[email protected]Small Gestures Can Payoff Big
I recently found myself with more free time than I expected at a truck stop in Portland, Ore. This is a deluxe stopover and included an attached hotel, several restaurants, shoe shine station, theater, gift shop and, of course, fuel islands and a service facility.
I chatted it up with several end users who also were trying to make the most of their idle time, though they were waiting for their trucks to be repaired, where I was simply a victim of poor planning.
The conversations were mostly work related – the price of diesel is going through the roof again, loads were starting to pick up and, of course, how bad traffic was just about everywhere.
Everyone was enjoying their meal and occupying themselves with the facilities’ amenities, from the buffet to the movie theater, but no one wanted to be there.
Everyone wanted to be running miles. No one, not once, praised this unexpected layover. This was a nice place to be marooned, but everyone with a CDL wanted to make it a more temporary visit.
It was an inconvenience, and it was money lost, and no one enjoys a bite out of the paycheck. Vehicle downtime is an occupational hazard and no one was cursing their tools of the trade.
But there was discontent with the way the repairs were being handled. One driver was visiting a shop for the third time trying to fix an electrical problem that has caused her to operate only during the day. The headlights flashed, with no operator input, making it impossible to run at night. She said she already had been pulled over twice for the problem while operating during twilight.
That $100 room became a lot more valuable.
The truck was out of warranty and she was paying out of pocket to get this out-of-service problem fixed. During this third service visit, she was required to retell all of the problems and the service work done thus far, even though all three visits had been within the same network of shops. There was no central recordkeeping shared throughout the network that all of the locations could access and pickup where the last one left off, or at least try to avoid going over the same ground again.
She was frustrated, and who could blame her?
Another patron snapped an axle and was waiting on repairs. He was having the work done at a shop different than the woman with the electrical problem. This shop had to procure the axle and promised they would get to the repairs the next day. That’s not unreasonable downtime. He was even more pleased when they offered to put him up, for free, at this hotel.
So while he would rather have been on the road, he was, all things considered, pleased with his situation. While the other operator was frustrated with the inability for a problem to be fixed, this guy was almost giddy that he had a place to stay free of charge.
The facility that was handling the electrical problem made no such gesture, even though this customer’s experience was far from satisfying. The nightly rate for truckers at the hotel is less than $100. That expense, had it been, covered by the service provider, would have gone a long way in improving this customer’s mood.
Both of these truckers will be back on the road, one sooner than the other, and both will be sharing their experiences, just as they had with me, with a lot more people. That makes that $100 room a lot more valuable. Small gestures to frustrated customers can go a long way in helping minimize a bad service experience. n
