The Unlikely Solution to Creating a Better Customer Experience in the Truck Parts Industry

As a truck parts supplier, a significant portion of your customer base will be searching for parts for vehicles manufactured before 2010. These spare truck parts can be difficult to source, so many customers may be coming to you with a slight sense of desperation. 

If you can solve these customers’ issue, though, chances are they will become customers for life and provide you with valuable word-of-mouth promotion.

What’s the unlikely solution to creating a better customer experience in the truck parts industry? It’s very simple: Under-promise but over-deliver when it comes to customer service. 

Customer Service Lessons for Bricks and Mortar Truck Parts Stores

In a brick and mortar store, your customer service representatives will be the workers who staff the front counter. They need to be trained to think of themselves as concierges as well as clerks. Here’s what they need to deliver:

Friendly service: This should go without saying, and yet, many counter clerks project indifference toward their customers. This should never be allowed to happen. Your workers do not need to be effusive, but they do need to be approachable and respectful. If another customer calls while a worker is talking to someone at the counter, the worker needs to tell the caller, “I am with another customer right now. Do you mind if I put you on hold?”

Familiarity with the stock: Several different manufacturers may make the truck part your customer is looking for. Your customer may not be a truck parts expert, but your employee should be. He or she should be capable of giving a thorough explanation of any differences that may exist between different manufacturer’s models.

Proactive service: Your employee should learn as much about the specific circumstances of the customer’s situation as possible so that your employee can give good advice. There is nothing quite so off-putting from a customer’s point of view as buying the wrong part.

Customer Service Lessons for Online Truck Parts Stores

One of the benefits of an online truck parts store is that much of the customer service work can be automated. Algorithms enable inventory search far faster and far more specifically than a human employee might be able to perform the task. 

Even so, issues will arise from time to time that can only be solved by a human representative. The most customer-friendly online truck parts businesses always supplement automated processes with a customer service hotline staffed by real people.