Think Customers: The 1to1 Blog

On a Friday afternoon in mid-November my wife was driving from South Bend, Indiana, to Indianapolis to visit our daughter. She left about 3:30 p.m., planning to get to Indy just about dinner time.

The trip was uneventful -- until she was a few miles south of Rochester, Indiana. Her car, a Pontiac, started "missing" when she tried to accelerate; finally, it quit running altogether. She was able to pull onto the side of the road.

After calls to our daughter and me to explain the situation, she called her usual Pontiac Dealer in Elkhart to see whether there was a Pontiac dealer near her location. They gave her the phone number of Shepherd Pontiac in Rochester. Calling Shepherd, she gave them her approximate location: someplace south of Rochester. They said they would send out a tow truck.

Less than 10 minutes later the service vehicle arrived. They loaded the Pontiac onto the truck and headed back to Rochester. By the time they arrived it was nearly 5:00 p.m. They took the car into one of the service bays and started looking...

During this time my wife told them about her Indianapolis weekend destination. They told her, "If we can't get your car fixed today, we'll loan you a car to drive to Indy; you can return it Monday when we get your car repaired." Much relieved, she called her two "support group" people and let us know that she would, indeed, get to Indianapolis that evening.

A few minutes later the service manager told her that the problem was the fuel pump; she needed to have it replaced. Fortunately, they had one in stock. It would take about an hour to install it. By 6:00 p.m. she was on the road again.

While on the road, she received a call from her local Pontiac dealer checking to make sure that she had been taken care of. She assured them that she had been. The rest of the trip went smoothly. She arrived home Sunday evening as planned.

We assumed that the entire event was finished. But on Tuesday, when we got home from work, there was a message on our home answering machine from Shepherd's service department checking to make sure that there had been no more problems.

The unexpected, "fairy tale" treatment in this event included:
• Quick response with the tow truck, even though they weren't really sure where her car had died.
• Immediate attention to the problem once they were at the shop.
• The offer to loan a car for the weekend if necessary.
• Quick solution to the problem.
• Follow-up from both dealerships to make sure the customer was happy.

The ending? We all lived happily ever after, of course.

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1to1 reader Ted Myers is marketing manager for PSSI USA.