After a kiss goodbye, my husband said, “Good luck at the dealership,” as I walked out the door. Those words rang in my head.
How often do people feel the need for “luck” when they visit your dealership, and why? What is happening to our customers in sales, in F&I, in service and parts to elicit the need for luck?
The dealership in question this particular day is impressive overall. The dealer has a beautiful building in a convenient location with better-than-average customer amenities. On every visit, I see many familiar smiling faces, and employees seem to care about their work and their customers. Staff has state-of-the-art technology to support a quality customer experience. Yet, things slip through the cracks.
On my last visit, service personnel had to send a part to a sublet for work. “It should be ready in a week or so,” they said. That was six weeks ago. But that is not what bothered me most.
I called the dealership every week to check on the part’s status.
No one ever called to update me.
Why not?
The No. 1 customer complaint in service has long been a lack of communication. Service certainly is not the only department that could improve its communications, internally and with customers.
Communication failures usually fall into two categories: people and processes.
The people lack the skill or will to do proper follow-up (they do not care nor know how). Alternately, the business does not have a system to ensure customers, jobs, parts and deals are appropriately followed through to completion. People and process issues are costing many dealerships customer loyalty and profitability.
Industry veterans likely take a stronger interest than the average customer on how dealerships work. My mind was certainly wondering:
Does the service department generate a work order to attach to parts and sublet work?
Does the service advisor have a way to track and schedule units waiting on parts?
How does the parts department know if an order has been delayed, canceled or denied warranty or service contract coverage?
How can the dealership know when or if the service advisor communicated with customers?
And even worse:
If customers fail to follow up, would they forever lose the parts sent to the sub?
Could the dealer be giving away parts and losing customers in the process?
If I could ask dealerships just one question, it would be: How are you proactively using the information from your failures to improve your processes and to better educate your people?
By not learning from these failures, we stand a good chance the same situation will happen repeatedly.
Looking around the dealership as I wait for service techs to (finally) install my part, I think about all the areas where customers might feel luck was (or was not) on their side.
The sales experience. You (the customer) have the “luck” of getting someone who listens, who really knows their product and the competition’s product, who seems genuinely interested in giving you the best options to meet your specific wants and needs. This salesperson helps you think through not just the buying process but owning the products you are considering. This sales professional wants your lifelong business, not just your next sale.
The F&I experience. You have the “luck” of getting someone who makes you comfortable discussing a topic many people find extremely uncomfortable. This F&I agent is someone who does not appear to judge you based on your credit score or use pressure to sell service contracts or financing. Instead, this finance professional educates you, helps you compare apples to apples and gives you the space to reach your own conclusion on what is best for you.
The service experience. You have the “luck” of getting someone who loves and understands your vehicle so well they take the guesswork out of ownership. This is a service technician who explains in plain language how to best enjoy and care for your RV. This service professional informs you about your camper’s upcoming service work, reminds you, and has your back every step of the way—even when trade-in time arrives.
The parts experience. You have the “luck” of getting someone who knows exactly what your parts options are, how much they will cost, if they are available, the time expected to get them and the pros and cons of one option over the other. This is a parts professional who understands how you use your RV and gives you suggestions on how to enjoy it even more.
Each department relies on proactive, honest communication for building trust. The phrase is called building trust because building requires work and time.
Most customers begin their relationship with a dealership with a trust deficit. They think “dealer,” they think “Vegas,” they think “I’m gonna lose!”
Our team is tasked with building trust with each customer in each interaction. Leadership’s job is to notice when situations arise with people or processes that are making trust-building difficult or even impossible—and then remove those barriers.
What does luck have to do with it? Thankfully, not much. It really comes down to the famous Samuel Goldwyn quote: “The harder I work, the luckier I get.”
The more we work at engaging the team in creating, improving and relying on processes, the more we encourage and enable strong communication, the luckier we will be…and the more trusting our customers will be.
Valerie Ziebron is a leading industry expert and top-rated speaker. She has delivered thousands of presentations for dealers and their OEM partners to help dealerships ‘flip the switch’ from reactive to proactive business practices. She started VRZ Consulting in 1989 and has worked with hundreds of clients, big and small, to increase customer loyalty and profitability along with job enjoyment. 313.506.8069 | vrzconsulting.com
