How To Attract & Sell The Millennial Car Buyer – PART 17

How To Attract & Sell The Millennial Car Buyer (PART 17)

TRANSCRIPT: Service only gets one shot.

Consumer Reports says that 91% of consumers will not do business with you a second time if you botch it the first time. We need to assume it’s everybody’s first time. Ask yourself, if I knew nothing about my service department can customers navigate to the right person? If they do find the right person, is that person always attentive, knowledgeable, eager to help? Our goal with customers is to service them today and forever. Just like Tire-Rama.

Think about that. No charge. That guy could have gotten … he could have said $75. He could’ve said it’s $150. I would’ve paid it. I would’ve never gone back. He said, “No charge.” That one little tire repair has so far led to $4,000 worth of additional business.

Too often, advisors look at a service customer as a one-off or an all or nothing proposition. Think about this. You can only take someone’s head off one time. They only have one head. It’s short term thinking to try and take someone’s head off.

Let’s look at two separate dealers, okay? Let’s look at two separate dealers on Yelp. The dealership on the left … By the way, both of these dealers have someone’s name attached to their dealership. These are two separate dealers, but the man’s name is attached to both of these dealerships. They’re part of groups. They’re in different cities and they sell different makes. The question I have to ask is does this become their legacy?

The service customer on the left was told that they had very dark brake fluid that needed to be replaced for $130. They turned down the service. They went home. They checked their brake fluid and they even took a picture and posted it on Yelp. This is important because, as we know from the customer experience series that we did, that one negative review can equal a 22% loss in business. This is losing the dealership business.

The dealership on the right, look at that trend. That’s their Yelp trend. They’ve been on Yelp for 10 years. They’ve been on Yelp for 10 or 11 years and their trend is 1 star. In fact, if we look September, October, November, December, of 2016 were all one star months for them. They’re trending in the wrong direction. They’re not fixing their issues. These are all almost 100% service.

These are both owned by a person. Each one is owned by a different person with that man’s name on them. He’s active in their markets. Does this become his legacy, right? This terrible service? See we’re way beyond the time when we can take advantage of people in service. The experience matters with connected customers and it’s time to clean this up.

The service experience matters, okay? We need to talk about what we’re going to do in the future. You want to charge 14% more? Remember, American Express tells us 67% of consumers will pay 14% more for a great experience. By the way, Deloitte says that 44% of millennials would pay you to pick up their car and drop off a loaner when they needed service. See connected customers don’t want to waste time. They want to know that you care. Things like having working WIFI, good coffee, snacks. Those things say that you care. The service experience of tomorrow should be today.

Let’s focus ahead. Let’s look ahead. What do the successful dealers look like tomorrow? When I say tomorrow maybe in a year, three years, five years. What does their service department look like? Focusing on what the market could be helps you plot a path that maximizes revenue today and in the long term.

Do you have home pickup and delivery? Are the successful dealers doing that? Are they doing home pickup and delivery? Are they sending out … are they doing mobile oil changes? Some of you have tried that in the past. It didn’t really work maybe some of you got rid of it.

Maybe it’s time to do that again. A lot of you are doing the mobile buying service, right, the mobile appraisal service. You’re already used to going out to customers’ locations. Maybe we need to start doing that for service. We’re going to do it at some point, but what is the connected car going to mean for dealers, right? When the OEM can just push a repair directly to the customer. We need to start developing loyal customers today, so that the ones that do need to see a service drive, the ones that do need to be at a repair center, choose us ahead of all of the things.

I can guarantee you this. The service experience of tomorrow, the successful dealers, it’s all going to be about convenience and the experience. See connected customers are not becoming less demanding, are they? Everything you do for today and to prepare for tomorrow should be focused on convenience and the customer experience.
Would anyone describe your service department today as being convenient, extremely convenient, and a great experience? If not, then we need to start working on that because the experience matters today. It really does.

This connected customer provided a two-star review because an oil change took too long and their coffee is sometimes out. See the dealership would have been better off, and I’m not going to read you the whole thing but it’s a pretty funny review. The dealership would have been better off had they paid to take the customer’s car to Jiffy Lube, bought them a free Starbucks, and got them in and out in 20 minutes because this negative review cost them business.

As we know, one negative review can equal a loss of 22% of your business and you’ll never know it because no one’s ever going to call you and say, “You know what, I was going to get my oil changed with you, but I read this funny review on Yelp where you took an hour and a half to do an oil change and your coffee was out, so I didn’t get my oil change with you.”

This review cost the dealership business. The dealership would have been better off paying to take the car to Jiffy Lube themselves, doing that service for free to the customer, not even charging the customer for that, and giving them a free Starbucks. They would have been better off doing that than getting this two-star