Are Car Dealerships the Safest Retail Experience?

Since car dealerships opened on the 1st June, we have experienced a bounce across all KPIs, including website traffic, leads into dealerships and most importantly guests returning to showrooms and transacting. It is encouraging that consumers have felt that dealerships are a safe environment, and this is testimony to the hard work, effort and financial investment to implement safety measures to ensure the dealership is Covid-secure.

Looking across the sector we can see the excellent work that dealerships have implemented: from sanitising each vehicle every time it is opened to the taking of both associates’ and guests’ temperatures on arrival at the dealership. These extensive safety measures demonstrate to consumers that our guest and associate safety is of number one importance across the dealerships, and prove to be a great rapport-builder with the guest.

Where the industry has stood out is the way these measures have been communicated and promoted- via safety videos and communications that have been disseminated through social channels, email and websites- again instilling trust and reassurance to the consumer that car dealerships are a safe retail environment.

The way the industry has pulled together in delivery of this has been humbling: the first-class webinars from Auto Retail, Auto Trader, CarGurus and Car Dealer, to name a few, has helped dealers understand the importance of ensuring that dealerships are Covid-secure. Furthermore, dealers all know the importance of trust, which is reflected in dealer reviews- especially Google My Business which provides a true assessment of a dealer’s reputation, and is a key footfall traffic driver. Dealers also know the importance of ensuring vehicles are correctly merchandised online, providing transparency and trust in the vehicle advertised; however now there is another indicator which is key – trust in the dealer safety processes.

My belief was that these safety measures had been implemented by all retailers in line with government guidelines. It was not until the weekend where I had the pleasure of visiting some out-of-town retailers that I was somewhat dismayed at the lack of signage, poor queuing systems and absence of implementation of social distancing measures, resulting in confusion across the store that made me realise how efficient our industry is.

With the majority of retailers reopening on June 15th, retailers would not go far wrong from reviewing and taking learnings from the automotive industry, where I believe car dealerships to be the safest retail environment.