Transcript: It's Not Alright, Alright, Alright: The Intersection of Good Marketing & Bad Customer Service

Joanne Bolt  (Intro)

The power of a podcast extends well beyond plugging in the mind. So if you're ready to learn how it can help you build a big business and your best friend, Hi, I'm Joanne Bolt and I am obsessed with all things podcasting, and creating an unapologetically big revenue business with it. From podcast guesting to podcast hosting and everything in between. We're gonna dive into it all and show you step by awesome step. How using a podcast can and will grow your business to grab a glass of wine and pop your headphones on. Cuz, Girlfriend, Happy Hour has begun here on the B word.

 

 Joanne Bolt  

You guys, I had the most epic situation happen over the last couple of months. And it really got me thinking about how the intersection of great, great, great sales and marketing meets up with the actual customer experience and what that means for you and your business.

 

Okay, so it all started back in 2019, my husband and I had decided that it was time for me to get a new car. Now, here's the deal. I hate shopping for cars, like, abhor it. I am not the girl who knows exactly what she wants. I don't know the brand names and the specifics in the cars. The only thing I know is I never have and I never will own a minivan. You can quote me on that one. But other than that, I like an SUV because I like to sit up high. And I don't really no anything else. So when I started thinking about what car I wanted, the it made me really nervous to have to buy a new one because getting used to a car was not something I wanted to do. And car shopping is not something I wanted to do. However, my son and I were sitting on the couch watching TV one night, I mean 2019 This is back when you still had to watch some commercials even if you were streaming all of your stuff. And a Lincoln car commercial came on with Matthew McConaughey.

 

Now ladies, let me just be clear, I had seen his commercials before. I mean, this was not the first time I ever saw his commercial. And marketing has shown us that oftentimes, you'd have to see something 10 to 20 times in order for it to really kind of like become lodged in your brain is something you want to buy or take another look at or investigate further. So I'd seen Matthews infamous Lincoln car commercials where he's sitting in the back being driven or where he's sitting in the front driving, and he's all hot and sexy. And I mean, he is a little bit yummy. He's not normally my tight, but okay. He's a little sexy, ladies, let's just admit it. And in that moment, I looked and Matthew was driving a brand new car to the lake and fleet and it was called The Aviator. And I remember looking at my son, and I was like, we should go drive that.

 

And so the next day, we got up, we found a Lincoln dealership, we went, we drove the aviator, here's where the marketing really really got juicy and good for me. Our family like our little foursome family, we go almost every summer down to Orlando, and we stay at the Westin on Disney property, which is the swan or the dolphin, and we switch back and forth between the two. But they're owned by Weston, and we go to Disney, or we go to the water parks or sometimes we just play in the polls for a couple of days. Like it's just our thing, and we love it. And the reason we love the swan and dolphin not only were they owned by Weston, which were big Marriott brand people, but there's this smell when you walk in the Westin, like it is the most clean, fresh smell. They waft it through the lobby while you're waiting to check in and for me and my kids and my husband included. When that smell hits our nostrils like we mainly relax, we know we're on vacation, we know we're going to have a good time. It just brings back and evokes these feelings of all the past happy times we've had and all the futures that we will have.

 

That may be too much info for you, but bear with me. I walked into that Lincoln showroom, and I swear to you, they have the same smell like it smelled exactly like I was walking into the swan and dolphin down in Disney World. And so they immediately enveloped me in all of the senses. It was clean. It was all pristine white, it was beautifully done. They had to the aviator is sitting right there in the showroom for you to open the doors and sit in the luxurious leather. The smell of the lobby, the very famous actor on the commercials that got me in the door. Everything about it hit all of my senses and I was hooked. Like I wanted that car. I drove the car and here's where the marketing and the salesman just nailed the coffin shut for me.

 

They told me something that no other car dealer ever had. I could take that car home overnight. One of the biggest fears I have of buying a car is I'm gonna spend all this money on it after a 10 minute test drive, get it home and not like it. So by telling me I could take it home overnight, sit it in the garage, drive it around, see what I thought bring it back the next morning at 10am. They elite they eliminated that fear for me because they knew I would either come back the next day and I would either buy that car or they knew that I wasn't going to buy that car and they still left me a happy camper because I had made a solid decision.

 

So of course what happened, I drove the car home, I fell more and more in love with it. And the next day I went back to purchase it. Now, I didn't want to purchase the actual car I took home because it was a white aviator. And it had red interior, I felt like I was in a stripper mobile, because like the red was kind of this velvet feel. And so I wanted the black and tan, one black outside tan or white interior and they had that one available the next day. And so we went through the process, we ended up purchasing a car that was far beyond what I originally walked in to purchase. Like I walked in looking at the base level aviator at the time, it was like $35,000, I walked out with a $90,000 vehicle because the entire experience was so good. And it hit me on so many levels that I just kept upgrading.

 

Thankfully, we can afford that car so I wasn't stretching us too bad financially, it just wasn't what I set out to purchase. They up sold me really really well. And they did a great job at it. However, their marketing and their sales team are one thing. The customer experience from the minute you sign in ink, the papers that the car is yours and you put the money down or you take out the you know the car loan is a different thing. And that's where the intersection started going wrong for me.

 

They pulled that car around and I had been having this marvelous couple of days with Lincoln. Neville was my sales man. Like everything was wonderful. And then what happened? I got in my brand spanking new car, my $90,000 vehicle it had well miles on it, and I had put those on it because I did do one test drive before I decided to buy that one just to make sure. And guess what? I pulled the visor down sitting still in the parking lot if Lincoln and a damn Roach fell out on me and it was alive.

 

Okay, go ahead and picture now because the ensuing screaming hysterics me jumping out of the car. I think I tripped over myself getting out of the car. This little critter is like running around in the inside of my car. I lost my ever loving mind over it, made them take the car back and detail it again. Because I was just wasn't convinced that that thing fell out of the car. That could happen to anyone y'all that could happen at any dealership I get it. I'm not gonna knock Lincoln over that when I am going to knock them over is at no point. Did anyone acknowledge that that is not what they wanted my first experience and my new car to be no one ever apologized. Their service department instead gave me the well it's just a waterbug you live in Georgia, these things happen. Which completely downgraded me as a person having a really not pleasant experience with my brand new car before I'd even gotten it off the lot.

 

I should have known then what I was getting into. However, I'd already bought the car. They did reclaim it. So I took it home. And for the next three and a half years, nothing but misery met me. Anytime I had to take that vehicle into Angela Krause Lincoln dealership, because I had bought a Black Label Lincoln. I had to take it to the only dealer in town who dealt with the black label, which was the Angela Kraus dealership. That is where I purchased it from as well. But nothing that I was promised or told during the sales process came true.

 

As a black label car I should not have had to pay for my oil changes. They were supposed to come pick my car up. Take it back to Angela Krause, change the oil, do all the things bring it back to me. They were supposed to anytime I took it in have a loaner available for me. Well, guess what? Oh, and I should have been able to schedule everything I ever needed through my app, including drive my car on the app. Well, the app never worked. Like half the time it just cut off shut down. It was useless scheduling anything on it was worthless because the online app scheduler and the actual Angela Kraus scheduling systems are completely different.

 

So I ended up so frustrated over the next two years out of all of those oil changes that should have occurred that I technically paid for in the Black Label. I actually only got two because it was such a pain to get Angela Cross's people to come get my car, or to bring me a loaner or even have one available that I ended up just going down the street to the local oil change place and having the oil changed when I needed it because it would take over 12 days to get an oil change scheduled and done through Angela Kraus. Now I can put some of that is died as Okay.

 

In that time period, the pandemic did occur. Which meant that they were low on, of course, employees and people. However, in 2022, things really got out of hand in my opinion. My husband and I were driving one night, we accidentally hit a curb because it was a foggy dark night, we were in an unfamiliar place, we hit a curb. And so we had a little bit of front fender damage. And I was like, okay, it's fine. This is no big deal. We'll just take it into Angela Kraus. We'll get it fixed. And we'll get it back. So we took it into them. They were okay. I mean, the service department, of course, there was no loaner available. So I was going to be without a car for however long it took to fix this. And the guy in the service department said, you know, it's gonna take about three and a half to four weeks to get the material in because of the pandemic. We're low on inventory, we're low on materials, yada, yada, yada. It's the same thing we've heard for years and years and years. And since we don't have a loaner, let me just make sure the vehicle is safe and drivable, you're not going to do any damage to it. Because the way that the fender White was kind of buckled under, he was like, I just don't think it's going to hurt your car. Can you just drive it for the next few weeks while we order the part? Okay, fine. It's not pretty to look at, but it's not damaging the driving mobility. Nothing's wrong with it, right. And so I said, okay, they ordered the fender and I took the car home. It I think it took like 72 hours later. And I was back at the Lincoln dealership with my car with a slashed front tire. The slash front tire was because the way that the fender bent under every time I drove it, it was just eating into the tire, like almost like a nail file that was just through your tire the entire time. I could hear it when I drove. And so I took it back to them. And legitimately all, their response was, Well, you shouldn't have kept driving it.

I'm going to pause there for a second. Anyone noticed that? You shouldn't I kept driving it. Y'all sent me home with a vehicle and told me it was safe to drive, it would not continue damaging the car. And that's why I kept driving it. And I did that because you didn't have a loaner that I was supposed to have. And that technically, it actually paid for with the Black Label package.

 

Nope, they didn't care.

 

The problem was they had failed to put the car up on like the jack thing. So they can actually look under the vehicle when they first assessed it. So now I had a car, sitting at the Angela Krause Lincoln service department. They didn't care that the fender piece hadn't come in. They didn't care that they had told me incorrectly that there would be no more damage. And now not only was I paying for a Fender, I had to buy a new tire and pay for them to put it on. I was really perturbed by this because in my head and maybe I'm wrong, I mean, you can leave a review and let me know that in my head, I should pay for this fender. However, I shouldn't have to pay for the tire because I would not have kept driving that car had they not told me to that's on them. And in fact, we argued with the manager of the sales department and the service department over this very fact. And it just didn't matter. They didn't care. In their mind, it was my fault, I shouldn't have been driving the car no matter what they had told me. And you know what, I had to get the car back. So I had to have a tire put on in order to have that happen. So I ended up spending quite a bit more than we had anticipated. In order to get all of this done. We didn't turn it into insurance because originally the fender didn't even meet the cost of our deductible. So there was no point. But now I'm well over that. And I'm too far into it. So okay, I was a little irritated. But let's move on because I love the car.

 

Despite the fact that at this point, I was getting a letter in the mail almost every six weeks with another recall. Because that aviator had been a brand new car and the Lincoln fleet there was all kinds of issues with it. And a new recall would come out and a new recall would come out and a new recall would come out. Unfortunately, of course, because of the and I'm err quoting pandemic, because y'all at this point, we're like two and a half, three years past the pandemic. They couldn't fix any of the recalls. Thank heavens, none of the recalls were stuff that were like, you know, endangering driving or my safety otherwise, we would have had a different situation on hand, but they really just couldn't fix any recalls. It was stuff like your navigation system rear window, you know, mirror isn't going to work correctly or this was going on or this piece couldn't be updated. So nothing life threatening, but annoying all at the same time? Because I think I think at the end of the day, I probably had over 10 recalls.

 

On that day. A goal, which is not what you really want to have when you are buying an expensive luxury brand. It all came to a head for me though, back in February. In February, I had a conference called the focus conference in Nashville, Tennessee. It was part of my annual things that I do here at the B word, and I was driving up to Nashville for it. Because I live in Atlanta. I'm only few hours from Nashville. There's no point in me needing to take an airplane up there. And I had a bunch of stuff I need to take with me for the conference. And so I decided to drive my aviator. It's a nice ride. Very comfortable, alcopops and podcast in and listen to him for a few hours. No kids in the car like this is awesome. On the way home, from the conference, the car in front of me lost a tire. And when it lost a tire that sucker blew up underneath, my car went careening out the back, all kinds of chaos ensued. I am so thankful like Thank You, Jesus, I was not hurt in this thing. However my car was to the point where the back bumper light was broken. Because the way that tire flipped up and over and underneath my car while it was drivable to get me home was something was like hanging out the bottom. It was literally hanging so low, it scraped the ground. So of course, what did we have to do? We had to take it back into Angela Kraus Blinken. This time, I did turn it into insurance because of course, there's a lot of damage done at this point. Now, this was February, early March.

 

They told me that it was going to take between seven and 10 days to fix. I've already dealt enough with the service department to know that was not going to be true. It was going to be longer than that. And of course, they told me that, oh, when there's no loaner available, I said, Okay, that's fine. I have rental insurance. I can keep a car through rental for 30 days. And I'm thinking if you tell me seven to 10 days, surely at the end of 30, this thing will be done right? Oh, how wrong I was you guys. At the end of 30 days, they hadn't done anything for that car. Not a thing.

 

And at this point, I have called multiple times to try to find out like, hey, what's the status of my car? What's going on? I don't understand. Yada, yada, yada. So we finally reached someone at Lincoln. And legitimately it was because they actually called me. I thought they were calling me back from all of the messages I left them. And the conversation was super interesting when a little something like this. Hi, Mrs. Bolt. This is Benji from Angela Kraus service department. I was calling to remind you that your car is due to come in tomorrow for the servicing on it. And I said, Benji, what do you mean my car is due to come in tomorrow? It's been on your lot for 30 days.

 

Y'all he had no idea. This is the service department guy looking at the record for my car. He had no idea it was there. None whatsoever. So I knew at that point, they hadn't even touched the car. Now, we're up 30 days here. So my rental is due. Two more weeks passed by because then she tells me he's, you know, he'll find out and get back to me and he'll get everything fixed. You know, they will call me and he's like, yep, Mrs. Bolt. I'm so sorry. We dropped the ball. He blamed it on someone else named Matt. Like, we're so sorry. Don't worry, we're gonna get this all fixed for you. Like Benji, I've got this rental car that I'm now paying over my insurance premium for because y'all didn't do your job. I need a loaner. And so, a week and a half later of me fighting with Angela Kraus. Once again. They finally brought me a loaner something I should have had from day one. But I'm gonna let that one pass.

 

It's gonna let it go folks just kind of let it go. It cost me though an extra $895 in rental fees, because we had to keep the the rental car from enterprise so much longer. So we finally get the car from Angela Krause is a loaner. In the meantime, I am hammering them. What's the status on my car? What's the status on my car? What's the status of my car? Well, we have fixed the backlight. But the undercarriage still doesn't, is not fixed. We're going to take it to one of our other body shops to get fixed. I'm like, okay, just get it done. People at this point, just get it done. So, two weeks pass, I get another phone call from Benji. Because, you know, I'm hammering his voicemail at this point. So as my husband, he calls me back and he says Mrs. Bolt. I'm so sorry. I'm not sure what has happened. Again, he blames this guy Matt from the very first time we ever took the car in that was in charge of your car. He dropped the ball. We haven't started any repairs. And I said whoa, whoa, Benji. Do you not remember you calling me two weeks ago? Give me this same excuse. almost word for word, y'all. It was like he read a script on what to say, when we know we have no clue where your car is on the lot, what's going on with it? And that's the feeling I have. They lost my car. I really do believe this bottom of my heart, they lost the car.

 

But oh, by the way, meantime, I'm getting all these notices from Carfax wanting to write the service from Angela Kraus for things and Carfax will list you know what you're writing them for things like brand new tires, a detailing all this stuff to make the car like look fantastic to the next consumer who's going to buy it. None of that had been done. Nothing. And I'm writing Carfax back. I'm trying to get a hold of them. I'm like, wait a minute. None of this has occurred. I'm calling the service department. Why am I getting these Carfax notices? Are you actually giving me new tires? Because we all know from the first experience that was not happening? Are you actually detailing the car? What is going on?

 

I mean, y'all weeks and weeks and weeks go by every time they call, it's the same story. The original service guy left the company, they don't know who dropped the ball. They're not sure what's going on. Someone else is doing it wrong. I mean, it was such passed the buck the entire time. Four months after we gave them that car to fix. I finally lost it and said you know what, just buy the car back. I didn't want it anymore. Well, at this point, of course, they're like, oh, no, it's fixed. It's perfectly fine. You can come get it. And I'm like, Yeah, I still don't want it. So yay, that it's fixed. Now, I still want you to buy it back. And I did that you guys. And here's where I'm landing the plane for you. I had gotten to the point that the service and the customer experience with the Angela Krause Lincoln Ford dealership was so bad, that even if my car was fixed, and it was the best and favorite card ever owned in my entire life, I no longer wanted a Lincoln. Because in my head, the very next time that something occurs, this is what I'm going to have to go through the entire time. This is now what I associate with Lincoln. And I understand that every dealership they franchise them out, I could have a completely different experience with a different Lincoln dealership. That's not the point here.

 

The point is, because of how they handled the experience so poorly. And so ineptly, and just a graciously bad, it turned me sour on the entire brand. I am at the point now where there's no way I would ever want another Lincoln, it doesn't matter if Matthew McConaughey himself gave me the Lincoln because of this experience. So I asked you to listen to all of this, you can laugh over the roach fallen in my lap, you can shake your head over the It took four months of them losing the car over and over again and may having to call every other day. You can grown with me over that.

 

But here's what I really want you to do, guys, I want you to take an introspective look at your own business is your sales and marketing. And what you do before you get a client matching up to what happens to them afterward. Are they getting what they think they paid for and more is your retention in your business good. If your retention is really good, then you can probably write yourself a little bit higher on the customer experience if your retention is not where you want it to be in your business where there's a coaching business, you know, conference sales, memberships, masterminds, whatever it is. If your retention of your clients is not meeting your personal standards, your KPIs like your you know the number that you want to keep, then you have to look and say, Where am I going wrong? You cannot sit back and say oh, it's because like I coach them and now they're fine. They don't need me anymore. You cannot say people just don't go a second time to conferences because lots of people are repeat visitors of the same conferences every single year. If they have a great time. You have to say there is a certain amount of people that just naturally would not renew their membership or would not renew a product or were not repurchase or whatever it is. But there's also a bigger percentage that will when they fall in love with a brand. Because everything on the back end of the brand, the customer experience exceeds the front end the sales and marketing and if your retention is at where you want it to be, take a hard look at those two things.

 

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