The 6 touchpoints of the customer journey and how failing in one can impact your reputation — EASTWEST Public Relations
I got into the car and it was filthy, with cigarette ash everywhere. I turned it on and it was out of fuel. I had only 40 kilometres left and I was going to drive 10 kilometres home and 10 kilometres back. I was thinking that it isn’t really going to work out.
I parked the car because I was making a phone call and then someone parked in front of me. It was a man wearing a Halfords-branded jacket. I said to him that I was about to leave but he said that I can’t take the car because it’s a mechanic’s car — it’s filthy and it has no petrol, and it’s not insured; it won’t be legal on the road.
And so I got out of the car, took all my things out, and went inside.
I overheard the exchange between the young man who’d only been there for a week and was trying to sort everything out and the man who turned out to be the regional manager.
Meanwhile, a young technician (the only one who was actually working that day) wandered around with an oil-stained rag, wondering which car he’d start servicing. I peered through into the workshop and I could see spanners on the floor — I could see oil with lids off and cars in various states of starting and finishing.
The supervisor then proceeded to talk to me in front of the young man. He was explaining that the agency staff had let them down. It was all really chaos and that he never normally worked in the said shop at all. However, they’d get to the bottom of it.
I have quite an important two-year service that needs to be done — brake linings, brake pads, oil filters, micro filters, and so on. I’m starting to think that the Mini garage, although twice the price, may have been a much less risky investment of my time.
Whilst I’m waiting to get my keys back, the manager explained to the young man and to the rest of us who are waiting in the slightly crowded and slightly anxious-feeling reception that four out of their six staff are not turning up.
Not only that, the young man who’d been doing the MOT wasn’t in an accident at all. That was a lie that the young man concocted to try and make everybody feel somehow better about the situation. The man who is going to have his car MOT-ed took his keys back and decided to leave.
I said that I’ll also get my keys back. And then the supervisor told me what really happened: A young technician had an electric vehicle (EV) on the ramp. He thought that the EV was in park mode. He got out of the car because there was no engine noise and thought that it had been turned off. And then the EV shot off the ramp across the garage and drove into the wall. They gave the spare pool car to the EV’s owner only to find that when he, unfortunately, had an accident, the car wasn’t insured.
The whole story, in itself, was not so reassuring. I said that I’ll just take my car back home with me.
How Crucial the Customer Journey Is
Step five of the Talkwalker customer journey is delivery. When it comes to advocacy, which is step six, you can imagine how people like me who feel aggrieved (because, frankly, we’ve been lied to) will likely share that story.
Originally published at https://www.eastwestpr.com.
