Tesla VS The Rest: What home improvement can learn from customer service all-stars

The Executive Summary: I spent 10 minutes in a Toyota dealership without being so much as greeted, and I spent the same 10 minutes at a Tesla showroom and was out the door with a test drive. Read why below and learn how to improve your customer experience!

I've got a story to share about customer service and how to beat your home improvement competitors. At its heart, this is a story about a dying business model and the up-and-coming business model that looks poised to replace it (and if you're in home improvement, that story should ring a bell!!!).

Car lots with commission-based sales reps are going the way of the dinosaur, replaced by direct-to-consumer car sales at a fixed price pioneered by the likes of Tesla. Here's a story of how the two business models compare, side-by-side.

The Old Way: Toyota's Customer Service Cluster

I took my wife's new Toyota Tacoma in for its first routine maintenance this weekend. Great truck, she loves it, it drives smooth as silk and you hardly feel what you're towing. I have a lot of positive things to say about the product here - it's fantastic.

That being said, the customer experience is routinely terrible at the Toyota dealership. Like, 0/5 stars, and I'm not normally hard to please. I walked into the wrong side of the building, where I last chatted with a sales rep who was very happy to sell us the Tacoma. The difference was jarring.

I walk over to the Service side of the building, and I stand there for 10 minutes before anyone greets me. I'm the only person in line, 2 folks are behind the counter. They're taking calls and look busy, which is fine, but a nod or a quick "be right with you" would have satisfied my expectation of prompt service.

The two folks leave their respective counterspace, evidently too busy to greet me. I stand by the empty service desk, wondering when I'll be able to drop off my car for routine service. A lady walks out of the office, and jokingly says "Sorry, can't help you."

Another office staffer jokingly picks up the chant, "Can't help you!" I feel like I'm in Willy Wonka, more Toyota staffers are going to come out and sing me a number with "Can't help you" as the chorus.

This goat-rope continues for a couple more minutes, and when the folks return to the service counter, they eventually explain that they were busy.

This is an excuse your customer service staff are better off not using as a home improvement company - you want your business to be busy, but your customer probably doesn't!

Ultimately, they take the truck for service, and I've got 90 minutes to burn as I wait. Now, my Toyota dealership is kitty-corner the new Tesla dealership. An easy walk. So I decide to head over and take a peek at the options while Toyota works on my wife's truck.

The New Way: Tesla's Customer Experience

Walking into the Tesla dealership, I'm greeted on the spot by a friendly guy with an iPad - he asks if he can set me up with a test-drive, a process which takes about a minute.

I tool around the show floor for a bit. I really just want to sit in and see the Model 3, get an idea for how the engineering stands up. Folks have said the build-quality is lousy. I like to see for myself. If the build quality is sub-standard, I didn't see it.

During this time, no sales person bugs me. I'm given space to look at The Product at my own speed. When I'm satisfied, I check in at the desk to get the test drive started.

A new friendly staffer summons a Model 3 over - by the way, if you haven't seen it yet, this is a very cool party trick. The car drives itself from the far end of the lot, and pulls up beside the dealership's front door. Like it was driven by an invisible valet.

Our friendly staffer gives me a 60 second walk-around, explains how the Self Driving features are activated, and then invites me to drive it around for a half hour unaccompanied.

Which is super cool! That's my preferred way to get to know a car. I don't want to be learning the road-feel of a car AND making small-talk with a sales rep, like I did with the Tacoma.

Here are the takeaways from the Tesla Model 3 Extended Range with Full-Self Driving:

• It is FAST. Maybe I haven't felt 0-60 in 3.1 seconds in a little while, but it stuck me to the seat and kept me there. It had me whooping about 30 seconds into my drive.
• It is crisp. Road feel is great, and it feels well put together. Dead silent at full speed.
• It is clever. You can see what the car's self-driving system sees on the center console. It picks up pedestrians on the sidewalk, cars in your blind spot, this feels like the future of automotive transit.

Probably the most notable part of the test drive was how it ended. I returned the car after about 15 minutes, it didn't take me long to learn what I wanted to know. The staffer asked me how I liked it, so I told them.

To my surprise, there was no sales pitch. I had to ask him what a car like that would run, and the guy apologetically directed me to the website where I could place an order and see the price. It's not his job to sell me cars. It's his job to show me cars, and that's a job he is very good at.

Your Takeaway for the Home Improvement industry

So, what is your takeaway as a leader in the Home Improvement industry? Toyota typifies a dying industry, whose sales numbers are going to shrink to nothing as they're outpaced by innovative newcomers. Why? Because they're doing things the way they have always done things, while their next generation of customers has evolved to new ways of shopping.

How do you avoid that pitfall? Give your customer service number a call, try and be your own "secret shopper." See how long it takes you to speak with a human. If that time is longer than 5 minutes, that is now a problem on your "to-do" list to fix. Tesla is willing to ship a car to my house, and you bet Zen Windows and the like is willing to sell me home improvement products sight unseen, so you simply cannot afford to be stuck in the old way of doing things!