Remember being the new kid at school?
Today I had the chance to guest post on the GasPedal blog with a tie into the blog at the Blog Council. My post compared the process of a company becoming a member of a social media community with the process a new kid at school goes through to successfully fit in. The model is a broken down into 6 steps being:
- Listening
- Learning
- Connecting
- Responding
- Participating
- Sharing
To see the entire post please visit the guest post at GasPedal. I look forward to your feedback.
September 16th, 2008 - Posted in social media | | 0 Comments
Penske & Ray – “Dedication at Every Turn”
Last week was moving week for my family and if you’ve ever moved before it’s not something you look forward to. So, the last thing anyone ever wants to deal with during moving week is more stress. Thus was my wife’s experience when she booked with UHaul. When she told me the agony she had gone through my frustration spilled over to Twitter and I tweeted this:
“My wife just went through a totally rude customer service experience with our local UHaul rep. Downright rude. Do they want the business?”
Little did I know that I wasn’t the only one frustrated with the UHaul customer experience. Reply tweets started pouring in and a flurry of discussion ensued. It was summed up nicely with a post from @catchuplady.
The good news from the discussion is that I was introduced to Penske, one of UHaul’s competitors. Some of the replies were:
amandam: @davidalston i’ve had the same experiences. i always end up going w penske. cheaper, higher quality, etc.
MarkRiffey: @davidalston Penske has always been much better. Better people, better rigs, better policies re: pricing.
crystalware: @davidalston I rented from Uhaul once to go from NC to CO and promised myself never again. Horrible CS. Now I’m a proud Penske customer.
It just so happened that a perfect sized truck was available with Penske when we called so we booked it and cancelled our UHaul. And were we ever glad we did.
In a word, Penske rocks. From start to finish my experience with Penske was top notch. We got a new shiny yellow truck (only 25K miles on it), with a powerlift, a 15 minute personal guided tour on how to use all of the features, great pricing, and super-friendly customer service. Not only did we get all this but I also needed to extend the truck past our return time and our Penske rep, Ray, who had a great relationship with his other customers (which I knew he had just hearing Ray interacting on the phone) found a way to give me the time that I needed (and at a completely fair price to boot.) All I can say is WOW!
So is this just a fluke? Is Ray at my local Penske an exception to the rule? Maybe, but lets look at how I see Penske set up to win when it comes to “dedication at every turn” (there company motto).
- Penske is new to the consumer truck rental business. They have been leasing to commercial for some time. To succeed in commercial I would expect Ray would have to be a great relationship guy – which he was – and treated me like he was developing a long term relationship. And trust me, Penske will get my business from now one based on how Ray treated me.
- Ray and the other rep that works with him spend most of their time between customer visits running maintenance checks on all of the trucks. This focus means that I get a safer truck. In fact, Ray noticed a latch on the back of the truck making a louder sound than usual (not a safety thing just a noise thing) and he was immediately going to tweak it right away to make the experience perfect. Now that’s what I love to see.
- Ray works for Penske so he cares about how his company is perceived. In fact ,the motto was the first thing I, and Ray, would see coming into work each day on a great big sign above his desk. Ray was empowered to run his operation to help customers and he did just that.
And in the end, even with this superior customer service and a great new product, my wife calculates that we saved more going with Penske vs. UHaul. UHaul may still bring in customers with their engenius ‘word-of-truck’ designs for now, but in my books, Penske will eventually win the hearts of movers with their genuine, positive word-of-mouth.
September 2nd, 2008 - Posted in social media | | 0 Comments
