I’m not much of a car guy. Sometimes I like to look at Ferraris and things, but when it comes to actually spending money on cars – I can’t bring myself to do it. I always weigh the cost of a new car against the vacations I could take, the home improvements I could do, or (most likely)– the money I could save for my kids’ eventual college education. Then I remember that I don’t even like driving and opt for whatever the option besides “buy a car” is.
If you like seeing people post about shiny new cars on Twitter, follow someone else. If you want to see a guy fail miserably at doing auto body work himself - click that follow button!I MAY be in just a tad over my head. Too late to turn back now. pic.twitter.com/ZwF70Gh1ok
— Steve Athanas (@steveathanas) July 1, 2018
As a result, I drive a 2007 Toyota Camry that I purchased new in 2006. For those of you counting, that means I’ve had it for just about 15 years; I may get it a cake to celebrate its anniversary on April 22nd. This red car known as “Scarlet” predates my marriage, my children, my house, and pretty much everything else I own. Please don’t mistake this as a sign of rock-solid reliability. As far as Toyotas go, mine has kind of been a lemon, which is to say that I’ve had my share of problems. Early on, I had to replace a water pump that failed and an oil line ruptured which required it to be towed in. If you Google “2007 Camry gas pedal” you’ll see all kind of information about floor mats and stuck accelerators, and my car still carries the wounds from where they ground the pedal down. Since the warranty ran out, I’ve had ignition coils fail and body parts rust. My radiator has been replaced and my transmission has had issues. My personal favorite was the time the car caught fire – yes, actual flames – and then only cost me $200 to repair and drive back home again.
My point is: I’ve spent more than enough time at the Toyota dealership getting it serviced. And almost every time I’m there, I’m reminded that Scott - the service advisor that I usually see - has a very similar role to many of us in IT. I bring him problems with a thing I know very little about and have no inclination to become an expert in, and I trust him to give me good advice and make it right. Sometimes, he gives me suggestions that are not related to a problem I’ve brought him and he’s earned enough of my trust that I usually accept those recommendations - like flushing the transmission - but not always.
Honestly, I could spend the next three blog entries discussing the parallels between his job and IT’s role in a business just in that paragraph, but today I want to focus on what most car dealerships - and definitely the one I visit - do really well: communication to a nontechnical audience. Think about it; the service advisors need to be able to explain to my great aunt who has no mechanical inclination at all what a wheel bearing is and why it needs to be replaced. How different is that than explaining to a customer-facing executive why their call center’s VDI environment needs to have vGPU added? They both have the same issue at the core – needing to explain the value proposition of something the user doesn’t really understand.
I think this is something that good service organizations do well; they prioritize getting the information in the hands of those that need it in a way that they can consume and find useful. For instance, the car dealership doesn’t send technical service manuals to my house. That would be overkill and certainly of little value. Instead, they send me updates about how best to care for my car during certain weather conditions or remind me that I haven’t been in for an oil change in six months(though candidly, with Covid I’ve put about 300 miles on my car since the quarantine started and I’m dubious of actually needing an oil change). When I get to the dealer, they have these little pamphlets that they can hand me that cover all of the most common services and problems they see. That way, they can walk me through why I need new brake rotors instead of showing me the horribly warped mess on my car.
This guy may not look like an auto mechanic, but if you pay attention, you can pick up ideas and ways to improve your IT shop just about anywhere.
When we look at this through the lens of IT it re-emphasizes for me the importance of making sure that you’re providing the right, actionable information in the right place and at the right time. For instance, if you run the service organization at your company, do you have a pamphlet available to explain what happens if you re-image a computer? Does it explain exactly where the data goes and how you protect it? If you manage the AWS environment, do you have something that you can use to explain how app data is protected both in the short and long term? If not you should seriously consider it. Is your website easy to navigate and does it have answers to common questions about the services your team provides? Are you providing relevant information to a client when they put a ticket in with a well-crafted email to explain what’s happening, or do you just “do the work?”
The problem with just “getting it done” is that you aren’t building the trust or relationships that you need to drive real trust in IT. Remember, at the end of the day the most important differentiator that IT has over an outside consultant or outsourced firm is trust that you’re resolutely working in the best interest of the business. Every time you interact withs someone is an opportunity to improve, maintain, or degrade that perception. By having excellent communications up front when the customer needs them and in a way they can consume them, you skew that line towards improving the reputation and relationship every time.
The second phase of communication happens during the service. Every time my car is back there, they tell me how long it will be until it should be ready. If something changes, they let me know right when it changes, not when the time I should be finished comes and goes. For instance, one time I went in for a simple 5,000 mile service and they told me it would take an hour. Not fifteen minutes later, I was sitting in the waiting area taking care of some emails and Scott came back to let me know that it was going to be an extra half hour because they had a problem with one of the lifts in the back and it had slowed the process down. I was told so far ahead of the game that I wasn’t at all cranky when an hour passed by. The same is true when I bring it in for an oil change and they come out to tell me that something else is wrong. They don’t wait until the end and surprise me with it – they come out right away, give me some advice, and let me make a decision.
Both of these are absolutely achievable for IT. You can keep your customers informed - and therefore happy - by simply making a point to keep them updated as you go through the process of building out their project, staging their infrastructure, deploying their new WiFi, or whatever it is that you’re doing. Don’t make them wander around and look through the windows to see what’s going on. The big one for me is meeting time expectations. If you tell a customer that you’re going to have their new database provisioned within an hour and it takes four, you had better tell them the instant you know it’s going to take longer than you said. If you do these things, you’ll mitigate any frustration when you’re completing work late. This is also true for unforeseen problems – just like at the garage. If you find out that you need to wait for the InfoSec team to review the requirements and that’s going to impact either the timeline or the deliverable – you owe it to your client to let them know right away.
The third phase of communication is the closeout and follow-up. My dealer does this pretty well, but I actually think this is an area where we in IT can set the standard and then have the auto industry learn from us. At the dealer, when the car is finished they walk me through any of the work that was done and then they ask me if I have any questions. I usually do not, but they don’t make me feel rushed and then they hand me some paperwork, I swipe the card, and get my keys back. Then I’m out the door. About two days later, I always get a phone call from them asking if everything is OK and a short survey as a follow up, which if nothing else provides me an opportunity to re-engage with them if something isn’t going well. I don’t remember ever needing to – but it’s nice to know that when I walk out the door that I can expect someone will call me to make sure that everything is going smoothly. This is especially true when I’ve spent more than $500 on a repair.
In IT, we can do this so easily. We are literally the people who deploy automation – so just automate the follow up! Send an email or a voicemail or an IM. If you can get an intern to make calls for you to give it that personal touch - do it! The important point is that you’re asking if everything is going well, giving an opportunity to re-engage if it’s not going well, and then asking for some feedback on how it went. Just by doing that you’ve sent a message that your team cares about the work that you’re doing for them and want to make sure that the customer is getting what they expected out of your project.
This is not my car. However, it is a rough approximation of the color of my car.
I bet I have more cupholders.
As a bonus tip (which I couldn’t quite fit in above), pay attention to how your service place respects your time. They have invested millions in an indoor drop off line so that I don’t need to get wet, and they can keep the cars moving through at record speed. I never need to wait more than a few moments to get checked in. Additionally, mine offers me a loaner car if the service is going to be more than two hours or so, and they’ll drop me off at work or anywhere else within a fairly sizable (10 mile or so) radius regardless of how long the service is. The point is, they know that I have other things to do besides worry about them working on my car. They know that the car isn’t the most important thing in my life. I don’t need to draw the parallels for you; hopefully by now you see them. But make sure that you’re keeping in mind that the folks that you’re interacting with aren’t nearly as interested in the technology as you are. They view the technology as a means to a business end, not the most important part of their day. So, try really hard not to kill them with technical detail, keep their attention any longer than you absolutely need to, or leave them hanging without the tools they need to be successful for any longer than absolutely necessary.
While I don’t necessarily enjoy going to get my car serviced, I don’t dread it like some folks do. I found a service organization that seems to understand what I want out of a car dealership and generally meets those needs pretty well. As a result, I am not inclined to shop around for another garage. In fact, I may actually be paying a bit more than I need to – but because I trust that they’re going to take care of my car’s (and my own) needs well, I don’t feel like I’m being overcharged. While you may think that your company doesn’t have any option other than to come to IT for service - I can absolutely guarantee you’re wrong, and the proliferation of outsourced IT organizations and services can back me up on this.
So, next time your check engine light comes on, try to experience the visit to the repair shop as a way to re-think how your team is serving the business. If you view mundane exercises like an oil change as a way to seek out excellence and best practices, you can level up your IT game anywhere.
Questions for reflection:
When you last went into the garage for car service, do you feel like they did a better job or worse job communicating what was going on that you do with your customers?
What best practices can you pick up from a car dealership? What other non-IT industries can you learn from?
Do you follow up after projects or tickets are closed? How can you extend yourself a little bit to make sure that your customers know you’re on their side?
