The importance of your dealership’s reputation cannot be overstated: taking care of your brand and how consumers connect it to the customer experience will be increasingly important moving forward, according to Marc Cannon, Executive Vice-President & Chief Customer Experience Officer at AutoNation in the United States.
That was one of the main takeaways from Cannon’s keynote presentation during J.D. Power’s virtual Auto Summit. He explored the topic of redefining the customer experience and what that means now and post-pandemic by touching on the importance of reputation, utilizing analytics and metrics, managing advertising, community perception, and recruitment and training.
“You need to know about your customer and understand what they are looking for,” said Cannon during the event. “We rolled out two initiatives literally overnight (in 2020): one was called Customer 360, where we had 9 million customers in our database, and for the past three-plus years we have been cleaning that information — making (it) available to our stores so they know about the customer.”
Cannon said the dealership has been using analytics and data to populate fields and ensure the information is correct, which includes customer addresses and phone numbers, or the vehicles they owned and when it was in for service. He said it took time and effort, while also attributing a significant part of the initiative’s success to proper training.
The Customer 360 initiative also allowed the dealership to personalize the information. “Think of that: when you went on to something like Amazon, it sort of knows your shopping habits — it’s intuitive. Well now with Customer 360, we’re intuitive,” said Cannon.
It provides the dealership with information such as when the customer will need new brakes, and purchasing preferences (whether for products/vehicles, OEM brand preferences, or vehicle body types), and more. To Cannon, taking advance of metrics and analytics to gain valuable insights like these provides the dealership with a competitive edge. But more than that, it allows the dealer to connect with the customer as an individual.
“That’s what customers have been wanting, and that’s what customer’s so badly needed,” said Cannon.
The dealership also launched an equity mining initiative to understand when the customer’s lease ends, and when they should try to move them over to a new vehicle.
They also reduced their advertising spend in core areas by 50 per cent last year, such as television, and they changed their strategy. “Where newspapers went by the wayside, I think TV advertising won’t — but I think there’s going to be some clear reductions in how you use TV advertising going forward,” said Cannon.
The dealership maintained its relationship with its third-party advertiser to continue to generate leads and drive more traffic to the store. Cannon said they also focused on webinars, virtual platforms and other areas to improve the customer experience and dealership’s visibility, including being a certified dealership (in this case, with J.D. Power) and by using Reputation.com, an online reputation and customer experience management company based in California.
“Those are in the bigger picture. At the same time, if you drill down and you look at how the store is being perceived in not just the manufacturer reports, but also in some of the testing that we’ve done, it was interesting,” said Cannon. “We didn’t kill our research by any means.”
Cannon said they continue to connect with the customer about their experience: what it was like, if they liked it, and if they noticed if anything had changed from the last time they had serviced their vehicle or purchased a car.
“Interestingly, one of the big eye-openers was that they felt the process was faster,” said Cannon. “It was more convenient, and when they came in we actually knew about them. And that was very well-received. I mean, the experience is what it’s all about — you having that personal relationship, so they know that you know them and you’re meeting their needs.”
The 2021 online J.D. Power Auto Summit took place between January 27-28, 2021 and featured a number of guests, some of which will be covered in the March issue of Canadian auto dealer.
