In our next installment in the Canadian auto dealer and Harris/Decima Research project, we asked Canadians whether they trust their dealer’s service department
We got a great response from dealers to our request for questions you’d like us to ask your customers.
Two common themes emerged: there were a lot of questions around the service customer — particularly how much they trust their dealership; and about what drives the purchase decision.
In line with the theme of this issue, we decided to tackle the service question first: “Do you trust your dealership’s service department?”
We approached this from a number of different angles, as well as asking the question directly. Our survey included 673 consumers who are responsible for the maintenance of a vehicle with model year 2000 or newer and who have had service done at a dealership in the past year.
- There’s still work to do to gain the service customer’s confidence
You can see the results of the Agree/Disagree/Unsure questions above and they indicate that there is still work to do in gaining the service customer’s confidence.
Most do trust the dealership (47 per cent) vs. the 27 per cent who don’t and the 26 per cent who aren’t sure. It’s that 26 per cent where the immediate opportunity lies.
Responses to the other questions provide some clues as to where the problem lies. While the cost issue is still there, the perceived “up-sell” is still the major barrier.
Making sure that accurate and complete information about future service needs is captured at each visit and communicated to the customer is just one way of addressing this issue.
Dealerships still have the advantage in perceptions of technician quality, but there’s a gap between that and the customer’s overall level of confidence in the dealership and the perceived quality of service (most consumers are not sure about that).
It’s tempting to focus on the 27 per cent who indicate they don’t trust the dealership and to say “tell me what’s wrong and I’ll fix it.” But that sidetracks you from making sure that the investment you make in training service staff and putting service processes in place is not falling apart.
Paying attention to these alone will help you to chip away at the naysayers and build the overall level of confidence of your customers and your staff. It’s been said that “the battle for market share will be fought on the dealership’s service driveway.”
With the sales growth targets of all manufacturers together totalling almost 150 per cent for 2012, someone’s going to hit and others are going to miss — your service department might just be the way to lock in that customer’s next purchase!
