(Nah, it’s Pretty Much Always the Little Things)

I took my car in to the dealer be serviced this week. Just the routine 10,000-mile check-up. Everything went like clockwork and everyone was friendly and efficient, as per usual at Carter Volkswagen in the lovely Ballard neighborhood of Seattle.

A few days later I missed a call from Carter. The message left on my voice mail was from an actual person in the Ballard office, rather than from some national VW call center, calling to make sure everything went smoothly and to see if there was anything else they could help me with. I was pretty impressed, and rather appreciative.

Source: Ken Paris @ Flickr

They know as well as I do that I didn’t need anything else – I just had the car serviced. But their taking the time to pick up the phone and make contact sent just the right message: We care about your satisfaction as a customer, and we’ll provide friendly, personal service whenever you need it.

Of course, it’s not like it suddenly occurred to that guy to call me. They’ve got mechanisms all set up so that people get a call two days after they bring their car in. And that’s exactly how it should be done: they clearly have a strategic communications plan that supports their business goals, one of which is providing friendly, personal service to drive customer loyalty.

Every leader of a business, a division, a team, needs to think the same way about their internal audiences: what are my business goals and how can I consistently communicate with my employees in order to help reach those goals? What mechanisms do I need to put in place in order for that to happen like clockwork, every time? How might I surprise and delight them in a way that drives loyalty, motivation and productivity?

Think about the last time you had a positive experience as a customer, and how you might take the essence of that experience to transform your internal communications.

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