Hyundai salesman’s promise garners national attention

A promise by Gary Wesolowski, a salesman at Henderson Hyundai, earned him national recognition for his outstanding customer service.

Hyundai USA ran a national contest asking current salespeople to relate a story about a specific situation when they were able to defy conventional thinking, design a clever and relevant solution and delight one of their customers.

Wesolowski's story, "A Promise Kept," proved to be the most outstanding example of going the extra mile.

In 2006, one of Wesolowski's customers told him that he wanted to buy his wife a new car - while he still could. He confided in Wesolowski that he was dying and wanted his wife's car properly maintained after he died. He asked Wesolowski to promise that he would look after the care of the car.

"I didn't know what happened to my customer until I called him to let him know it was time for his first oil change," Wesolowski said. "It was then that I learned that he had passed. I let his wife know that it was time to bring in the car to be serviced, which she did."

Wesolowski continued to look after the woman's car and check in with her whenever she came in to get the car serviced.

"About a year after selling the car, it was in an accident. My customer's wife called me and I arranged to get the car repaired through an auto body shop we worked with at the time," Wesolowski said. "Over the next couple of years I continued to call her at every service interval to bring the car back in. She continued bringing the car back to us for all its service. Just this year she traded the 2006 Azera in for new Hyundai Azera."

Henderson Hyundai owner Frank Maione said, "We are really proud of Gary. He is a great example for all our salespeople to follow. He has become the standard we measure all our customer service against."

For the contest, stories of outstanding customer service were submitted to Hyundai from across the country. Ten semifinalists were then asked to submit a video of themselves telling their customer service stories. These videos were posted on a website and Hyundai salespeople and a panel from Hyundai corporate voted for the best story. Wesolowski's video was selected as the best example of going above and beyond to keep a customer happy.

"Sometimesm it is the little things that matter the most," Wesolowski said.

Along with the prestige and recognition for the salesman and Henderson Hyundai, Wesolowski also won the cash grand prize.

"Yeah, I was pretty ecstatic when I won," he said with a smile.