Living in Manhattan in my early 20’s, owning a car made zero sense.  There were no parking spots, rush hour traffic was most of the day and public transportation was great.  The New York City train system can get you anywhere you needed to get to in a decent amount of time and most of the time came with free entertainment in the form of concerts, breakdancers, or comedians.  It also offered some of the best people-watching available. I didn’t need a car until my second child was born and my wife and I realized that it wasn’t going to be easy hitching a ride to an event with 4 people and 2 car seats.  

We ended up buying our first car right before baby number 2 and it was a beauty.  It was the newly remodeled 2007 Honda C-RV EXL with leather seats and all.  I wasn’t looking for anything fancy but we happened to have found a really great deal that we couldn’t pass up.  

With all the bells and whistles this car had, it didn’t have a backup camera which came standard in the last few cars I bought and is now legally required in many places.  

Do you remember having to manually roll down your windows?  You would get a workout just to be able to feel a breeze while driving.  It was a real luxury to get automatic windows that opened at the click of a button.  There are so many features that used to be considered luxuries that are now standard in many regular cars.  Times change and people expect more and more.  Once you taste luxury, you expect more.  

It’s not just cars.  The internet changed the way we do business and it continues to change our expectations each day.  

Google is training us to feel that anything less than an instant answer is unacceptable. 

Amazon is training us to expect anything and everything within minutes of deciding that we need it.

Every Startup business is out there trying to “solve a problem” to make our lives easier.

In the process, you and I, the consumers,  are expecting more in every situation.  

Customer service is not what it used to be.  Great service is expected if you don’t want terrible reviews posted on Google and all over social media.  Even worse, you turn off clients and never know what you did wrong.  When you get a bad review, you know what you can fix.  It’s the silent customers that hurt your business in a way that you will never know unless you really care to find out.  Do you care?  

Follow along as I dive deep into customer behavior and how you can improve your dealership’s overall customer experience.