If This Was My Business, I Would …
Henning Schwinum
Helping growth-minded Founders, Owners & CEOs to identify their ideal sales/revenue/growth leader for a fractional, interim, full-time, or consultation role, using our proprietary PerfectMatch? system.
It might just be me. Maybe car dealerships and I are just not meant for each other.
About two years ago, I shared my story of buying a car at a dealership. Titled 'Wait Here, Let Me Talk to My Manager,' I concluded that the process is broken, ripe for re-engineering and disruption. The proverbial car salesman is not dead! And they all attend the same old school of playing games.
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Fast-forward two years, cars need to get serviced. This is the review I recently left on Yelp and Facebook:
“Worst customer service experience. First, they make a big deal of their Service Event, with mailings, email, and phone reminders, a giveaway, and a prize to win. They ask you to schedule in advance and tell you it will take about an hour. I arrived at the scheduled time, checked in, and took a seat. After 90 minutes with no communication, I went back to the front desk, only to find out that my car was still where I had left it and unserviced.
The only excuse was that some of their technicians had left, and they were short-staffed. The only two options given were to continue to wait an unspecified amount of time or to leave. I chose the latter. Why was it the worst? Because in addition to the lack of planning and communication on their part, and wasting my time, the front desk staff lacked knowledge, compassion, and basic customer service skills.”
A day after I left the review, the dealership posted a comment on Facebook:
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“Hi Henning, we're disappointed to hear of the negative experience you had at our location. We'd like the opportunity to discuss this with you. Please reach out to us at (xxx) xxx-xxxx at your earliest convenience to discuss how we can turn your experience into a positive one.”
I decided not to call because my expectation was that they call me. After all, they have all my details. Well, they did not reach out, and after five days of giving them the opportunity to display better customer service, I did call and speak to the General Manager.
Rather than recite the contentious conversation we had, allow me to share what I would do if this was my car dealership:
Needless to say, none of the above took place. To me, the above outline is customer service 101, and it starts at the top of an organization.
I will now give another dealership the opportunity to impress me.
Key Account Sales Executive | Federal & Private Sector Sales Model Design| Sales Team Transformation
2 年I appreciate this post, as I did also the commentary... thank you all! I'm a student of leadership, and I'm still learning. Much to be learned in the auto industry about leadership too, apparently.
Chief Sales Resultant - Fractional Sales & Business Development Leader helping businesses create a sales strategy, build a sales structure and team to exceed sales targets.
2 年I have had more bad experiences than good ones at dealerships with both sales and service. I have found one that is great and the family has purchased 4 vehicles from them and those vehicles are always serviced at the dealership. The others will never see me again nor will I buy those brands as I don't want to deal with their lack of ethics and service.
Enjoying court time and helping others.
2 年?Having spent 30+ years working with car dealerships and technology to assist with their operations I’d love to say your experience was unique. It is not. Sadly fixed operations (service and parts) is where the profit is in a dealership and it is not the primary focus of many dealerships. One would think that the cash cow would have the resources necessary to delight their customers. Too often it’s not. The other part that’s sad is the there’s a saying, “Sales makes the first sale, service makes the rest.” While that’s an oversimplification, service is a key factor in a customer coming back to buy again. There are plenty of studies which also show that good service provides a lift in sales gross profits. The steps in your GM’s call are good ones, so why doesn’t it happen. Well, there are two reasons which come to mind: 1. That’s really the service manager’s job. 2. Volume/time may be an issue. If it’s one a day – no problem. The challenge may be there’s way more than that and that there’s not enough time in the day.
The Value Sales Expert - Helping Sales Directors/VP's and sales teams understand and communicate customer value and master Value Selling. Supporting thesellercode.org
2 年The final point you make is key. That should be the normal level of service that, as a customer, you have every right to expect. For some reason businesses think that by giving "normal" service they are doing something exceptional. They are not. They are only doing what they should be doing in the first place. Henning I feel your pain!
Global Vice President | Supply Chain, Logistics & Automotive | Repeated Double-digit Sales & Profit Growth
2 年An old dealer adage is "sales sells cars, service brings them back" I do almost all my car servicing via dealers and it is rare that the experience (even with "premium" brands like Cadillac, BMW, Lincoln) is executed well.