No love at Love’s behind pump number 5

Last week about 100 miles west of L.A., and late at night I ask my wife, “T and A or Love’s!” She thinks the miles have made me snap, “What are you talking about?” A look of relief came over her face when she heard, “South side TA Fuel Center, north ramp Love’s, which one has the best bathroom?”

My wife has a spidey sense about long haul travel bathrooms, on this day she chose Love’s because of their little heart in the logo. My wife’s bathroom sense was taking a nap that night , what she was about to find out a little heart does not mean great bathrooms, more about that later.

I pulled in and went to work on the gas as she made her way to the back, kids in tow. As I swiped my card I saw a real corporate eyesore, the cover-up. In my experience, the tales that corporations spin are equal in size to their payroll. Like some oath they take inside a large company when exiting the HR interview, the truth must be safely buried deep inside the boardroom or heaven forbid, the front office. Large corporations spin their mistakes or inadequacies in weird perverse ways to try and make the customer actually believe they are perfect. It’s as if they believe their customers are either so dumb they cannot accept the fact that they are dealing with an imperfect organization or they are so paranoid about the true nature of their inside realities being exposed, it will ruin them overnight if the customers ever found out.

Reality check, your customers are much smarter than you give them credit for and the truth is your friend, it will set you free I am told. That is one of the liberating traits of being a small company; you have nothing to hide because you literally have nothing to hide. On the other hand, large corporations seem to have their own spin department to postpone the inevitable. No one is perfect so deal with the problem and move on, we can take it, we are human too. Well I just had to post the photo of the spin masters at work with a sticker they put on the pumps. Now I am not implying that Love’s is dishonest or sole proprietors are more trust worthy than their fortune 500 brethren. Small operators have not cornered the market on transparency. This story is not about Love’s at all, they were just unfortunate my wife did not choose TA Travel Center that night. This story is about the herd mentality of humans and how it is amplified in direct proportion to the size of the organization one chooses to work for. Human nature has a tendency to move to the center of the corporate herd. Likewise, the larger the herd, the more the leaders hire members that like the safe middle. No need to be a hero, play it safe. No more animal stories you get my point.

For all the readers who cannot view the photo of the pump sticker in your reader, please jump out to franchisewhale.com and check it out. In summary, they are trying to “control fuel costs” by limiting MasterCard users to $75.00 per transaction and apply the same logic to Visa users but they seem to need more help controlling fuel costs so they assign them $50 limit per transaction. They then let the customer know “feel free to run a second transaction if necessary” and then they apologize for any inconvenience.

Apparently American Express users don’t need to conserve fuel and the poor Visa users really need to be more disciplined about their fuel use. With the option to run another transaction, it really doesn’t seem that “control fuel costs” is at the root of the problem.

At least get some good spin doctors if you persist in covering up the problem instead of fixing it. We know you are human, it’s ok, we all have problems and can even help you solve them if you shoot straight with us. For the sake of being fair, I went in and talked to the cashier and got her take on it. She said, “our software is old and will not process a transaction higher than that amount at one time.” But what about your companies’ effort to help control fuel costs? “I don’t know anything about that.” Lesson number two, if you persist in spin, you need to involve the people in the front lines in your stories.

I would recommend we try a completely different approach. Recognize the problem and tell the customer what you are doing about it, then turn the problem into a new opportunity.

New sticker:

Attention Visa or MasterCard customers:
Our software stinks! We bought it long before the price of gas shot up so high you need to swipe twice just to fill your big tank. We are working on the problem and appreciate your patience; you will be required to swipe twice for really big tanks. If you bring in over $50 in gas receipts on this fill up; we will give you a free 32 ounce fountain drink for the headache we have caused you. Our CEO says the drinks are going to come out of the IT department’s budget until they fix the problem, so filler up!

What did one little new sticker do for your relationship with your customers? You became human in their eyes; the CEO is a problem solving super hero and they like you because you are paying for their inconvenience which means you are sincere, that causes them to spend even more money.

If the CEO saw and heard the customers on that busy holiday week complaining about the old sticker, he would make the change immediately. I am sure he does not know anything about it until I send him a copy of this blog. Accounting might say, we will lose too much in drink revenue, wake up you already have! One of the other bits of magic is when someone receives something for free; they tend to spend up to the amount of the free product they received in actual new purchases. I predict, one little new sticker will actually increase your bottom line and your employee moral while you are working on the problem. Also talk to us in a human voice, not so stiff please. The marketing department would be a great start for stickers like these, not the operations department. Problems are your greatest marketing opportunities, get out of the damage control mode, raise the kimono and let the world see things for the way they really are, we can take it, we are human too. Now for the bathrooms, we'll chat about that tomorrow.