SOMETIMES ADDED AMENITIES ARE NOT ENOUGH IN THE SERVICE WAITING AREA.WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD FOR THE AUTOMOBILE?
Over the past two months, I have spent time in two different Toronto area dealerships waiting for my car to be repaired. Headlamp bulbs always seem to die in pairs three weeks apart, and my regular dealer couldn’t accommodate me for the second visit.
At the first dealership, the customer lounge is completely separated from the service area. It’s clean enough, there’s fresh coffee, some magazines and current newspapers, and a TV set to the CP24 news channel.
It’s pleasant enough, but you really feel as if you’re waiting, not sitting in a place where you could spend time pleasantly or productively.
You could be in any waiting room. If the dealership’s name wasn’t visible on some pictures and wall certificates, you might as well be at the dentist. Second, you have no sightline into either the showroom or the service area.
My experience at the second dealership was different, but there were still missed opportunities.
In this store, the customer lounge has been updated, and is bright and modern. There’s also a great coffee bar right there.
With the customer in the dealership, it’s a golden opportunity to showcase your business and remind them that when they’re ready, you have the
new models that will get them excited about a new car again.
It’s a pleasant place to wait without feeling that all you’re doing is waiting. But again, not only is it separated from the service area, but also there are no sightlines into the sales area.
Another oddity was the fact that the F&I offices are a few steps away from the bistro. Anyone sitting in part of the lounge area has full view of the customers, and can easily hear the conversations taking place.
Apart from these design issues, what an opportunity missed on both counts. With the customer in the dealership, it’s a golden opportunity to showcase your business and remind them that when they’re ready, you have the new models that will get them excited about a new car again.
These two visits set me thinking. I am not a design expert, but because of my work with consumers, I always find myself trying to see any retail experience through a customer’s eyes, whether it’s a grocery store, a bank, a hotel or a car dealership.
I began to think about how the auto retail business could change to take advantage of every minute that the customer is in the dealership.
ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS
In almost every survey I see, there are the standard questions about facilities, including cleanliness, amenities and refreshments.
A question in one survey caught my eye the other day. It’s used by a manufacturer in Sweden and it asks, “While you were waiting to have your vehicle repaired, were you given the opportunity to look at the new models?”
This seemed to make a lot of sense, and I will be looking closely at this information to see how a “yes” or “no” response translates into a repeat customer. The Swedish survey also takes a different approach to scoring other questions, and results in far more differentiation between high and low-performing dealers.
I believe we need to start asking different questions about facilities. Questions that focus less on some of the things that you and your staff can see for themselves and more on understanding how customers feel when they spend time in the dealership.
When I look at survey responses from sales and service customers, I pay as much attention to the actual comments as I do to the scores on the standard questions.
I recently looked at the responses for a luxury brand in the U.S. and was interested to see a common thread running through the positive comments.
This survey asked how customers felt when they waited — not just about the amenities:
“Clean, quiet, WiFi enabled, coffee, water and bagels — what more could you ask for?”
“Every time I go there, I feel like I’m in a five star hotel. The serenity and the decorations there are superb.”
One customer who wasn’t that impressed said:
“I waited along with other customers, had coffee and watched TV until my car was ready.”
We need to start asking different questions that focus less on some of the things that you and your staff can see for themselves and more on understanding how customers feel when they spend time in the dealership.
In this industry, we’re still shackled by the traditional separation between sales and service. While that separation obviously needs to exist from an operational perspective, perhaps we should start looking at every customer visit differently.
We could encourage the customer to tie the two together more easily by not separating physical space. The comments above reflect how customers want to feel —we can go further than that and make it possible for them to see your business as a whole, not as two different operations.
