"Say 'Consumer Experience' ONE MORE TIME!"

[ryan.leslie]

The vast majority of keynote presenters across the industry conferences mention the disparity between traditional retail automotive and the consumer's perception of a satisfying consumer experience.

More than one of the keynotes said the 5 letter swear word that is sure to "electrify" a crowd of dealers and get them just a little "charged up." It was quite a "jolt!" ( Those of you that aren't "plugged in" may not be getting the reference; that swear word starts with T and ends with esla. )

Disruption is on the horizon, but let's be honest, it has been lurking just around the corner for many, many years. What do Ebay, Tesla, TrueCar, Carmax, and the interwebs in general all have in common?

Check out this snippet from a recent eMarketer survey:

When marketing executives in North America were asked to rank the most important attributes of customer centricity, having a senior management team committed to understanding the needs and behaviors of the customer market landed in the No. 1 spot. Functional alignment and support of a holistic customer experience strategy came next.

However, 35% of marketing execs called out a lack of alignment, saying that their heads of operations and line-of-business leaders as well as their finance, marketing, sales, point-of-sales and customer service teams were not focused around a customer experience strategy. Just 12% said their core teams were strongly aligned.

As an industry we are in good company. 75% of Marketing Executives cross industry that were polled by eMarketer do not have a formal Customer Experience Management Strategy currently in place. They also said that the factors that lead to a customer-centric focus were a senior management team that committed to understanding the needs and behaviors of customers followed by the functional alignment of a holistic customer experience strategy. In simplistic terms, a customer experience focus begins at the top of the organization and is driven down to all employees in every department.

It appears that true disruption from a negative perception of consumer experience in retail automotive won't come from an external force, it will be ushered in by lack of internal alignment to a common consumer-centric process.

Do you have a formal Customer Experience Management Strategy in place? Is it holistic and truly driven from the top down? If not, are you actively working to define one?

 

[Alex Snyder]

Do you have a formal Customer Experience Management Strategy in place? Is it holistic and truly driven from the top down? If not, are you actively working to define one?

You forgot one: Does it start in the service department?

 

[ryan.leslie]

You forgot one: Does it start in the service department?

Great clarification Alex!

Jeff and I spoke together last year at DSES and one of the key points that we tried to make was "Blow up your Silos!" Here is the slide:

There is clearly no place for silo'd consumer experience expectations. We can't have one driving principle in variable and another in fixed. The average consumer doesn't recognize our profit centers and won't judge them independently, they only recognize the name on the side of the building.

 

[joe.pistell]

Great clarification Alex!

Jeff and I spoke together last year at DSES and one of the key points that we tried to make was "Blow up your Silos!" Here is the slide:
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I've been in Retail for decades. When I came into this industry I was amazed to see the department managers in bloody battles amongst each other and the customer had the smallest voice in the fight.

Dear Dealer. If you're going one-price, you can't keep the old guard too. Silos are pay plans in action. Pay plans are made by GM's & DPs. Ball's in your court sir.