Written by: Larry Goodfellow
I was having a chat with my son the other day who recently visited a Tesla store on his travels. He was wowed to say the least. He showed me photos he took of the showroom vehicles. The car designs were wonderful, the interiors were beautiful as well. The speeds shocking, 0-100 in 2.2 seconds. For those who don’t know, Tesla cars run on battery power. The cars come with a battery charger which you can install in your garage. 1 hour of driving requires 10 minutes of charging. The average battery lasts approximately 5 hours before needing to be recharged. Beyond the specs, design and vision of the car company was the in-store experience my son shared, and which was confirmed today when I opened the Fortune site and read the article Elon Musk’s Angry Customer Twitter Thread Is a Gold Mine of Customer Service Advice, which looked at an angry customers tweet and Musk’s perfect execution of customer service.
If the Man Building Rockets to the Moon Listens to his Customers So Should You
The article begins by stating how Musk is known for sharing his company’s vision through his Twitter feed. He also commonly responds to some of his followers responses. One particular Friday night an angry customer tweeted “had a terrible experience with very pushy sales guy from tesla stanford shop while shopping for model x.” To which Elon Musk replied, “Def not ok. Just sent a reminder to Tesla stores that we just want people to look forward to their next visit. That’s what really matters.” Tesla prides themselves on being different from other car dealerships in that they don’t push sales on the customers. If the customer wants to buy a car they will, and the salesperson is there to answer their questions and help them in whatever way they can. Most companies take years of struggling between getting what they want and trying to convince the customer to buy, rather than spending the time to gather qualitative research in order to understand their customer and begin producing products based on what the customer wants.
Let the Product do the Talking
When my son described the showroom and sales experience he had, he responded that he never felt pressured once. The experience was similar to visiting an Apple store he said. The focus was on the product and the product spoke for itself. There was no need to convince the customer that they needed the product. This change in strategy is the key to customer centric sales. High pressure sales are slowly going the way of the dinosaur and with good riddance. No one ever felt good making a decision that they were bullied into making. Companies that invest in market research online communities are on the right path with the focus on understanding their customer and their needs and learning to cater to them. The reward is a constant ROI and a product that is always evolving based on the needs of the customer.
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