CX/RX

In tough times it’s easy to wish for an easy solution. We tend to long for a magic pill or anything to inject into our veins to manage the pain. We are then faced with the greatest temptation – to seek a short cut. A quick fix.

In automotive I have seen many attempts at short cuts from grandiose, fake sales, misleading advertising, forging signatures, expensive SEO options, marketing proliferation, sketchy lead purchases, and more.

It takes more money, time, and effort to pursue these endeavors than to address the more probable reality that you’re lacking differentiation from competitors.

Look at the “About Us” pages from groups around you, I can almost guarantee they’ll say the same three things: we sell cars, people work here, and we help with financing.

You sell the same cars as your competitors, your teams are made up of mere mortals, and anyone can find financing… so how can you be different?

First, take an assessment of your true values as a dealership because your values are communicated through your processes. If you’re only chasing money, people know. If you respect your customers, they’ll know. However, it’s not always so simple, many times the prevailing tactics still linger. Here are four of the first friction points to resolve:

1 – Total transparency of pricing and payments. If you can’t proudly justify a price, why have it.

2 – Respect their time, be quick and efficient. Time is money, don’t waste either of theirs.

3 – Drop the 80’s sales tactics. Seriously.

4 – Eliminate siloes (sales, F&I, Fixed Ops, etc.) Teamwork is essential, don’t pit them against each other.

Once you have resolved these, now you can begin to set the standard in your market. You need to come up with a long-term strategy. Define the goal you want to achieve and then develop an unparalleled experience for your people and your customers to accomplish it.

For your employees you should drop the notion they owe you any more than 40 hours in a week. Your people have lives outside of work, they should enjoy it and it will even enhance their work. Childcare and flexible scheduling will make a great impact in attracting and retaining the right people to work for you as well as creating a great pay-plan structure.

For your customers, I highly recommend creating a loyalty program. Loyalty programs done right show incredible success and are especially important to millennials and beyond. According to Jon MacDonald (Founder of “The Good” for Millennials), loyalty benefits rank 1st in importance when choosing companies to support, even over brand authenticity and trustworthiness. For instance, Dunkin’ Donuts reported the highest volume of orders after launching their program. Rare Consulting also showed that over 83% of customers said that loyalty programs make them more likely to continue doing business with a company.

Great businesses grow on loyalty. Loyal customers are willing to spend more, become your advocate and refer you, wait or pay more for quality service they’re familiar with, and spend more each transaction. Frederick Reichheld of Bain & Co. found that even increasing retention rates by 5% increased profits by 25-95% depending on the industry. Furthermore, in the last recession, companies that developed their customer experience realized three times the returns than companies that did not. Loyalty programs and add-on benefits are a great pursuit in CX development.

I firmly believe that a dealership has the most unique advantage in creating a loyalty program. We sell the epitome of the American Dream – Freedom. Go out into your communities and ask every local grocer, gas station, niche business, golf club, arts and sports supply stores, every fun-center and more if they’d be willing to give a small incentive into your program. The key is to create small, meaningful impacts in their daily lives that positively reinforce their choice in purchasing from you, therefore creating the salient experiences that you need.

Buy cycles are long in the car business. You can either chase after leads every single day and commit to the grind, or you can create consumer demand to do business with you. Having a great reason to buy from you by serving your customers allows for you to push back against a commoditized market.

Playing the long game doesn’t allow for a simple RX fix for the necessities of CX. There is no magic pill. The magic is in great values that bleed through how you treat your customers and develop them into life-long advocates of your business.

We must ditch the pursuit of a quick fix. You’ll only become a junkie chasing the next flashy gimmick. Your best course of action is to be worth being loyal to. So, be worth it. They’ll know.