I'm conducting some in-house training soon and thought it would be nice to provide the team with some meaningful information with the help of the forum. As you can see from the feedback section of the forum, we take customer satisfaction very seriously. To ensure that we maintain this level of service it is important that we revisit the customers 'buying experience' regularly.

With the exception of the actual price of the vehicle, I wondered if you could score the most important part of the purchase experience by selecting what you feel is the most important from the list.

Your help would be much appreciated and will give some real substance to the customer experience training that I am putting together.

Thanks for your time!

James

TBH James, it is more than just one but for reference I have chosen availability of vehicle for test drive/display.

Overall though I would say dealer location plays a fairly big part but I would be prepared to travel up to say 50 miles.

Attitude, experience and knowledge of sales people is also important as I am a bit of an anorak and if I was walking into a dealership to buy a car I would know my onions. I wouldn't expect a sales person to either not know the answer or give an incorrect one.

I would also expect a dealership not to ignore me because I looked too young to buy that particular brand of car. Have had this before when buying BMW 3series Sport coupe and also when we walked into what was our local LR dealership and made a bee line to a RRS instead of a FL. Sales execs clearly thought we were just in there to ogle our 'dream car'. I think Jay is a classic example. He is young but is in a position to buy expensive luxury cars. RR sales execs treated us like dirt at motorshow as did Kahn with Jay at another show.

Hope this is of help  Runner up - 2009 Best Avatar Award
Joint runner up - 2009 Outstanding Contribution Award
WINNER - 2008 ‘Best Thread’ Award – Beautiful Women Of The World
Runner Up - 2008 Comedian Of The Year Award
Runner Up - 2008’s Funniest Incident

06 RRS TDV6 HSE, Java/Ebony, PTI, Running Boards, Privacy, S/C Grille/Vents, Stormers, Tasmods - GONE - (

Spot-On Supertrotter, thanks for that! You can never pre-judge anyone, and certainly can't make a judgement based on age. Hopefully Viewise (forum member) will understand what I mean, and appreciate that we can't be accused of that!!

Thanks again,

James

Understanding the customer's requirements is important as it can save a lot of hassle later on when you find things are not quite right. Good communication and relationship I think would also cover this.
It was the LR experience that sold me on the RRS as at the time I was concidering the FL2, I'm happy with the choice I made.
My Dealer is in Inverness, about 1000 miles from where I stay, tho they are the nearest dealer to my home in Scotland. My local dealer here in Hasselt could not match the deal I got from them Inverness. The dealer in Hasselt are happy to sort any problems I have, but the load car I get is a push bike  Sons of dogs come hither and get flesh
Clan Cameron

James
Absolutely completely agree with ST.
Impress on salesmen to treat everyone walking through the door as a potential sale and not to pre-judge on appearance.
You won't believe the number of times I have walked out of a dealership because I was ignored for wearing jeans and a polo shirt.
This is exactly what happened when I tried to buy my RRS in Sheffield recently.
ATB
Chris MY2011 HSE Santorini/Ivory/Piano Black/Privacy Glass/TV .Sadly gone.
Audi A5 Sportback Black Edition 3.0 tdi quattro S Line

I also agree with ST. Just bought my Touareg and the 'Lux Car Manager' at the dealership was probably one of the best car salesman I've ever dealt with. He knew a huge amount about the history of the Touareg and was able to discuss previous and current quality issues without claiming he knew nothing about it, was willing to switch wheels from another car without question to get the sale and made me feel like his priority at all times. The dealership was the other side of the country which wasn't the best situation, however this didn't detract me from travelling purely due to the salesman's attitude.

Great post James

People buy people the end. If the sales people look after you and do that little bit beyond the norm you are more likely to do business. That could be as the others have said, it could be the slightly different test drive, such as allowing a car to be tried towing or to see if it fits on the drive.

Being honest about issues like Kaine said is important too, if the client says I've read about XYZ issue, don't deny that you've never seen or heard of the problem. Knowing how to really use the car is a big deal too, I would expect a Porsche dealer for instance to know how to really drive a car and I'd expect a LR dealer to be competent in off road driving even though many London clients wouldn't perhaps know what mud was.

The biggest minus is bullshi**ing when you don't know the answer put your hands up and find out the answer. Porsche Cayenne S Diesel 66 Plate

Yeah, didn't have a chance to respond to this yesterday. I've chosen the salesman rapport option as I think it's important to build relationships with everyone that you're planning to do business with. In the short term it allows the scope of the engagement to be built accurately and with everyone understanding what is required of them. In the long term, it helps build the salesman's repeat client base and also allows the customer to put his repeat business in the hands of someone he can trust.

I also agree with Super that the answer to the question covers more than one option and there are some very important points on there that a lot of less experienced and wise sales guys should take note  

2009 Outstanding Contribution Award - Joint Runner Up
2009 'Tech-Head Of The Year' Award - Runner Up

Like it here? Then Donate to RRSPORT!!

Thanks for all the feedback so far, it is building a very interesting (and consistant) picture. I too as a consumer believe that a number of the choices above result in a happy customer , however I just wanted to narrow down to the most important element and have a look at the percentage split (plus I don't think the site give the option of multi answers?).

Thanks again, it's really helpful and hopefully interesting to the forum.

James

Good post mate... and no, you can't do a poll with multiple answers  

2009 Outstanding Contribution Award - Joint Runner Up
2009 'Tech-Head Of The Year' Award - Runner Up

Like it here? Then Donate to RRSPORT!!

James,
Another thing I think is very important is stability.
Quite often just when you have formed a relationship the person leaves and you have to start again.
What happened to me recently was that I had to revisited a dealer and fortunately bumped into a new hire who had previously sold me a Discovery and really looked after me,clinched a deal that had been lost the previous week.
Another thing is constant contact with the customer after the deal,nothing worse than taking your money and then no follow up,Nottingham dealership ran 2 off road days a year and invited customers for a social get together which was wonderful.
Regards
Chris MY2011 HSE Santorini/Ivory/Piano Black/Privacy Glass/TV .Sadly gone.
Audi A5 Sportback Black Edition 3.0 tdi quattro S Line

Finally, one of the golden rules of selling (I used to be a National Sales manager in a previous life) is DON'T KNOCK THE COMPETITION!

Something that really gets my back up is if I said 'Yeah, but we're also considering a Mercedes ML', and the salesman said 'Oh you don't want to buy one of those, they're crap. These are much better'

If someone were to say to me 'Very good cars the Mrecedes, however the features/benefits of buying a RRS are .......' that will illicit a far more favourable reaction from me.  Runner up - 2009 Best Avatar Award
Joint runner up - 2009 Outstanding Contribution Award
WINNER - 2008 ‘Best Thread’ Award – Beautiful Women Of The World
Runner Up - 2008 Comedian Of The Year Award
Runner Up - 2008’s Funniest Incident

06 RRS TDV6 HSE, Java/Ebony, PTI, Running Boards, Privacy, S/C Grille/Vents, Stormers, Tasmods - GONE - (

Agreed... as long as we can still say how all D3s are driven by pikeys with a spare bit of tarmac in the back  

2009 Outstanding Contribution Award - Joint Runner Up
2009 'Tech-Head Of The Year' Award - Runner Up

Like it here? Then Donate to RRSPORT!!

 
L 405 2013 FFRR 5.0 SC
--------------------------------------------------------------
WINNER - 2009 �Best Avatar� Award
WINNER - 2009 Comedian Of The Year Award

Sales Executive's enthusiasm and the rapport is very important to me, as i don't want some bloke who worried about putting food on the dining table, if thats a worry don't tell me about it when were haggling, if there that worried tell her to get a job and the kids can have a milk round too

I have had sales execs not listening to me if i want a HSE, I mean HSE not a Killimanjro or whatever model he can make more money on or has in stock.

Product knowledge is important too as i read as much as possible about all the cars features and i don't want to find out that it doesn't have some feature that I was told it did.

As has been said, there is no need to put down other dealer brands and models or build quality, if your comparing the car with another it because they both appeal to you at that moment in time.

Though i think the dealer location is important too, i don't mind travelling for a good deal but not too far as i like to follow up a purchase with the services at the same garage too if the price is right.