Why Treat Your Customer's Like Criminals?

All right, let's have it. Look at me.

What are you trying to do, force a confession out of me?

You've been holding out and I want to know why. It'll be easier for you if you tell me the truth.

What difference does it make? You've already made up your mind. I'm guilty.

Are you?

No. I didn't steal the rental car.

Why did you tell us about the accident? I tried.

I tried, but nobody would return my calls. Nobody would listen.

Hey, it's Mark Danolo at Sales Globe. And today is Free to Friday. And this week we asked the question, why treat your customer like a criminal? We're going to tell you a story this week about an unfortunate situation. And sometimes unfortunate situations can give us good lessons. And so we're going to learn about something a major company did and what you can learn about your organization and your leadership skills. So check it out. I think you'll find it valuable. The link is right here and we'll see you there.

Welcome to Free to Friday. Mark Danolo here, art school MBA and CEO of Sales Globe. And it's that day of the week when we get to take a fresh look at creative data driven problem solving. And today I want to talk about why treat your customer like a criminal? And I want to start with a story. And it's something that happened with a well known company. And I'm not going to bash the company. I mean, others have already done that. This is actually a hot news item. But I think, I think it's a good example that we can look at in the spirit of creative problem solving to think about what some of the reasons might be behind this and why it happened and how we can apply that to our own organizations or situations we might encounter and how we can learn from it. This past August, a friend of mine was driving up i85 coming back from vacation in Florida and she rented a Hertz car for the trip and everything was fine. It was a great drive until the tire on her car blew out and her car hit the wheels of a semi going down the highway and it started to go into a spin. And as this is happening, the windows in the car blew out and the car headed across the median toward oncoming traffic. And luckily the car stopped and the driver of the truck and a number of other people that were there on the scene, they came to her rescue and they helped her out. And as the whole thing transpired, she ended up calling Hertz to let them know what happened. And when she did so, she was passed from person to person at Hertz. And they said they'd come and they would tow the car away. And she said, well, can I get another car? Since, you know, the accident was a blowout, it wasn't her fault. And they told her, well, we can get you to a hertz location about 70 miles away. And they'd pay for a taxi, but that would be for a certain number of miles. So it would get her partway there. So she's in shock at the time, and the police bring her back to the station, and she ends up having her sister come pick her up. Sister has to drive about 100 miles to come get her. And so Hertz never got her a replacement car. They never called her back. It was as if nothing ever happened until days later when she got her first robocall. And the robo Hertz call advised her that the car was overdue and it'd have to be returned right away. And the call didn't give her the option of letting them know that she actually didn't have the car and what happened, which she thought they were fully aware of since they towed the car away. And then when she finally talked to someone on the phone, they didn't have the right information. And the robocalls continued for days. And there wasn't a way for her, as a valued Hertz customer, to close the loop with Hertz about what was really going on. And eventually the calls became more threatening, and she ended up turning the call information over to her accident attorney, who spent hours trying to close the loop with Hertz.