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Customer Service? And Uber?

These words are going hand in hand more and more as Uber revolutionalises the transportation industry.

Uber is a game changer.

How easy is it now to get a paid ride when you want from where you are to where you want to go, without having to battle with a taxi company?

Now, there is no worrying about finding a ride when taxis are doing 3:00pm changeover shifts?

And gone are the days of not being able to get a cab to come to your home to pick you up, and then walking ten minutes up the road to the railway station to find a bunch of cabs sitting there waiting on a fare….

No. The world needed Uber.

So, let me tell you about my experience recently the other week when I was out one night in Atlanta.

Firstly, as you all know, I’m not from Atlanta.

So what happened this night was that I decided to venture out for dinner about twenty-three kilometres from my hotel to a restaurant that had been highly recommended to me.

I decided to travel by Uber both ways.

On the way there I needed to sit up front with the driver so that I could recharge my phone. And guess what? The driver was able to oblige my request with ease.

Now, after dinner, I needed an Uber to get back to my hotel and here is what happened.

I ordered the ride, but the ride never showed. What happened was, that I think he did in fact show, and I saw him, but he was six lanes across a major road from where I was at, and I was in a driveway on the other side where, as a matter of fact, plenty of other diners were being collected by other Uber drivers.

So after a while of watching this on the app my driver went and cancelled the fare and Uber billed me six dollars.

Immediately I proceeded to order a replacement ride, and within minutes the new driver had arrived to where I was and I was on my way.

So on this ride, I mentioned to the driver that I was staying out near the airport, but after a few minutes he pointed out to me that our destination was logged as Marietta which was in the opposite direction.

So the driver immediately switched route and turned the car around, despite the fact that I was having difficulty changing the destination on the Uber app on my phone.

Well it turned out that the driver needed to leave the highway to put gas in his tank, and so while we were stopped there he was able to help me find the right place on the phone app to load in the new destination.

So how did this little error all happen?

Well the Uber app lists three recent destinations as buttons on your Uber destination page when you go to book a ride, which is very convenient.

Similarly, when I went to ride to the restaurant, there is a “Ride with Uber” button on the Trip Advisor app that took me straight to Uber without me having to type in the destination.

But, back with those recently visited buttons, there was one small problem…..you see, Uber listed a Marriott in Marietta where I had stayed in June, but now I was staying at a Marriott out by the airport. And I had pushed that button for the Marietta address, without fully checking…

So I figured it was entirely my fault that we were travelling in the opposite direction initially, because silly old me, I hadn’t paid attention to the detail.

Long Story Short.

To cut a long story short, my driver dropped me at the correct hotel, and collected his correct fare.

Sure, the fare was probably a little higher than if we had gone straight there from the restaurant, but heck, that was all my fault, and none of this driver’s fault.

In fact, he was very pleasant about it all.

What was really interesting, was that in the initial part of his ride I was putting in an objection to Uber about the driver who cancelled the first fare.

Because Uber had charged me $6.00 for that.

So what happened then?

Well after logging my objection, Uber immediately sent me an email letting me know that the $6.00 had been refunded to my card.

No questions asked.

What can we learn from all this?

Firstly, in the case of a dispute, the best form of resolution is concession.

Really, for $6.00, why not?

$6.00 is a very small price for Uber to pay [back] to ensure a happy customer.

Secondly, as in my case, sometimes the customer messes up.

I did. With the second ride home and the incorrect destination.

I skipped a step, and relaxed my attention to detail.

No real harm done, but no point arguing about it.

Great customers make for great business.

Try to encourage your customers to be great customers.

And not nickel and dimers.

Try to work out how you can apply these two lessons into the day to day running of your business.

There are always plenty of lessons out there in front of you.

You only need to see them, heed them, and take action.

*****

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For more information and to secure your seat click this link here.

I will also be presenting at a Symposium on growing your Dental Practice in 2018 in Sydney Australia on Saturday December 2 2017 with leading experts Kinnar Shah, Angus Pryor, Jayne Bandy and Toni Surace .

For more information and to secure your seat click this link here.

*****

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*****

The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.

Email me at david@theupe.com

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