Express Tire in Watertown – A Great Service Experience

I bought snow tires for the first time this weekend.  My friend Mark referred me to Express Tire in Watertown.  I’ve had such bad experiences with auto-related services in the past, so I wasn’t expecting very much when I called them up.

To my surprise, I found Express Tire to be a great small business.  In a world where small businesses are being crushed by Wal-Mart, Starbucks, and Costco, it’s refreshing to see an entrepreneur find ways to compete.

Daron, the founder of Express Tire, is not the typical entrepreneur that we would back at Spark but he demonstrates 2 principles that could help any business:

1. Delight your customers: Don’t just do the job a little better or a little cheaper than others.  Find creative ways to surprise your customers with just how good your product or service is.  In Daron’s case, he offers customers free use of a loaner vehicle even if your job only requires an hour or so of work.  He also offers free repairs for the life of the tire and gave me 2 free ski passes to Attitash.

2. Connect personally with your customers: In addition to delighting customers with high-quality products and services, connect with them in a personal way.  This moves them from being satisfied customers to being your biggest fans.  This was one of Ebay’s early strengths, as we included customers in our “Voices” program and continuously dialoged with our customers and responded to their feedback.  For a startup, this may mean blogging to reveal what is going on in the company internally (ie: Dave Balter and BzzAgent), and having the courage to make swift changes when your users are unhappy (ie: Facebook).  In return, your users will not only keep coming back, but will bring along everyone else they know.  In Daron’s case, he knew my name the minute I mentioned the vehicle that I drove, he knew the names and children of the other customers he was serving, and he shared the history of his business and the ways he is trying to improve it.  

It’s because of this personal connection and my delight with the company’s high level of service that I am writing this post.