12:03 pm, August 7, 2024
The motor trade needs to prioritise customer needs to build strong relationships and drive business success, a leading consultancy firm has said.
Speaking on Car Dealer Live, Cassie Howell, director at PHM Group, explained how dealers must adapt their customer service and experience provision in a time of changing consumer behaviour and expectations.
‘Customer service has always been really important, certainly with the dealers that I’ve worked with over the years,’ she said in the video posted at the top of this story.
‘But historically, customers would come into a dealership maybe only once a year for a service or when something goes wrong, despite the many attempts to bring them in for like summer checks and winter checks. Whereas now OEMs and dealers are offering multiple services so there are lots of opportunities to have those touch points with customers.
‘These, of course, are opportunities to delight the customer, but also opportunities to cause friction. And I think the other element is that customers experience other industries. They don’t just compare their current dealer to a previous one or the one up the road, but they compare their experience to other experiences they’ve had – whether it’s hotels or booking things online such as travel. This is what dealers need to be benchmarking themselves against.’
While customers expect similar experiences across different industries, the general view of the motor trade is a positive one believes Howell – but the key for dealers is understanding what they’re offering to the customer.
‘Some dealers definitively have a customer-centric approach to things, but I think it comes down to the nuance of the explanation – the difference between customer service and customer experience,’ she said.
‘If you ask five people what customer service or experience is, they’ll say that the vehicle was ready when they expected it to be, it was fixed, it was clean and I had a courtesy car. That’s all customer service, and it’s very difficult to have a positive customer experience if all of those elements aren’t already in place.
‘Customer experience, however, is more about how the customer is made to feel – positively or negatively – and about delighting the customer so that they want to tell everyone about it.’
Howell then went on to give an example of a great customer experience to highlight the difference.
‘I took my children to a place to buy bath bombs. We went in there and the sales consultant came over, spent time with the children and let them feel the product. Then when we went to leave and they are given some product for free. We must have been with the consultant for about 10 minutes, which gave me an opportunity to browse, and I ended up paying more and purchasing more things than I expected to. When we were leaving, my young son said to me that he wanted to work there when he’s older.
‘Now, that is a story I tell everybody because it made us feel really positive. Now had I gone in there and they had the product and I got served really quickly, that would have been good customer service – it’s a small difference, but a significant one when it comes to customer loyalty.’
In an insightful interview, Howell explained how dealers can create that memorable customer experience rather than just offering great customer service, and how the customer experience is potentially taking on a greater level of importance with the advent of agency sales.
You can watch the full interview and discover top tips on how to improve both customer service and customer experience by clicking the video at the top of this story.
