Everybody say, 'WOW!'
In a perfect world, that's what everyone who spends money at Mountain View Tire says about the experience. It's also what Nick Mitsos said when we told him he was the 2011 Tire Dealer of the Year
By: Bob Ulrich
Nick Mitsos, CEO and president of Mountain View Tire and Service.
Customer service at the retail level means different things to different business owners. To some, it’s a hook, a way to get people into their stores. In the end, they might as well be crying “Wolf.”
To others, it’s more literal than philosophical. The customer gets served, almost as an afterthought. A service is provided, money changes hands, and the customer may or may not come back.
To successful dealers like Nick Mitsos, CEO and president of Mountain View Tire & Service Inc., customer service is a way of life. Does he really think his customers are always right? Of course not. But to Mitsos, it’s more important they always think they are right. In that way, they leave any one of his 29 stores happier than when they came in.
He calls it the “WOW Experience,” a relentless business practice he has passed on to his three children — and everyone else who works for him. His focus on customer service has resulted in a $45 million operation in Southern California, and earned Mitsos Modern Tire Dealer’s 2011 Tire Dealer of the Year award.
Where ‘WOW’ comes from
“We got a call from a senior citizen who couldn’t start her car. She was a widow, and her two sons lived out of town. She had nobody to call, and remembered us from coming here a couple times. Cat (Service Manager Catarino Jimenez) and I grabbed the jumper cables and drove two miles to her house. The jumper cables didn’t work, but Cat rewired the car, got it started and drove it down here. It needed a new battery, and we replaced it and drove it back to her. She was impressed and very appreciative.” — Henry Montes, store manager, Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.
Nick Mitsos, 68, can’t pinpoint when he came up with the slogan the “WOW Experience.” There was no “Aha!” moment.
“It was more of a feeling I wanted people to experience than an idea,” he says. “Whether you are speaking of food or a movie or services and people are thrilled or excited about whatever they are engaged in at the time, their instinctual verbal expression is typically ‘Wow!’ That is the same feeling I wanted to create with them as they were getting their vehicles serviced at Mountain View Tire.
“The automotive industry has always had a dark cloud hovering over it in terms of consumer trust. I thought how simple it would be to give someone the WOW Experience knowing consumer expectations were so low. We have since raised that bar tremendously, and now we compete with ourselves in trying to continuously give that WOW Experience, as Mountain View Tire customers have grown accustomed to exceptional service.”
“We do it every day,” says Paul Mitsos, 39, a vice president and district manager for the company and the youngest of Nick’s three sons. “So it’s nothing out of the ordinary. It’s second nature. It’s the culture of our company.”
“Managers and salespeople have full empowerment in customer satisfaction issues,” says Mike Mitsos, 43, also a vice president and the middle son. “Their responsibility is to take care of the customer and create the WOW Experience. I don’t want them to be bogged down administratively.”