The Waiting Is the Hardest Part

Dealers overwhelmingly say providing a great customer experience is their top concern in the CDK Global Friction Points Study 2023.

However, the study indicates consumers don’t feel dealerships deliver such experiences. And adding technology isn’t the sole fix, the study suggests.

In the study, 77% of dealers said improving customer service was the most important strategy for 2023. But they seem to focus too much on digital technology to meet that goal. Quality interaction with actual consumers is also important (see chart after story for more specifics).

The study, conducted in November 2022 with the NADA Academy, involved 335 dealers and 1,150 consumers who bought vehicles in the past six months.

“What we are seeing is the consumer who starts online, that doesn’t transfer over to the in-store experience,” Anu Roberts (pictured, below left), senior director of product marketing, CDK Global, tells Wards.

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Dealerships still play central roles in the vehicle purchase process. Of consumers surveyed, 91% bought or leased their vehicle at a dealership.

While consumers expect a much more digitalized dealership experience and dealerships have made improvements there, says Roberts, “there is a lot of work to be done.”

But the time spent in the dealership to complete the purchase was consumers’ greatest annoyance. In 2022, 46% of consumers said it took them more than two hours to complete their purchases, up from 43% in 2021.

“In nearly every way of measuring the customer feedback, breaching that two-hour mark leads to diminished scores,” says the study.

Dissecting the time problem, a lack of sales staff is a major culprit. Price negotiations are where consumers spend the most time waiting for a salesperson, and it’s getting worse, the study finds.

In 2022, 48% of consumers told CDK price negotiations were where they waited longest compared with 45% in 2021.

The other area adding time to the process is “waiting alone.” In 2022, 39% of customers surveyed said it accounted for the longest wait time compared with 32% in 2021.

Waiting associated with the F&I process was another major pain point for consumers, even though dealerships added F&I staff in 2022.

While waiting for F&I completion improved a bit to 35% in 2022 versus 38% in 2021, a quarter of consumers said they still waited 30 to 45 minutes to complete the F&I process.

If a consumer waits more than 30 minutes in the F&I office, the dealership’s net promoter score (NPS) drops by half, says Roberts.

That’s where the intersection of staffing and technology suggests areas for improvement.

Since COVID, dealers have reduced overall sales staffing by 35%, says CDK. That has improved efficiency. The units sold per headcount rose slightly from 12.6 in 2021 to 12.9 in 2022.

But consumers are less satisfied because they must wait longer to complete the entire purchase process.

The study concludes that better use of the technology in which dealers already have invested is the answer.

In F&I, “one of the opportunities for dealers is to pull the F&I process up earlier in the sale, even online,” says Roberts.

And eliminating the “disjointed” online-to-offline sales journey is a must for dealerships, she says, because it will speed up the consumer journey.

While 84% of dealers surveyed use digital retailing, only 30% leverage the technology to incorporate shopper preferences once the customer is in the showroom, says Roberts.

Dealers must look at the entire purchase process from the first online interaction to the in-store sale and be sure the two are integrated, she says. That will speed up the entire shopping process, thus improving the customer experience.

“There is a big opportunity there for dealers,” says Roberts. “They haven’t changed the in-store process when the consumer arrives. What we are seeing is the consumer who starts online, which doesn’t transfer to the in-store experience. (Consumers) have to start some parts of the process over. That adds to time.”  

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