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A Scruffy Old Boat, Part One

A flotilla of missed opportunities

By Mark Riffey

I bought a $300 boat. I hear you laughing. Yes, I know the joke about the favorite two days of a boat owner’s life (the day they buy it and the day they sell it). This isn’t a story about a boat as much as it is about thinking about every person who walks in the door of your business (virtually or for real).

This scruffy old boat is a 1988 Bayliner, even though none of this is really about the boat. It’s about the lens that you view someone through when they enter your business and how important it is that your entire staff is trained to use that lens.

So I bought this boat at this ridiculous price because a friend had to get rid of it and was unable to sell it for a year for various reasons. As you’d expect, a $300 boat needs a little bit of work. Given a full schedule and a serious lack of boat mechanic chops, I decided to take it to a boat shop.

It’s a sizable shop. Clearly successful, well-funded, nice showroom, plenty of inventory, employees all over the place, etc. So I drop off the boat and tell them what’s going on. They say they’ll be able to get to it early the following week, which is fine. The eight day wait isn’t surprising since every mechanic shop (of any kind) that I’ve talked to over the last month is backed up for weeks.

Educate the newbie

That was the first missed opportunity. It’s the first time I’ve ever been in this business and they know.

How? Why? Because they took my name, phone number, address, and email at the Service Desk. Everyone in the building appears to have a computer in front of them. With that information, their system should know that I’ve never called, bought or rented anything there, etc. Yet, they missed an opportunity. The showroom and parts department is not crowded with customers for obvious reasons (it’s Monday 10am).

No one confirms that it’s my first visit – so what if I’m standing at the service desk. No conversation about the things they carry that I can pickup any time rather than order and wait online. No curiosity about what other boating I do (kayaking is not boating, IMO). No brief tour to make sure I know what resources are available to me there – even if I only have a couple of minutes.

In the following eight days until they look at the boat I was not contacted. I wouldn’t expect the service department to contact me as they’d already told me what to expect. Again, they have all my contact info. No postcard, email, or fruit bouquet (yes, the fruit would be overkill).

Another missed opportunity.

Once again, a motorhead

After 10 days, I called to see what was going on. The service department guy said the boat needed a starter and it’d be $1200. I was proud that I didn’t laugh.

I’m not much of a motorhead anymore but I wasn’t born yesterday so $1200 to replace a starter seemed a bit off. I asked the service guy and found that it was two hours to remove and replace the starter (WHAT?), another three quarters of an hour to test it, then another 90 min for possible follow up diagnosis (because something else is probably wrong).

Still, I asked for an estimate to fix the starter. The starter and solenoid were just short of $400 which seemed a bit rich for a starter, but there are good, better, and best marine starters if you look around. This one just happened to be the best – which is probably not ideal for a 32 year old boat. I told him I’d pick it up.

I mosey in to pick up the boat today, wait 20 minutes after paying for somebody to grab it out of the locked yard even though I called in advance to advise them that I was coming, then the service guy asked them to pull it out, then I had to come in and ask again.

The service guy gave me the estimate because it included part numbers. That was nice – having the numbers will save me some time when I put on my motorhead hat. He agreed it was nuts to spend $1200 to put a starter on a scruffy old 32 year old boat. So I’ll be doing that next week when the $72 part arrives.

We’ll finish the story next week …

Mark Riffey is an investor and advisor to small business owners. Want to learn more about Mark or ask him to write about a strategic, operations or marketing problem? See Mark’s site, contact him on LinkedIn or Twitter,or email him at [email protected].