While driving to a client meeting I looked at my dashboard and noticed the warning light again. I was about 2,000 miles “over” on getting an oil change.
Now, I have always made a habit of taking great care of my cars and 2,000 miles on an oil change on a well maintained car is not going to kill the car. Why haven’t I done it? It has a lot to do with scheduling and the fact that it is going to take an hour out of my life at a critical juncture when I am working on several key projects. And really I have just not been able to do it or maybe it’s that I have not made it a priority to get it done.
Here is the thing. Most car dealers- some more progressive dealers are open a little bit earlier — but very few are open late and fewer are open for service on Saturday. I don’t know the economics on why or why not that might be true – I would just say that it is a truism in the industry that it can’t be done. That same type of truism held forth in banking until Commerce Bank (now TD Bank – and the most noticeable in the Northeast) blew-up the model and said ‘We are actually going to be a full service retail store that serves retail customers in a way that customers want to be treated.
So Commerce Bank opened 7 days a week, with late hours all 7 days. Many banks have had to follow them and not close the teller window at 3pm because of some age old operational constraints that are just not true in our electronic age.
So the lesson here is that you need to really rethink – especially in older type industries- whether or not what you accept as a true limitation is a REAL limitation … or is it just an industry habit. Maybe, it was a limitation that was born from boundaries that your industry had from years ago that are no longer valid with newer technologies and processes?
Whether you run a bank or local car dealer or a donut shop – have you looked at your business from the perspective of your customers? And do you do it often?
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