Service Envy: Lube and a Lesson in Under 15

Last weekend I was running around and out of time.  I needed an oil change and the garages were closed.  As I was gassing up, I looked across the way and saw a Mr. Lube shop.  It was late.  They were open.  I wanted it now.

Twice the price?  Ouch.  But in I went.

I pulled into the bay, and didn't even have to get out of my car.  I rolled down the window, was handed a free copy of the day's paper (okay, so it's not -really- free when you're paying twice as much as you do to get this done at the garage, but what the hell, it made me happy and I felt special) and offered me coffee, hot chocolate or tea (and if you've been in Canada lately you know how bloody cold it's been).

As I sat reading my paper and drinking my nice hot beverage, I had three very helpful young men crawling all over my car.  They were under the hood.  They were spraying the hinges inside my doors.  There wasn't an inch of that vehicle they didn't attend to, and right smartly.  I felt like I'd just stepped through a tv screen and into one of those 1950's Texaco commercials.  You know the one -- guy with the cool cap, armed with a squeegee and a really swell smile.

THIS was service.  They were fast.  They were friendly.  They were making me feel like I was the most important person in the world for at least 15 minutes.

And dammit, I want to do that too.

By the time I drove out, being thanked by these polite young men with the Ultrabrite smiles (okay, so it was a little Stepford Wives at times, but I was willing to look beyond that because I'd just gotten the best lube of my life ~wink~) I was drumming my fingers on the dash and saying "now -that- was service!".  How can I do this for -my- customers?

One of the things that impressed me was how they managed to rape my wallet and make me want to thank them for it.  I liked the convenience.  I didn't have to get out of my car.  I liked that I had people hopping to serve me a hot, tasty beverage.  I liked that they asked me "upselling" kinds of questions without making me feel like a cheapskate for the ones to which I responded "no".  I liked that it was fast, and easy, and that the sticker they put inside of my windshield reporting all those geeky-cool car stats -also- gives me 50% off the next time I go in.  Felt kind of like it all works out in the wash.

So, here I sit this morning, a week later, thinking about an oil change that would -never- have crossed my mind again until it was time to have the next one done.  That's service gone right.  So right, in fact, that I'm blogging about it because once again I know if I say it out loud, I'll hold myself accountable.

I want my customers to feel -just that special- when they walk through the doors of my shop.  The rub is that this becomes a monumentally larger mountain to climb when you're in a place that's grown from 20,000 people to over 4,000,000 in a bit more than a year.  While I can continue to innovate, scaling the "service" end of things becomes an ever-growing nightmare.  I struggle to keep up with my IMs, and while I've blogged a few times about the "embedded office systems" that I continue to cultivate to try to get a handle on this again, it's probably the single biggest thing that makes me feel like I'm just not getting it right.

So, I'll get over myself on that one for the moment, and let myself play a little with the idea that there are other ways of making my customers feel like kings for a day when they walk through my digital doors.  For a start, I want to offer a free piano.  I've got a new line ready to release, and I want to make the classic ebony something that anyone can own without spending a dime.  Baron and I have also spent a lot of time talking about cultivating a rewards program -- loyalty points of some kind.  By working on our own vendors, it's one of the things I want to build in, not to invade my customer's privacy by tracking their sales, but to reward them with discounts and other incentives for coming back to do business with us again.

I'm going to continue to noodle this a bit, because while I can't quite invite my customers to drive their shiny prim jeeps through my doors, I might in fact be able to hand them the daily metaverse version of the paper and all the other news fit to print, and that hot mugga joe too.

I'll close with a question, because I really want to get this right:

What makes -you- feel special when you do business with someone in Second Life?  What kinds of wonderful experiences have you had that made you really want to go back and do business with that person and place again?