Dealer’s service operation | Details to improve active service awareness

Dealer’s service operation | The awareness of active service refers to the service staff’s desire to provide enthusiastic and considerate service for people when interacting with them, which is a good habit derived from the workers’ innermost being. The value of active service consciousness can be realized by making customers perceive the activeness and triggering their empathy.

Active service awareness can help create differentiated service contents to provide customers with various service experience, bringing them a good impression, by which we can gain customers’ good opinion, build a tacit relationship, and gradually win their trust. From customer’s cognitive trust to their emotional trust, and then to their behavioral loyalty, the last one is the unanimous goal of the automobile service industry. Loyal customers will spontaneously repurchase or recommend what they bought to others, which ultimately boosts the profitability of dealers.

Whereas it is not easy to win the customers’ trust. What matters is to integrate the awareness of active service into the process of digging into customers’ needs and to provide them with more active and considerate service, underpinning the development of a positive win-win relationship between dealers and customers.

Observe

Observation is the prerequisite for exploiting active service consciousness. It means not only observing with our eyes, but with the involvement of our five senses. A good service worker is capable of anticipating customer’s ideas and behaviors through their subtle movements and their variable reactions to surroundings, with which the worker can actively create service surprises and give play to the activeness of service consciousness.

Those who can quickly find every functional area after entering the service area must be regular customers. It’s recommended to employ a simple way to serve the loyal customers in which the efficiency comes first. If someone wandering in the store just looks around, he may seldom visit your store or he is just a new customer. In this case, “being proactive” to serve him is the most needed, with guiding and care being the key.

During communication, if you observe a little sweat on the customer’s nose, it can be inferred that the ambient temperature is a bit high or that he is nervous. If so, the worker can slow down the speed of speech to adjust communication way or simply adjust the indoor temperature, relieving the customer’s pressure of talking.

Similarly, the occupation, living environment, social status, car use and service concerns of customers can be judged by observing their dressing style and temperament, which helps offer services in line with their tastes and preferences.  

The cultivation of observation ability requires not only more observation practice, emulation and learning but also putting ourselves in customers’shoes.

Inquire

Inquiry is an art stressing skills and methods. Two common ways of inquiring are “open” and “closed”. Different inquiry methods should be adopted for various types of customers. For example, extroverted customers are good at communicating and usually answer questions with their own thoughts, so “open” inquiry is the first choice to interact with them. On the other hand, the introverted are less talkative and tend to just give corresponding answers to questions without any additional information, in this case, “closed” inquiry is more appropriate.

What’s needed before inquiring is to anticipate contingencies which help bring the conversation back to the key topic. In daily work, this ability can be improved by practicing asking many a question.

Be a good listener

Sometimes what customers say doesn’t mean what they really think, which needs service staff to make out their implications. For example, a customer’s complaining about “The maintenance cost is too high!” probably means “Can you give me some discount?”; if a customer says, “My car needs maintenance, but I’m busy these days. Maybe I shall come in the next few days.” The literal meaning is that the customer doesn’t have time, while what he implies may be “Do you offer free door-to-door service or pick-up service?”. If service staff can grasp what customers really think and propose ways to meet their desires, they may place an order or make a decision soon.

When faced with customer’s implicit expression, we need to gain the ability to “grasp the implications”, that is, seeing through their real intentions, which is exactly what it requires to be a good listener. By listening to customers, we can find their speaking habits and sort these habits out to figure out their real ideas, then facilitate transactions or solve problems raised by them. This ability, when at work, can be improved by business training and learning of communication psychology.  

All in all, the awareness of active service covers not only simple observation, inquiry and listening to, but also depends on long-term experience accumulation and continuous exploration of service. By understanding customers’ characters and knowing about their needs, in combination with experience-based judgment and putting ourselves in customer’s shoes, we shall certainly improve the awareness of active service and present service surprises for our customers.