GPA Training has introduced ‘Say it better,’ its second free customer service training app.
GPA Training’s Ian Coburn says the app was designed based off dealer requests. Coburn says he regularly encounters dealers who ask for guidance on how to condition their customer-facing associates to stop saying phrases such as: I gave you what you asked for; that’s not my job; and they shouldn’t have done that.
GPA Training says it has compiled a lists including all the phrases provided to the company from dealers over the past year, as well as phrases it has added, and cataloged them into a free app that provides alternate phrases for each situation.
“The idea is to change our habit of choosing language that comes off as a problem to a habit of choosing language that comes off as a solution,” says Coburn. “We tend to believe the way to capture and keep business is to offer the lowest prices, but the truth is the way to capture and keep business is to offer people solutions not problems.”
He adds statements like, “I didn’t look that part up,” and, “we didn’t get that done because a tech didn’t show,” create problems for customers.
Coburn says consumers take time to determine who they should contact to help them, wanting whoever they choose to give them a solution. When they leave a conversation that added to their problems instead of reducing them, they feel duped, that their load has been further encumbered, and, since they still have the original problem to solve, that they have no choice but to contact another dealer to do so.
“We have to recognize that our phrasing triggers emotions, which in turn trigger physiological responses, in our customers that they can’t control, either positive or negative,” he says. “This is why, as dealers, we get calls from consumers we’ve never even spoken to who are already annoyed with us, responding to our greeting with something like, ‘Yeah, I doubt you can help me but I thought I’d give you chance to disappoint me, too.’”
GPA Training says the new app goes a long way to improving sales and customer satisfaction.
“Dealers who have taken the training and reviewed solution-based phrasing, tell us they are seeing far fewer errors by staff, more customer conversions, and getting more positive feedback from customers,” Coburn says.
The app is available at www.gpatrain.com.
