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My experience seems to be pretty mixed, and the greatest contributing factor seems to be how I handle/manage the experience and process. I'm pretty experienced at managing people and have a soft approachable demeanor without coming off as meek or uninformed. I've been treated like shit at many places, and turned that around quickly and efficiently. I think the customer themselves plays a pretty big part in how they get treated. Having put myself through highschool and college working in retail, and having owned several customer service business's I know it should never be that way, but the simple reality is any business can be sucked down by one bad individual, or a broken process.
It's pretty hard to draw meaningful constants from this business segment without quantifying and standardizing the customer side. I've turned some bad situations aground by being charming and relatable with service employees that are fighting a broken process that they don't want to follow. I find may really want to be good at what they do, but simply can't do so without collaboration on my side. I've gotten through to them that I can understand their efforts and constraints and that I don't want to make their job hard, I just want my needs to be met. I've had them go well above and beyond to help me.
I think customers underestimate their ability to influence the quality of treatment they receive. In the few instances where I found a dealer was just shit, I just moved on, and quickly so.
If I feel a business is kissing my butt but doesn't really care, I'd rather not count that is a positive. I know they will just as quickly sell me out because that's not a real relationship anyway.
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