A servant’s attitude
As Galpin has grown, keeping every employee on the same page has
become a monumental task. The company now employs about 1,200
people, and all of them have to embrace the same values.
Boeckmann says keeping the message simple has become very
important. With that in mind, he has distilled the overarching mindset
he wants his employees to exhibit down to a four-word directive:
“Have a servant’s attitude.”
Boeckmann says that you can never lose sight of the reason why
you are in business, and it’s not just to sell your product or service. It’s
to take care of the people who use your product or service.
“We have no reason to be here unless we serve our customers the
way they deserve to be treated,” he says. “A lot of people say, ‘I don’t
want to be a servant,’ but that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re
here for a paycheck, but if you’re working just for a paycheck, you
might not be serving the customer the way you should. But if you are
serving the customer the way you should, you’ll definitely get a paycheck.”
Boeckmann trains Galpin employees, particularly those who interface with customers, to be sticklers for detail. It goes beyond doing
what the customer expects you to do and reaches another level of
anticipating what might go wrong during and after the purchase
process, and doing whatever possible to eliminate inconvenience for
customers.
Boeckmann says Galpin was among the first to make loaner cars
available for customers having their cars serviced. As society has
become more fast-paced, Galpin has taken steps to reduce the time
necessary to make a car purchase, such as appraising trade-ins while
a customer shops.
“We try to reflect a real joy in serving our customers and taking away
the fear and dread of the buying process. That’s really what we train
for.”
Boeckmann says that if you want a culture of service to sink in, you
have to immerse your employees in it by setting an example from the
top down every day. Along with that, regular training sessions can
help to reinforce the lessons you are teaching.
“In the training, we reinforce our ethics, which is really no more
than being honest and transparent with the customer,” he says.
“That’s really the key. Everything we train for, everything we do, is
built around the customer.”
Boeckmann says developing great customer service is really rooted
in making your customers believe that you are genuinely interested in
the experience they are having with your company. An interaction
that might be purely transactional to you, might be an experience that
has an emotional impact on a customer, and that is something you
should always remember and cascade throughout your organization.
“You not only want to treat people in the way you want to be treated,
but if you can, to go beyond that and do something that is of a greater
benefit to the customer. If there is a problem, we want to take care of
it. We want them to feel that we are interested in whatever experience
they are going to have with us.”