Tracking Tesla's ongoing communications failures + ways to improve

[Pdub2015]

This might be more of a marketing gimmick to get those of us who have older cars to crawl out from under our rocks and order a new Tesla with these features.

Yup. You gotta problem with targeted "marketing gimmicks?" Opt out.

This example and the "Weekend social" announcements are not any worse than marketing gimmicks used by many other respectable companies. Expecting perfection from Tesla on something so far removed from the primary focus of the company is somewhat unreasonable.

 

[timk225]

We have all experienced Tesla Motors' failed, sometimes ineptly failed communications. Company-to-customer, internal company, you name it, and they keep doing it.

Here's the latest example of a pure #fail:

View attachment 107870

I got this email today. There is no reason I should have gotten this email. All this email does is piss me off. My Model S is from August 2013, before parking sensors, before autopilot, before D, and certainly before Summon.

So why the heck is Tesla sending me this? Imagine all the customers who get this who are genuinely confused, and wind up calling up the company asking what are they supposed to do to enable Summon in their car, when in fact they don't even have AP or parking sensors in their car?

This is a technical failure and a management failure. I have written at length about this elsewhere, and Tesla's continued doofusness when it comes to simple database-filtered communications concerns me because we are getting closer and closer to Model 3. An inept, poorly-communicating organization is not ideal when you aim to sell hundreds of thousands of Model 3s per year -- and Model 3 buyers will largely not be early adopters but more of a mainstream market, people with less tolerance for stupid, sloppy, mismanaged communications.

I'm going to use this thread to capture other Tesla #fails when it comes to comms, and also suggest some ways that Tesla can improve. It has to start with Elon., himself not that great a communicator, and not a stickler for details. Certainly the new President of Worldwide Sales and Service has a lot of responsibility for these goofs and for fixing them.

Get a load of Captain Butthurt over here........

Tesla has a few things on their list right now, that are above the priority of checking your emails for you.

 

[tinm]

Why should only the vehicles themselves be well-designed, engineered, and thought through? Why must a chunk of the Tesla customer experience, outside of the vehicles, be anything less than as well-designed, engineered, and thought through? Why is that tolerable?

This is a very hard question for Tesla fanboys to grapple with. But it is the central question I am asking in this thread. For a company situated in the heart of Silicon Valley, where everybody knows this stuff cold, Tesla's use of the internet to communicate with customers, inbound and outbound, continues to reflect either a lack of competence or (I suspect more likely) a lack of management urgency to get it right, compared to any self-respecting dot-com worth a hundredth the market cap. There's no excuse, and I maintain that as Tesla scales (and its new ambition of 500K production in 2018 screams how fast they wanna scale) also screams that they have a lot of work cut out for them. If they don't do anything, then the problems will scale right along with the production. And eventually that could impact customer satisfaction on a large scale.

 

[msnow]

Why should only the vehicles themselves be well-designed, engineered, and thought through? Why must a chunk of the Tesla customer experience, outside of the vehicles, be anything less than as well-designed, engineered, and thought through? Why is that tolerable?

This is a very hard question for Tesla fanboys to grapple with. But it is the central question I am asking in this thread. For a company situated in the heart of Silicon Valley, where everybody knows this stuff cold, Tesla's use of the internet to communicate with customers, inbound and outbound, continues to reflect either a lack of competence or (I suspect more likely) a lack of management urgency to get it right, compared to any self-respecting dot-com worth a hundredth the market cap. There's no excuse, and I maintain that as Tesla scales (and its new ambition of 500K production in 2018 screams how fast they wanna scale) also screams that they have a lot of work cut out for them. If they don't do anything, then the problems will scale right along with the production. And eventually that could impact customer satisfaction on a large scale.

Let me preface by saying I am not a fanboy.
I think it's a question of prioritization. They are a small company and have prioritized manufacturing, engineering and perhaps marketing ahead of using data for emails in a more effective and efficient way. Given limited resources that might be the way to go right now.

 

[Pdub2015]

Why should only the vehicles themselves be well-designed, engineered, and thought through? Why must a chunk of the Tesla customer experience, outside of the vehicles, be anything less than as well-designed, engineered, and thought through? Why is that tolerable?

This is a very hard question for Tesla fanboys to grapple with.

Not at all hard to grapple with. As another poster succinctly mentioned, it's merely a matter of priorities, and I personally find it hard to believe that even casual Tesla customers would prefer to see email marketing given the same resources and priorities as manufacturing, delivery and customer service.

 

[cpa]

Yup. You gotta problem with targeted "marketing gimmicks?" Opt out.

This example and the "Weekend social" announcements are not any worse than marketing gimmicks used by many other respectable companies. Expecting perfection from Tesla on something so far removed from the primary focus of the company is somewhat unreasonable.

PDub, I never intimated that I had a problem receiving this email. I resent your tone.

 

[Pdub2015]

PDub, I never intimated that I had a problem receiving this email. I resent your tone.

Please accept my apology. I was using the term "you" in a general sense for those opposed to email marketing gimmicks. I did not mean "You" in particular.

 

[Gerasimental]

Please go and like my post (#117) in the thread for questions to be asked at today's shareholder meeting. I am hoping for Tesla's communication issues to be brought up there.
The more likes it gets, the more likely Tesla IR are to pick it up and ask it at the meeting.

 

[tinm]

More communications weirdness from Tesla.

I'm still puzzled why Tesla raided its Tesla Energy customer mailing list to sell Tesla cars to, when people signed up for the TE list to get information on TE products and services. In the past two days, I have received not one but two separate emails from Tesla to an email address I specifically set up for TE news. And yet, they keep pushing the car on me. I own the car. I wanna know about TE. Remember TE, Tesla? Was supposed to generate billions in new revenue? Had a waiting list so long it was mind-boggling? This is disappointing. Is Tesla using its TE mailing list to drum up (gasp, here comes the D word) demand? Why would they need to do that?

 

[tinm]

Aaaaand yet another email to my email address set up for Tesla Energy emails. This is the third one this week, and like the other two, is pushing me to buy a Model S. Tesla knows I already own one.

Is anyone else getting these emails? Did you set up a special email address to sign up for TE information? I'm curious if this is a widespread thing, and if Tesla really did decide to mine the TE mailing list to try to sell cars to. Desperate move, or error? Would love to know.

 

[tinm]

Fascinating. Yet another email to my Tesla Energy email address trying to, begging me to, be reasonable and buy a Model S, don't I see the sheer logic in ownership? Of course I do. That is why I have owned one for three years. Which, Tesla, you know. So, why do you keep selling me on a car I already own, when I gave you this special email address to learn about Tesla Energy products and news?

 

[msnow]

Fascinating. Yet another email to my Tesla Energy email address trying to, begging me to, be reasonable and buy a Model S, don't I see the sheer logic in ownership? Of course I do. That is why I have owned one for three years. Which, Tesla, you know. So, why do you keep selling me on a car I already own, when I gave you this special email address to learn about Tesla Energy products and news?

View attachment 189675

Cross selling, pretty common but I understand your being annoyed. Why not just mark it junk and be done with it?

 

[tinm]

Because I really do wanna receive Tesla Energy news from Tesla. If I mark as spam or unsubscribe, I might miss out on Tesla remembering they have energy products and supposedly gazillions of customers demanding them, and then resuming sending news and info about them. Plus, as an ongoing experiment, it's fascinating to watch how Tesla tries to drum up interest its cars without having to resort to advertising.

 

[bonnie]

I want a life where getting email I don't want is at the top of my list of complaints.

 

[tinm]

Was that really necessary?

 

[bonaire]

When you signed up for TE, did you indicate you wanted or didn't want solar pv? I don't get those emails but in my TE signup, I selected "don't want Solar PV" - because I already have it. I presume that the powerwall registrations were supposed to be used initially as a name-collection list for finding new Solar City PV customers. Maybe if you indicate you don't have solar, that is also a flag to say "send the list information about cars too".

A nice simple mail merge pass through of names and addresses could cull existing Model S owners out of being re-marketed to. I guess, by now, you know about Tesla cars?

 

[roblab]

Was that really necessary?

It may not have been, but Bonnie is special. She's just jealous because her entire china set of plates are full right now. We miss you, Bonnie!

 

[tinm]

Impressive. A fifth email in five days, still urging me to buy a Model S. Nothing about Tesla Energy.

Called Tesla Sales to inquire about the issue. Guy I talked to seemed genuinely surprised that so many emails were going out so frequently. He's looking into it.

 

[tinm]

Wow. Today marks the sixth day in a row Tesla has sent a Model S promotional email to my Tesla Energy email address. Looks like they're recycling them -- today's is the same "Safety First" email I got last Monday.

I'm now wondering if I will get one "please buy a Model S" email per day from now on, ad infinitum. Nobody else is getting these?

 

[22522]

Why should only the vehicles themselves be well-designed, engineered, and thought through? Why must a chunk of the Tesla customer experience, outside of the vehicles, be anything less than as well-designed, engineered, and thought through? And eventually that could impact customer satisfaction on a large scale.

Rate limiting steps are used to control pressure on different parts of the organization.

Say you are building a mountain bike trail. You finish the entrance last so that you can work efficiently with no distractions, until it is ready.

As for the ads, The New Model S looks better in real life than it does in pictures. It is taking while for people to get comfortable with it.

Also, the Model 3 overhangs a lot of the EV market. Not just GM and Nissan, but Tesla, too. The Model S is a little too long for many people. The impending adjustment to "on target size" combined with the low cost of fossil fuels raises the trigger threshold for buying.

Tesla is trying to trigger sales and the people in those jobs have metrics. The right answer is new markets with Super Charger installs and product placement in those markets. Trying to figure out the limits of Net Promoter marketing - when everyone at the country club is informed, and cultural groups are a bit balkanized... The S needs to grow in new markets until the 3 arrives. How hot is the large sedan market, anyway?