The best or
worst thing that happened today.
It’s a cold
Monday in July here in Ventura. But it heated up very quickly when I got to
work, opened my emails and found we had a Yelp review. I went to my Yelp
dashboard and read the review.
It was one
of the worst reviews we’ve had in a long time. It stated we had taken a Jeep Wrangler for a simple battery test, had taken one week to get back to them, had no
communication in between, and still had no answer as we still had the vehicle
here. It was the biggest waste of time they had ever gone through!
The temperature
in my body rose very quickly as a read the contents of the review. But, first things first. I got the other side
of the story from the service adviser involved with the vehicle in question.
Got the story but he wasn’t all that apologetic. He felt he had done everything
possible to address the issues, to mitigate the anxiety of the client and to
inform them of the findings and possibly needed repairs. Couldn’t understand
why things had gone so horribly for the client to write such a poor review.
Second, I
searched into my soul, and into my business, then asked the question, “is there
anything I can learn from this?” The answer was a resounding YES! I can learn
from this.
In every
business, there are processes that are sometimes dropped due to human nature,
apathy, boredom, cell phones, etc. I
realized we could have done better, much better! Otherwise how else could we be
getting trashed with such poor review?
I left a
voice mail for the owner of the vehicle to call me back in hopes we could
resolve the matter out of the public forum.
When the
owner called me back, he started by apologizing profusely. He told me the car
was his 16-year-old daughters first car, which they had just bought. He told me
we had indeed called him and informed him in a timely manner, we had done
everything possible to work with him and a vehicle with a failed battery purchased
elsewhere.
Unfortunately, his daughter wasn’t in the repair loop. All she knew,
was that she was without her new (used) car for almost a week now and desperately
wanted it back. And no one was updating her. So, she took the matter into her
own hands. She posted a review on Yelp from her own perspective of the matter.
And that’s what brought us back to the father calling me back apologetically
for her daughter’s behavior.
Fortunately
for us, we dealt with a father with a strong moral compass who was willing to
right a wrong. He demanded from his daughter the removal of such review and she
did. I felt vindicated, but at the same time, I did acknowledge to the father
his daughter wasn’t all wrong. Maybe in her approach but perhaps not in
content.
You see,
when they brought the car to us for something as simple as a battery test, we
should have been able to address it on the spot. Not a day or two later. I understand
there were other underlying circumstances that conspired to delay things.
Mainly, the owner wasn’t in a hurry to get back to us.
In that
regard, that bad unposted review, will have help us make the changes to become
better. Changes that without that bad review, we may not have considered. Thank
you, Emma. Next time call us first please!
