How the Car Dealership Customer Experience Got So Good

Yesterday’s car buyers put up with a dealership process that wasn’t particularly customer-friendly and took hours on end.

It was something today’s buyers, particularly Millennials, don’t brook. What happened? Were car buyers of the past more tolerant and did they have more time on their hands?

Michelle Denogean, chief marketing officer of Roadster, which offers online car-buying technology services to dealers, fields that one in a WardsAuto interview.  

It has much to do with people’s retailing experiences today, she tells WardsAuto. “Look at the technology that has come to bear,” she says. “We live in a world where people are looking for and expect convenience and flexibility in auto retailing, because they are influenced by all the buying experiences everywhere else.”

She tells of a friend who while on a boat during an outing ordered various goods from Amazon. When she returned home, the delivery was sitting on her porch.

The influence of Amazon and other e-tail behemoths is why most car buyers today expect a dealership to deliver a great consumer experience that is fast and friendly. It’s life in the Internet age

“People are used to having that instant gratification in ways they never had before,” Denogean says. “That plays a huge role. In the past, whether dealership customers liked the process or felt they could do more with their time than spend hours and hours at a dealership, they really didn’t have anything to compare it to.

“They might have been dissatisfied to an extent, but that dissatisfaction level rises when there are other retail experiences in your life that are changing as much as they have. You can’t expect (dealership customers) not to be influenced by everything else in retail.”

So the car-buying process has improved dramatically in their favor. It’s why customer experience is such a buzz term in auto retailing.

Credit also goes to those crazy-kid Gen Y’ers who in a short time have become a dominant consumer force in the automotive market. They account for 29% of vehicle sales today. That’s expected to hit 40% in three years. Many of them are first-time buyers.  

“The Millennials go to a dealership, and they have not had any of those past negative experiences (their elders had),” Denogean says. “Millennials are used to customer satisfaction that has been revolving around them everywhere else in retail. It’s all they know.”

She cites a study that indicates car buying Millennials enter the market with a much more positive outlook than do their elders. “They don’t come with the baggage of feeling they won’t get a good deal or must spend hours and hours there.”

But if things do go amiss at the dealerships, young buyers are the most miffed of the generations, the study says.

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