Customer Service, Koeppel Nissan and Broken Business Process

Today, a short diversion from our ongoing story about MailPoet’s Kim Gjerstad and his 360-degree marketing presentation at WordCamp 2013.

I’m sitting in the customer service lounge at Koeppel Nissan in Queens, New York. I’ve been here before, and yes, the Wi-Fi still rocks. Having now officially moved to New York City, I’m waiting for my car to undergo New York State Inspection, and Koeppel Nissan, where I bought the vehicle, was my choice for the job, mostly because getting all the paperwork in order as I transfer my car insurance, driver license, and vehicle registration from New Jersey to New York (that is the correct and only acceptable order, by the way) is proving to be challenging and I’d hoped that Koeppel Nissan, having registered the car for me in New Jersey, would be helpful navigating the maze.

And they have been. And then today happened.

After speaking with Koeppel Sales Manager Joe Clem to get things as in-order as I could, I called Koeppel Nissan’s service department to make an appointment. State inspection on a less-than-one-year-old vehicle is a simple matter, and I was promised that with an appointment the whole process would take only a few minutes.

Apparently at Koeppel Nissan “a few minutes” is the same as “at least two hours”. It’s why I’m sitting here. It’s why I’m writing this. I’m hoping that either Joe Clem or Howard Koeppel will see this (Koeppel Nissan is pretty great at the on-line thing), but at the end of the day I’m really just angry and taking an opportunity to do a bit of Search Engine Optimization reconnaissance to make the best of the bad situation Koeppel Nissan has created for me today.

Customer Service matters, but doing great customer service requires a business process, and clearly Koeppel Nissan has none in place. My friends at Nissan World of Denville NJ will keep getting my service business, and if I ever buy another Nissan and Joe Clem is still here I’ll buy it from Koeppel Nissan; thieves, they are not.

Want to talk about customer service as a business process? Just click the contact link.

Oops, I’m done. I guess it’s time to watch The Price is Right with all the other customer service victims at Koeppel Nissan.