’s, they’re the only ones. 

00:23:11 

There’s no other you know off the shelf wheel and tire. 

00:23:13 

They could have just thrown on in the mean time. 

00:23:15 

Or maybe they could have and they just didn’t try, but the bottom line is, if you bought a brand new car, especially a A Model S, and you’ve just spent $130,000 and you smash a pothole and you don’t. 

00:23:25 

Even care how much the wheel or tire costs and you just can’t. 

00:23:28 

Get it that’s frustrating. 

00:23:30 

That ruins the experience, because now you’ve really got a sour feeling. 

00:23:35 

What else is going to go wrong? 

00:23:36 

What else might break and I need to get fixed and I’m going to be without my car because there are things that happen. 

00:23:42 

And it doesn’t mean it’s a bad quality. 

00:23:44 

It means that you hit a big pothole and you do that with any car. 

00:23:47 

There’s a good chance you’re going to burst a tire. 

00:23:49 

If you do it with the Honda Civic, you’re going to have a really easy time going to any tire store in the country and picking up a new wheel and tire. 

00:23:55 

Even if it doesn’t match, if you were desperate, you’d have no problem going. 

00:23:58 

You go to a junkyard, get a wheel they’ve been making the same wheel tire combinations on those cars for a day. 

00:24:03 

Kaden, they’re a best selling car, so there’s, you know, hundreds of thousands of these vehicles out there. 

00:24:08 

It’s easy to get stuff for, and I’m not talking about this to defend Tesla customer service, but I’m I’m. 

00:24:14 

I’m mentioning it because it’s it’s a. 

00:24:16 

It’s a genuine problem, right? 

00:24:17 

It’s it’s legit, it’s a legit issue. 

00:24:20 

They are behind there. 

00:24:22 

The car has incredible. 

00:24:23 

Demand they don’t have enough supply. 

00:24:25 

They don’t have enough parts. 

00:24:26 

They don’t have enough. 

00:24:27 

Support there, they don’t have enough chargers, they’re doing all this. 

00:24:30 

They’re building it, they’re working it. 

00:24:32 

It looks like they recognize it, but it’s just not there yet. 

00:24:36 

Now maybe three or four years from now, everything gets caught up. 

00:24:39 

Things get somewhat normal. 

00:24:41 

Their production in global markets increases dramatically, and now that they have that part of the equation under control. 

00:24:48 

They can really focus on service and start building that out and bigger and better service centers. 

00:24:52 

And I would think that would be what they would want to do because they seem to be a company that really wants to create an incredible experience for their car. 

00:25:00 

Customers, but it’ll be interesting to see how they go about doing it now. 

00:25:04 

Amazon is a much more mature company and we see specifically the shortfalls with Amazon, and honestly, they’re usually pretty far and few between, but there’s been issues like if I get a package for someone else and and honestly. 

00:25:20 

A lot of people I’m going to say this has probably happened to you. 

00:25:23 

You open your door and there’s a box from UPS and has someone else is name and someone else is address on it and someone just goofed and brought it to your house by mistake. 

00:25:31 

Now what do you do? 

00:25:32 

You call UPS, you ask him to pick it up. 

00:25:34 

Sometimes they will. 

00:25:36 

They’re usually pretty good with. 

00:25:37 

But let’s say it’s the correct address, but the wrong name and definitely not something you ordered could just have been typo when someone was placing the order. 

00:25:46 

Who knows how it happened. 

00:25:47 

It doesn’t matter, but the bottom line is now you have this thing you want to give it back. 

00:25:51 

You see it came from Amazon. 

00:25:52 

You call Amazon. 

00:25:53 

Hey, I got like, well can’t quality Amazon you go online with a chat and you try to explain to someone that you got a package. 

00:25:58 

It wasn’t yours. 

00:25:59 

You want to send it back, and it’s, it’s like they don’t even begin to understand that that’s a possibility, or how that could happen. 

00:26:05 

And of course, with more Amazon delivery drivers. 

00:26:08 

That aren’t necessarily professional delivery drivers, so say that because you know it seems about just about anyone almost like Uber. 

00:26:14 

Now you can be an Amazon delivery driver if you want to be, and I’m guessing you’re not going through the same training regimen that someone working for UPS for 20 years will have gone through. 

00:26:23 

So you see, a lot of these mistakes happening and I get it. 

00:26:27 

They’re in the same position as Tesla. 

00:26:28 

They just started basically building out an entire global shipping operation. 

00:26:32 

It’s going to take some time to square things away and make them right. 

00:26:36 

The bottom line is, Jeff Bezos has not been able to figure out how to deal with that 1%, and he’s a pretty smart. 

00:26:43 

Guy Elon Musk is a really smart guy too, and he’s having a hard time trying to figure out that 1% or 5% or 10% whatever it might be. 

00:26:50 

So no one actually figured this out yet, So what are we talking about? 

00:26:55 

Why am I even talking about if there’s no solution? 

00:26:57 

I’m talking about it because my guess is you’re not Jeff Bezos. 

00:27:00 

You’re not Elon Musk, and you’re listening to this. 

00:27:03 

Because you want some. 

00:27:05 

Actionable information that can help you with your business, and I think one of the huge advantages you have as a small business owner or a medium sized business owner is you have that ability to be nimble, you have that ability to quickly change a process. 

00:27:21 

You have the ability to have something escalated to you personally. 

00:27:25 

If need be, if there’s something that’s very bizarre where you can make that executive decision. 

00:27:29 

You also have the ability to grant that ability to someone else, right? 

00:27:34 

You can give executive decision making power to someone else in your organization. 

00:27:37 

Say hey, listen, I don’t have time to deal with this, but let’s. 

00:27:40 

You you can and I give you full authority, you make the call and I’ll back you on it if there’s a service issue. 

00:27:46 

If there’s a refund issue if there’s a product or if we have to expedite something because the customer has been waiting too long, you don’t have to run to me every time and ask permission. 

00:27:53 

Just do it, just get it done. Keep the customer happy. Of course that might not apply to 100% of that 1%. 

00:28:00 

Or 5% or 10% that don’t fit the mold, but it should take a huge chunk of those people and give them the flexibility they need. 

00:28:08 

Now, here’s of course the dilemma. 

00:28:11 

If you are Tesla and you simply cannot get a part for a car because one you don’t make it or you’re relying on a vendor. 

00:28:17 

There’s COVID, there’s supply chain issues. It’s sitting on a freight ship for three months outside of Lai mean there’s so many possible reasons why something like this could happen. 

00:28:26 

What do you do? 

00:28:28 

What is the solution when there is no solution? 

00:28:31 

If you’ve got the car and you’ve got a customer and you’ve got a broken wheel and you simply cannot get another wheel. 

00:28:37 

How can you appease that customer now? 

00:28:39 

It would be easy to say, well just give him a really nice Tesla loaner, but there are none. 

00:28:43 

Because they’re all sold, we don’t have any Tesla owners. 

00:28:46 

It’s not even a thing. 

00:28:47 

From what I understand, most Tesla owners, if they are left without a car, they will get Uber credits to get to wherever they need to go, and Tesla will pay for it, which in a way is smart because they don’t have to maintain a fleet of loaner cars or worry about it and you still get to go where you need to go and you don’t have to pay for. 

00:29:02 

It’s kinda cool I guess. 

00:29:03 

I don’t know. 

00:29:04 

I mean, it sounds weird to say it like do I want to Uber from the Tesla dealership to my house and then to work every day? 

00:29:10 

And there’s there’s definitely a little experience difference, I think. 

00:29:14 

Between planning on someone picking you up and just being able to get in your car and go. 

00:29:18 

Uh, you know, if it was 2-3 days I probably wouldn’t mind it three months, even if they funded everything. 

00:29:24 

That would be pretty frustrating to have to take an Uber everywhere and every single time I wanted to do anything. 

00:29:28 

Have to wait for someone to come pick me up. 

00:29:31 

I’d probably get pretty. 

00:29:31 

Tired of it myself. 

00:29:33 

So what is the solution? 

00:29:34 

Supercharger credit? 

00:29:36 

I see that they do do that sometimes, but it does seem that those exceptions are exceptions. 

00:29:41 

I don’t see it often. 

00:29:43 

I there do seem to be a lot of people who have legitimately been wronged for lack of a better word. 

00:29:49 

They are suffering and incurring some type. 

00:29:54 

Of emotional distress, or. 

00:29:56 

Physical inability to go to work or whatever it may be. 

00:29:59 

They are experiencing a serious problem that wasn’t their doing. 

00:30:03 

You know, if you if you drunk drive your car into a tree and now you’re waiting for, well, I guess that’s kind of your fault. 

00:30:09 

But if you just get the car home and now something doesn’t work, you you know the key doesn’t work and they say, well, it’s going to take three weeks to get you a new key. 

00:30:16 

There should be something something there where you can say listen that we can somehow compensate this for you and it may not only be a payout, but again you know what costs Tesla very little. 

00:30:28 

Can they give someone? 

00:30:29 

Hey, here’s a couple 100 hours of supercharging to certainly make up for whatever there’s some things I think. 

00:30:37 

And they sometimes do, but there’s usually stipulations on what I’ve seen people who do get free supercharging credits because they have a problem. 

00:30:45 

They usually expire. 

00:30:45 

There’s like a lot of little things beyond it that make it not really reasonable for most people, so they get it and it feels good, but they probably will never use it, which maybe that’s the goal. 

00:30:55 

Maybe it’s not. 

00:30:55 

Maybe it’s just a bad system. 

00:30:57 

I don’t know. Keep it in the back of your mind. The goal of today’s episode is the 1%, the 5%, the 10%, whatever it is, the customers that you can’t create a perfect experience for. 

00:31:10 

What is their pathway to get as close to perfection as possible? 

00:31:15 

And if you can’t map out that pathway, then you are in the same boat as Tesla. 

00:31:20 

You’re in the same boat as Amazon. 

00:31:22 

You’re in the same boat as Google or any other tech company where you have an inability to serve a percentage of your audience because you don’t have a system in place. 

00:31:32 

I’m not saying that you can appease every cut. 

00:31:34 

There’s always going to be the unhinged lunatic. 

00:31:36 

That’s no matter what you did, you could give them the company and give them free products with and they’ll still just say you’re an idiot and everything sucks that that you can’t avoid that. 

00:31:45 

But what I’m talking about is if you have a percentage of customers that don’t fall into the typical day-to-day. 

00:31:53 

And as you know, as a business owner, 90% of your time, you usually are dealing with exceptions to rules, right? 

00:31:59 

It’s always about putting out fires. 

00:32:01 

It’s always about appeasing things. 

00:32:02 

It’s always about how are we going to tackle this. 

00:32:04 

There’s a problem with this. 

00:32:05 

This delivery didn’t come in time. 

00:32:06 

This is going to be backordered. 

00:32:07 

We thought we could do this now, but now we can’t because this change or this change or this vendor went out of business or this place closed. 

00:32:13 

Or this streets under repair? 

00:32:15 

I mean, there’s so many things that happen right? 

00:32:17 

And we’re always putting out those fires and the goal is come up with a system to deal with a portion. 

00:32:23 

That where you don’t have to put out those fires anymore. 

00:32:26 

Think about those problems. 

00:32:28 

What are the problems that can be somewhat resolved where you can say hey, we can’t do this, but we can do this, this, this and this, and hopefully the customer will accept it and understand it. 

00:32:38 

It won’t cost us a fortune or put us out of business, but it’ll keep everybody somewhat happy. 

00:32:43 

Maybe not. 

00:32:43 

Thrilled, but not so angry. 

00:32:46 

And this fury and this disdain for you and your company, because they really, really got screwed. 

00:32:53 

Think about that. 

00:32:53 

Keep that at the top of your mind. 

00:32:55 

That is the lesson for today. 

00:32:58 

Deal with the percentage that doesn’t fit your mold. 

00:33:02 

Listen, thanks for listening so much. 

00:33:04 

If you like this episode, please like and subscribe. 

00:33:06 

You can always shoot me an e-mail if you have a question or you want to dig a little deeper into something. Shoot me an e-mail!

00:33:16 

At marketing and service. Com You can always hit me up at the marketing service.com Facebook page. If you really enjoy this show, share it with someone. 

00:33:23 

Let someone you. 

00:33:24 

Know a coworker. 

00:33:25 

Maybe somebody know who has a business, say, hey, I I heard this show. 

00:33:28 

It’s got some. 

00:33:29 

Good marketing advice because I always want to grow my show just like you. 

00:33:32 

Want to grow your business and I think that’s a wrap for today. 

00:33:35 

Thanks so much for listening. 

00:33:36 

Have a great day and I will catch you on the next one. 

00:33:48 

Falcon 9 Mission Control. 

00:33:52 

Falcon 9 to Mission Control. 

00:33:55 

Mission Control is there anyone there?