Car Buyers Are Talking…

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…and they have a lot to say. Especially when their car buying experience is anything less than spectacular. Find the original post, and tips on doing auto repair yourself with step-by-step videos from TuneyFish.

The customer service element of a car dealership falls on the shoulders of every person within the store; car shoppers are expecting better service – delivering the value shouldn’t be that difficult.

Check out Scott’s excellent post…re-posted w/permission.

Why Aren’t Auto Dealerships Getting It?

Its no news that the auto industry has been dealing with some troubling times asking for bailout funds, but is it enough to motivate them into action? I did a little investigation this morning and it seems as though they haven’t fully taken any steps yet, granted this was BMW who recently decided toraise pressure on Detroit.

The U.S. will be the growth engine of the future, Jim O’Donnell, BMW’s U.S. chief, said in a recent interview. This is where we will continue to focus our efforts.

I will give them some credit, BMW who owns Mini created a rather clever marketing campaign, but what about their individual dealerships? Some used car dealers are ahead of the curve by utilizing Twitter and other social media. Personally, I’d be much more willing to buy from a dealer who listens to the market and has enough motivation to learn about how people communicate today.

So I went in for an oil change today, and wanted to see just how much the industry is changing and adapting to social media.

10:15am

I’m writing this from the waiting room of a car dealership just outside of Seattle. I don’t feel it’s necessary to identify them. I’ll just explain the experience I had while waiting for a simple oil change.

I don’t have high expectations when it comes to car dealership customer service, most likely because they don’t have high expectations in their ability to sell to anyone who walks in the door. Maybe they are getting paid by the hour because I didn’t see one salesperson approach a single person in the 1hr 30min I was there.

I’m not sure about you but whenever I walk into a dealer I feel like I’m being judged immediately. Perhaps they would rather I enter through the finance department as to not interrupt whatever it is they do when sales aren’t their biggest priority. I’d rather buy a car from one of the guys in the service department, at least they have some knowledge about cars.

I took one look around and didn’t see anything about green, electric cars or much of anything that looked like something I’d buy in the future.

Maybe I should have a t-shirt made that says Hi, I’m the customer. Ask me what I like about these cars, and maybe I’ll buy one or something to that effect.

Is the showroom supposed to have you just look, but just don’t touch vibe? With there fancy chairs and little glass displays – No way! Are those awards in those cases? Really? If you were at all concerned about selling cars, then you would at least look for a better solution for your website development and online sales.

Before going to the dealer, I made some calls.

I did a few things online to educate myself about this particular dealer. They didn’t seem to care much about their website, or it just looked that way to me. I thought about ways that my business might be able to bring them a little bit of social media action and I decided to do two things, because if you know me you’ll know that I rarely pass up the opportunity to discuss my business if you are in the auto industry. I like to learn things, and I like to know where people are at and whether they are aware of this whole social media concept.

First I brought up their site.

I noticed that in the bottom corner they had a logo for the company who built and powered their site, so I clicked to see what they offered, and they were obviously a small operation. Why not make a quick call to discuss a possible collaboration with their web dev company to help them offer video to their clients. Oh this one was good! More on that later.

After checking the site, I thought why not call and see if someone would be willing to chat while I’m there.

I wanted to see if this dealer was interested in talking about their online efforts so I called and asked to speak with their marketing person. I got a voice mail but left a message stating I would be in around 10:15am and would love an opportunity to chat while I was there. No call, and not surprised that it probably sounded like I was speaking a different language. Probably hung up and said, Hey Fred!… what in the wooorld is social meediyah ?

Then the real brilliance behind it all became known when I called their webmaster.

I really wish I would have recorded the phone call when I spoke to their web dev company. The person who answered sounded like a young receptionist and I politely asked to speak with someone in biz dev , or marketing after I introduced myself.

She fumbled with an answer that sounded halfway professional, then started to inquire a bit about the purpose of my call. I spoke about 5-6 words when suddenly interrupted, with handle everything in house, do NOT call back again…click. I’m not surprised that dealers are clueless to social media, their webmasters don’t teach them a thing. I’m starting to question whether the webmasters themselves know anything, what a joke. I bet they use GoDaddy’s website tonight for building websites.

How much money has this pathetic webmaster bled from the dealer because I can almost promise they haven’t a CLUE when it comes to online marketing. Took me about a minute to evaluate the tools they provide, and I almost spewed coffee out my nose when I saw their appointment scheduler.

I’m sitting here with mixed emotions because I know that I can’t blame the dealer 100% for something they just don’t understand. Half of me is mad because they don’t know and because they don’t listen either. I can’t see a promising future here, its as though I’m sitting in ground zero and the source for the failure in the automotive industry is right here.

I feel like I want to slap whoever runs this place and say wake up and maybe you’ll learn something about how to sell in this market.

I had some suggestions for this manager had he thought to return my call. Here is the first:

Return ALL calls about social media, online media, or you site. I don’t care who is calling, I guarantee you they know more than you do about it and YOU NEED TO LISTEN.

Communicate with every person who walks through your door, and ask them something. I don’t care if it’s: Do you have anything you’d like to know about us or Did you want to fill out a survey while you waited to help us get better.

Get some stuff about green, electric, hybrid, plug-in hybrid, etc on your showroom floor. Aren’t you paying attention to what is happening in the media?

Sell something for god’s sake, and if you can’t, ask the customer why they aren’t buying.

I hope that I don’t have to experience that again, and I wonder how many people leave thinking the same thing.

I wouldn’t bother writing about this issue if I didn’t want the auto industry to wake up and do whatever it takes, and unfortunately that’s just not happening.