I know how much y’all love these personal anecdote posts. Actually, if I’m wrong about that you may want to skip this post.
Anyhow, I’m in Florida this month for a series of meetings, and I brought my family along with me because I hate being away from them for too long. They did Disneyworld, I met with clients. One particular engagement took me out of the Orlando area and I had to rent a second vehicle. I drove to Tampa for the day for meetings, and the next morning before I needed to return the vehicle, I went running with a friend around a lake that was about a 30 minute drive from our hotel. It was a nice area, with lots of trails to explore, wildlife and a farmer’s market. Some of our family wanted to go to Disney while the rest of us wanted to see the farmer’s market. Long story short, somewhere between my parking space and the place where we stopped to take pictures of gators, I lost the keys to the rental car. (Probably karma from throwing rocks at the gators to see if they would move into a position for better photos.)
Now, if you’ve read previous blog posts (or just know me personally) I am a pretty difficult consumer. I expect great service, and I understand that the price for great service in emergencies that I myself have created through my own nonsensing is usually pretty high. You’d think after the many interactions that I’ve had with this particular car rental company that there would be some sort of note on my file either saying “DO NOT RENT” or “UPSELL”, but there are neither.
So the keys are gone, and my family is bored of the farmers market, and they want to get to Disneyworld, which at this point is looking pretty impossible. I call the car rental agency and explain the situation, and ask them to handle it. I will leave the car, they can figure out the best way to solve the problem.
The agent on the phone is immediately angry. You can’t do that. You have to do x, y, z and then 1, 2, 3.
I know this isn’t true, because guess what? Yup. It was not my first time feeding my car keys to a gator.
I explain to him again what I need them to do, which is essentially “handle this.”
Again I am given several self service options that I should explore. Frustated, and unable to reach anyone else at the company, I attempt to do as asked. I finally shuttle my family into an Uber and send them to Disneyworld without me as I wait for a locksmith that I have to call myself. Hours later, I’m still waiting.
Finally, I call the car rental company one more time and explain to them that I am abandoning the car and they can do what they wish.
Frustrated and panicky agent: “But Ma’am, that’s going to cost $500.00!”
Me: “Are you telling me that all along, I could have paid $500.00 for you to handle this the way I asked you to the first time I called you?”
Agent: “Yes, of course. We will bill you for the tow, the keys being cut, the extra rental day and a fee for returning to a different location.”
Me: “Great. That’s what I wanted you to do 6 hours ago when I asked you to handle it. Why didn’t you just suggest this at that time? Now I have missed a day at Disneyworld with my family and I’m pretty hot and angry after waiting for service all day.”
Agent: “Well, Ma’am, most people don’t want to pay $500.00 to have us deal with their $50.00 car rental. I was giving you options to save you money.”
So, Lesson One is about Selling.
The agent had the option to do what I asked him, which was handle my problem. He could have, and should have, charged me to do that, and taken care of it. Instead, he made an assumption that I would prefer to spend less money.
How often are you pre-judging your prospects? Are you going in to quotes presenting what you think they will buy instead of what they have asked for or what they need? Build value, and charge appropriately. In this case, the agent could have clearly outlined all that they could do for me — by the end of that list, considering what I wanted, which was a full day with my family, that price would have been a bargain and I would have paid it gladly. (Want to learn how to prospect better? We’ve got an online sales prospecting training program starting June 13, and you can register here: https://www.managedsalespros.com/online-msp-prospecting/)
In my case, I ended up with a day wasted AND I spent the same amount of money on the problem that I would have if they would have just handled it right the first time. In the end they were scrambling to make it up to me, which meant loss of margin for them, inconvenience for all of us, and just ill-will all around. Imagine how happy I would have been if they had just said “We got this!” Fantastic, take my money.
Lesson Two is about Data Integrity and Documentation.
This company should know that I’m a pain in the butt to deal with. They should know that I lose car keys. I’ve been renting from them for four years and I travel over half of every year. It’s not the first time I’ve done something stupid. First of all, there should be a note that outlines how much I spend with this company – like most of my road warrior brethren, I live on the road and I’m loyal to this company – mostly because of the way they handled the first time I did something stupid with one of their rentals. Second, isn’t there a note on my file that says “prone to error, not cost-adverse, handle with care, charge double when she’s being ridiculous” or some other nice-to-know tips about how to do business with me? That would have helped this agent in this situation provide the right assistance based on my customer history. If everyone in your organization can access the right data at the right time, life is much easier for everyone – including your clients. (Hint: ITGlue can help you with this!)
Lesson Three is about releasing bad and/or unprofitable clients back to industry.
So the third and final thought I want to leave you with is this: maybe they shouldn’t be renting to me at all. I called their offices over 20 times on Saturday. To be fair, that should have been one call (see commentary above). Sure, I spend a lot of money with these guys, but how much of that is profit after the amount of time they have to deal with me and the number of things they need to fix after I touch them? Granted, someone smarter than me does the math on what rental car agencies need to charge to remain profitable. Are you doing the math on what each individual client is worth for you? Are you holding on to clients that aren’t as profitable as others? Are you working with clients who burn out your techs? Should you be firing those clients? Or charging them more? (Hint: MSPCFO can help you identify this.) I’m sure there was a point last weekend where this company would have preferred I just take my difficult self across the street to their competitors. Then I booked four more rentals and all was forgiven.
And I finally made it to DisneyWorld.
