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Providing The World With The Ultimate Customer Experience

Lucky's Blog

This blog has been created to keep our customers, partners and friends up to date with pertinent information relating to our industry, technical or otherwise. It will also keep everyone up to date with M.C. Dean's ever expanding capabilities. Thanks to all my followers and I hope you find this blog both helpfull and informative. Best Regards: Lucky Drake

Thursday, July 28, 2011

The Customer Experience

When I first came to M.C. Dean, one of the first things I did was to implement the Ultimate Customer Experience (UCE). What is the UCE? Good Question. The UCE is an internal plan I developed a long time ago to set myself apart from the competition. It is a series of actions to help improve our customer’s overall experience with the company. This simple action plan is used to help improve our image, brand, and how the customer feels after we have left the job. From the first contact, to the completion of the project, the UCE goes through a step by step process to put the customer first and show pride in everything we do.

I originally got the idea after buying a car from an Arrigo dealership in Palm Beach Florida. Buying a car has always been an unpleasant experience for most people. This particular dealership made an effort to make buying a new car a pleasurable experience. No haggling to get the best price, no high pressure sales people, no stupid questions, just great service at a great price. Since then, every time I have bought a car, I have continued to travel to West Palm Beach to buy through this dealership, and every time it is a pleasure to do business with them.

I figured out that if they can make buying a car pleasurable, then I should be able to make using an electrical service just as pleasurable and the UCE was born. Obviously I cannot divulge specifics about the UCE but it exists everywhere if you look around.

Ever wonder why Best Buy continues to crush their competition? Think about it! There are many bargain big box retailers that have the same products for less money. Why would someone go to a place where they know the product will cost them more? Simple! Whenever I plan to buy any electronic device, I only go to Best Buy because of the customer experience. I can go into a Best Buy and be greeted almost immediately by someone who asks me if they can help. No commission based sales people, just employees that truly want to make sure I get exactly what I need from the store. The associate will spend a limitless amount of time telling me all I want to know about the product, from a highly technical perspective or a simple consumer’s point of view. Best Buy’s associates always seem to be very well trained on all the products they offer. They will ask me specific questions about what I like and how I plan to use it and will narrow it down to the perfect product for me, whether or not that happens to be the most expensive, or the cheapest product. They only care about my overall experience. Then once I select the product, the associate will walk me to the cashier and check me out, no lines no waiting. I am in and out quickly with the perfect product for my lifestyle. No one tried to make me fit into their product, or sell me the most expensive product and accessories to boost their commission. This is what I mean by the customer experience. It is not always about price, even in today’s economy.

On the other side, my wife and I took a trip to Las Vegas a couple months back. All I ever heard was how amazing Vegas was and how you have unlimited food, drinks, entertainment, etc… anything to keep you in their hotel. From the moment we checked into Treasure Island, the experience was horrible. We stood in line for nearly an hour just to check in. They had a check-in counter that was a half a mile long but only two people working behind it. We were some of the lucky ones, since they actually had a room ready for us when we got up to the counter. Unfortunately the rest of the nearly 100 people behind us would be sent away until the cleaning crews had finished prepping more rooms. Really? You had reservations! It couldn’t have been a surprise how many people where going to check in that day.

Things just got worse from there, from the $28 dollar a person buffet filled with substandard food, to the joke of a show performed outside on a pirate ship. Just when we thought things couldn’t get any worse, they locked us out of our room and told us that we had only reserved one night, even though we had proof that we had booked it for the following three days. They would not let us in the room to get our proof, and told us that all our stuff was probably in lost and found. Probably?! They didn’t even know where our stuff was? After what seemed like hours of screaming and yelling, we finally got back into our room where all our stuff was still untouched, thank God. Up until that point we had visions in our heads of people picking through our personal belongings in a lost and found room. We showed them the proof that we were right and they were wrong, to which we got a “Sorry for any inconvenience” from the night manager. No comps, no free buffet vouchers, no credit vouchers, nothing-- after wasting several hours of our time that extended into the wee hours of the morning! Not what you would have expected. There were several more examples that Treasure Island could care less about their customers, but I won’t bore you with those, I think I got my point across.

While the Treasure Island example is on the bottom of a customer experience scale, you would be surprised how many companies don’t rank much above that. How many times have you gone out to dinner just to be ignored by the wait staff? How many times have you stood in line at the DMV like cattle waiting to be butchered? There are more examples of poor service in our world today than of superior customer service. In this economy, you can’t afford to disappoint a customer. Like the old saying goes, ‘if you are not willing to take care of your customer somebody else will!’

Throughout my career I have dedicated my efforts to one principle, ‘Because of the customer, we exist!’ I will not tolerate even average customer service from any member of my team, let alone poor service. The only way to survive in today’s economy is to offer superior customer service and quality, at a fair price. People will always be willing to pay a little more for true quality and a good buying experience. If not, Best Buy, Target, Rolex, etc… would not exist.

So the question you have to ask yourself is; do you have an Arrigo or a Treasure Island kind of philosophy? Pay attention to your customer’s needs, listen to their problems, and offer quality solutions, or somebody may be writing a blog comparing you to Treasure Island. (((Ouch)))

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