Every dark cloud has a silver lining, it seems. Today I hit a curb dodging a person who made a last minute illegal left turn and messed up two tires on my truck. I guess it seems like the past two months the world of motorized transportation has been stacked against me. Let me expand:
Log in to view the full article
Every dark cloud has a silver lining, it seems. Today I hit a curb dodging a person who made a last minute illegal left turn and messed up two tires on my truck. I guess it seems like the past two months the world of motorized transportation has been stacked against me. Let me expand:
On the way to help teach at Las Vegas in September, I was in my truck with Andrew and had a headgasket failure. Jiffy Lube wasn't so Jiffy and did an improper coolant change on my truck, and the overheating was really bad. In fact, the repairs cost me about $2K and I didn't have a truck for over a month while we followed the proper legal procedure. In the end we settled for less than the repair cost, but fighting things could have cost me more money in the end. Big corporations have the money, but not all the power. I'll do a good job spreading negative PR around the community, and that seems to stick sometimes.
Today when I was in the tire shop after hitting the curb I noticed that they are expanding and remodeling. When I went in I told the guy about the oil change problems and explained that I only went to Jiffy Lube because that was the only place I knew about for a quick oil change. He told me the tire shop has expanded their service offerings and could have done both the coolant and oil change. I wish I had known that on the Sunday I went to Jiffy Lube, because the trip would have been a lot different. Oh well, I know now that I can go to a place with expert, reliable service. The tire shop fixed my tires and really fixed up my wheels from the curb check. Perfect service is what I've come to expect from them and in a predictable timeline. Next time I'll spend $40 on the oil change without the mandatory upsell.
The stories are just one small example of what I see happening within our country in so many ways. There is a segment of the population that has a solid stream of income and they care about two attributes in a service provider: quality and reliability. With the age of computers, Internet, etc., in certain ways we've trained our psychology to reward for quick solutions and answers, and that is what I did with Jiffy Lube. I made an impulsive mistake, and I learned permanently to schedule things like an oil change and wait for someone good. I have noticed that people who want quality work are willing to wait these days. The customers with solid financial backing already paid the "quick-change" contractor back in the boom and learned that if someone is available tomorrow, that isn't always a good sign. Be patient, my peers, service and quality are taking center stage over price these days.
My final observation in the story is that having work versus not having work is often because of confusion over your service offerings. I didn't know that my tire place had grown to hiring new mechanics so they could offer other services, but I do now. Now is the time to keep your brand in front of the right customers and let people know what services you offer that they may not have known. Before you know it, they may be calling you for a refinish because Stanley Steemer promised the world in cleaning their hardwoods, messed it up and now they called you, when they should have called you for a cleaning or a recoat in the first place.
Take care of yourselves, my friends, and don't eat too much turkey this year. We're about to post the poll on Facebook, so I hope everyone left their comments on the last video blog.
