Two Simple Steps to Creating an Amazing Customer Experience

I just had one of the most positive customer experiences of my life. It wasn't at Chick Fil-A, Trader Joe's, or any other company that's known for its customer service. It happened with a car mechanic — an industry that isn't typically known for its amazing customer experiences.

If you've been driving for any amount of time, you know the feeling when something is wrong with your vehicle. The immediate thoughts are "What is this going to cost?" and "How long will I be without my car?"

What happened here was on par with a Ritz-Carlton experience, and at a fraction of the cost.

Pedro Bonilla , owner of Pedro's Garage in Odessa, Florida, simply gets it. He knows that great customer experience is really only about two things:

1. Anticipating the customer's pain points (obstacles to doing business with you)
2. Removing (or minimizing) them

Yes, it's that simple. Although it's rarely that easy.

Let's take a look at what happened, what Pedro did, and how it addressed those two details.

The Back Story

Several months ago I noticed that the interior door panel (sometimes called a door card) on the passenger side of my 2014 Porsche 981 Cayman was warping. It appeared to be separating and bowing away from the center of the window. I ignored it for a bit, then realized it was getting worse, and couldn't not notice it each time I got into the car.

After doing some research , I found that this is a common problem among Porsches manufactured from 2013 through today. Some owners begin to experience the issue as soon as 18 months after purchasing the car. Others, like me, see it as much as 6-10 years later.

After becoming better informed about the issue, I realized that the same problem was beginning to occur with the driver-side door. :(

The issue technically isn't Porsche's fault , and affects other German vehicles made in that same time frame. The issue results from a German worker safety regulation requiring adhesives inside the vehicle to be water-based. Over time, and with the addition of heat and humidity, the adhesive breaks down and the door panel peels away from the backing.

I first visited my local dealer and learned that they couldn't repair the panel. But they would be happy to replace it at a cost of about $3,500. That's per door! Since the car is nine years old, of course it's out of warranty.

To do anything but set me at ease, I learned that if they did the replacement, the new door panel would be manufactured the same way. If I went that route, I could expect the same problem 2-8 years from now. And I plan to still have the car in eight years.

Then I contacted a couple local Porsche repair shops, along with a local car upholstery shop that I had used in the past, to see if they could help. One claimed to have repaired similar panels a couple times, but didn't seem too confident with their process or experience with the issue. The other two indicated that it wasn't something they do.

I found examples of people repairing the faulty adhesive themselves with epoxy and other materials. Online discussions about this frequently brought up safety concerns related to the side-impact airbag deployment after the repair was done.

Suncoast, a reputable OEM and aftermarket Porsche parts shop, offers a replacement for just $3,895 per door. And I had to install it myself. No bueno.

Enter Pedro

While reading up on the issue on several owner forums, I kept stumbling across references to Pedro Bonilla and Pedro's Garage. The feedback was all positive, and several said something to the effect of "stop looking for a solution and just go to Pedro".

I checked out his site and found that he and his son, Pedro Jr., have successfully repaired hundreds of door panels, and offer a warranty. That checked two boxes for me — experience and accountability.

His website, coupled with the many independent reviews I found on PCA and Rennlist forums, Reddit, and other websites, gave me the confidence to think that I had found the right solution. It explained:

1. What's actually wrong with my door
2. Why it is happening
3. How he fixes it
4. Several things that others had done to make the panel more difficult to repair, or affected the airbag
5. Why his work is better than replacing with new door panels

Then the obstacles arose. Reading a bit more, I learned that I needed to either bring my car to his shop near Tampa (a nine-hour drive), or I could ship him my door panels to be repaired.

Here's where the real obstacles (pain points) arose, and when Pedro earned my business by eliminating or minimizing them.

Removing a door panel concerned me. I was worried that either I wouldn't be able to put it back together correctly, or that when I did I'd experience constant rattling while driving for as long as I owned the car.

I was also concerned about how to ship the door panels. How do I pack them? What's the best way to ship them? Could they be damaged further during shipment? They're pretty much the size of the car door. What will that cost?!

Pedro anticipated every obstacle and had an answer. Even better, he had a video to show me how easy this actually is!

His website includes detailed instructions explaining everything.

1. How do I remove the door panel with basic tools?
2. Where do I get the materials to ship it?
3. How do I pack the door panels, both to protect them and to minimize the shipping cost?
4. How I can save money (50%!) by using his UPS shipping account
5. How do I reinstall the repaired door panels?

Bonus: He even simplified the process to one transaction by paying for my discounted shipping up-front, and charging me once the work was finished and the door panels were ready to be shipped back to me.

My Actual Experience

Using just two tools that I already had in may garage, each door panel took less than ten minutes to remove. Later, I put them back on in the same amount of time. And there are no clips to rattle when I put it back together!

Once I started the process, the timeline to resolution moved fast.

• I bought the shipping materials (about $30), removed and packed the door panels on a Sunday afternoon.
• The next morning, I called Pedro with the package dimensions and weight and within two minutes he had sent an email with a barcode to show the UPS Store (about $30 more).
• Two days later, I received an email indicating that my door panels were safely in Florida with Pedro.
• He called me early the next afternoon to say that the work was done. I paid him over the phone and received a shipping confirmation from UPS a short time later (about $300/door panel, plus another $30 to ship it back).
• The door panels arrived at my house two days later.

End-to-end, the process took less than six days. Throughout, I had clear communication of the status of my order and next steps. With service scheduling and parts ordering, having the panels replaced by the dealer would have taken at least that long.

Including packing materials and shipping, the cost was less than 1/7th what it would have been to replace the door panels at the dealer. And the fix is permanent and warrantied.

The Lesson

Pedro got my vote and earned my business (and this free promotion) by doing two simple things.

1. He took the time to map out the customer journey and identify the pitfalls I would encounter.
2. After anticipating each of my challenges, he was prepared with a simple solution to either eliminate my concern altogether, or minimize it to something I was comfortable handling.

As a bonus, he kept new pitfalls from arising in my mind with clear communication each step of the way.

These are valuable lessons for any business, my own included. As I recently heard Adrienne Weir say, "Value is about pain removal. The best value proposition is one that removes a pain point for the client."

Make it easy for your customers to do business with you and not only will they, but they'll return, and they'll provide free advertising — like I'm doing now, and many of his other customers did with the posts in owners group message boards that brought me to Pedro.