Ken Gratton•1 Oct 2014
NEWS
Ford tackles customer concerns
Local dealers are at the grassroots of paradigm shift for the Ford brandFord is embarked on a far-reaching program to redefine its brand in Australia. And the first step along the new path lies at the threshold of the local Ford dealer.
"From the point the customer comes in the door..." was how Ford Australia Communications & Public Affairs Director, Wes Sherwood, described it to motoring.com.au last week.
"It's based on permission-based sales," he continued, "moving away from the hard sales approach. For example, you walk in – and I went to the first dealer that we certified, Thompson Ford in Sydney – and they have a concierge now. This person has no role in the sale of the vehicle. They are there to greet the customer first of all; so everybody is greeted.
"Some people may want to go and look around for 15 minutes before anybody approaches them. Some people... they've done their homework on the Internet, and they want to go in and start negotiating. This person [the concierge] just gets a feel for how they want to be approached. The concierge speaks to the sales people and they have an understanding of what the customer wants.
"But they're asking how the customer wants to go through the whole process. Then the sales person gets engaged, and it's no longer [a case of] you go to their desk and you're sitting back there...
"They [now] have the iPad, where they now have everything you could want [to know] about the vehicle. But not only that... they have a comparison system; so right there – in full transparency – I'm looking at the Focus, I'm looking at the Corolla..."
Those are just the preliminaries for the new customer-friendly process. Sherwood says that after signing the contract, the buyer can, for instance, use an online app to set up the car for personal preferences prior to delivery. That means even configuring audio system presets for favourite radio stations, as one example. The actual delivery is accompanied by much fanfare, with the new car literally unveiled to the customer by the act of removing a shroud – all in the name of making the sale memorable, in a good way.
And Ford is carrying through the permission-based sales process to servicing as well. There has been a consequent spike in satisfaction expressed by customers taking their vehicles in for service. The enhanced customer service strategy has even resulted in Ford's customer service centre moving to 24-hour operation.
It took the dealers a little while to accept the new philosophy however, until dealer management saw the "step changes" in customer satisfaction after a couple of months.
"It was a fundamental shift in the kind of feedback they got," said Sherwood, who also observed that once the first few dealers began to experience the improvement in satisfaction, word hurtled around to other dealers.
Sherwood says that what the dealer network is going through at present is the "significant change" the network had to undertake, but it saves dealers from facing closure after local manufacturing ends in 2016. The company is being pro-active to retain sales (and hopefully boost them) to keep all members of the 200-strong dealer network on board after the Broadmeadows and Geelong plants shut. To date, around 40 of the dealers have embraced the permissions-based sales process.
Picture courtesy of Kgbo/Wikimedia Commons
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Written byKen Gratton
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