The title of this blog post originated from a thought-provoking interview with Chad Mitchell, senior director of digital communications at Walmart. In the interview he lays out a philosophy that every industry – especially automotive – should embrace. The main point he makes is that our digital and physical world is evolving at light speed and, the[…]
A recent article in Automotive News tells the story of Carlos Liriano, a car dealer from New Orleans who migrated his dealership to Texas and brought with him a passion – gumbo. Initially, it started as a way to show appreciation to and treat his employees every month. But, at his dealership’s 5-year anniversary, he decided to[…]
It’s no surprise that Disney has created one of the largest groups of loyal customers in the world. Of course, this isn’t by accident. Everything Disney does is by design. According to an article in Automotive News, Porsche wants to do a similar thing and create its own brand loyalists by bringing a little Disney magic to[…]
It’s a logical conclusion that customer retention and loyalty are important to the survival and growth of any dealership, yet many dealers focus on growth by intangible metrics, simply looking at numbers – 100 units last month vs. 125 this month, or $125,000 in service revenue last month vs. $175,000 this month – without knowing[…]
Customer experience has become an industry “buzz term” of late when talking about customer acquisition and building loyalty. Most of the time, the focus is on the small things that turn a customer off — attitudes, inefficient processes, or other such actions. But what happens when, well, everything goes wrong? Imagine if a couple visited[…]
An associate of mine recently told me an interesting story about their 75-year-old father, who purchased an import, rather than a domestic vehicle, for the first time in over 60 years. This was sometime around 2010. When it was time to replace his domestic minivan, the first thing my associate’s father did was to check[…]
When it comes to customer loyalty programs, customers like to feel appreciated and recognized for their loyalty. And, if they are not, it doesn’t take much to turn them away from being loyal customers into brand advocates. I recently came across an interesting story about an Uber customer who wrote an open letterconcerning his experience with[…]
A recent McKinsey podcast shared that when it comes to loyalty programs, a large part of the population is being ignored: elderly customers. The podcast featured Jaana Remes, partner of the McKinsey Global Institute, and coauthor of the report “Urban World: The global customers to watch.” According to Remes, the elderly population will grow by more than one-third[…]
Dealerships have forever tweaked pay plans to satisfy bottom lines and keep employees happy. Many employees in the sales department can make more money from a single sales commission than any technician can make in a day. There are even some salespeople that are so productive that their paychecks can exceed those of their sales[…]
The customer experience at your dealership is more important than ever before. With start-ups aiming to take away sales by luring customers with promises of a hassle-free buying experience, customers are starting to realize that they no longer have to sit at a dealership for hours. In fact Amazon France just sold a car completely onlineand[…]