Bill Matthies

At the Sound of the Beep, Forget It!
November 8, 2007

I am car shopping and recently visited one dealer twice within two weeks, taking test driving both times and willingly giving the sales person my mobile number in the process. A couple of weeks later, my phone rang and it was the dealer politely asking if there is anything they could do to win my business. Just a few days after that, they called once more again, asking if they could assist me in some way. In other words, simple CRM (customer relations management) aimed at what should be a prime target; a person who went to them and essentially said, “I’m interested.”

Good idea, bad execution. The words say they value my business, but the message I got was not enough so to justify a real person calling me. 

Why would they do this? To save time?

It had to have taken someone as much if not more time to load all the phone numbers they gathered into the machine in relation to the time it would have taken a real person to call. And suppose I had not been put off by the machine contact (I hung up on both messages)? What then? Should I have left a message for them? 

As far as I’m concerned, this makes them no different than those who send me Viagra email solicitations from China or those who each day fill my home’s mailbox with solicitations ascribed “personal invitation” addressed to “occupant.” A machine asking me to give them $50,000? I don’t think so.

Communication technology (potentially) enables as well as shackles us; it frees us to do more or enslaves us in the naïve belief that we are doing more. It’s up to each of us to decide which it will be. As for this particular car dealer, it was the ultimate cold call.

Bill Matthies is the president of Coyote Insight (www.coyoteinsight.com) and can be reached at (714) 726-2901 or wmatthies@coyoteinsight.com.

Posted by Bill Matthies on November 8, 2007 | Comments (0)