Car buyers “still as human as ever” despite tech growth

Times change and so do customers. The high-tech, connected world in which we live has moved the goalposts a long way in buyer savviness. It has also made working life notoriously tougher for dealers, battling shrinking profitability as so many consumers spend much more time exploring car choice online than in showrooms.

As a long-time specialist motoring writer I have seen a sea change in how genned up people are about the cars they consider buying. Being quizzed about cars I have driven has always been a constant sideline to working life.

Car scribes are uniquely fortunate in the access we have right across the industry, and so I have happily driven around 100 different models a year, globe-trotting on car launches for more than 30 years, with weekly car tests in between.

It means that I’ve test-driven several thousand different cars over the years, including most of what’s currently available for customers to consider buying, on both the new and used car scene. Friends, family and acquaintances have long enthusiastically pumped me for information on the latest abc, what it’s like to drive, and how it compares with xyz. Which would I go for? What else of a similar ilk is worth considering?

Of course I happily tell them, but with an emphasis not on how a particular model would suit me, but how it would work for them. I always urge them to experience a potential choice for themselves, to gain a personal perspective by visiting a dealer and driving a demo model. It still surprises me, though, how many buyers forego a test drive in their revved-up enthusiasm to make a change.

More recently the quizzers ask for an opinion having already pretty much made up their minds about the next purchase. They come much more lavishly armed with advance knowledge gleaned from their good friend Google. They’ve watched the online videos, shared the viewpoint and heard the sounds a car makes – if not the crucial tactile experience – via one or more of my videographer car test colleagues.

Often, having done their research on keyboard and screen, they are already as genned up as I am on a particular model’s features and technicalities. They have lavishly consumed the relevant sections of the encyclopaedia of the internet. Now they want confirmation of a decision made, not information to help make it.

From conversations with friends working in the motor trade, and experience as a Motor Trader Awards roving judge, I know how much the same inevitably applies in dealer showrooms across the land. Sales staff have a tougher job than ever before, selling to customers who arrive on site having done their homework very thoroughly in advance via the net, and who often reckon they know more than the person employed to steer their purchase.

It is uncomfortably well known that margins are being squeezed. Car sales have held up better than might have been expected on the rocky road to Brexit, but the pressure is on. Times are tough.

Canny dealerships have followed the trend of car supermarkets in establishing growing digital activity. On the basis that if you can’t beat the power of the internet, join in as energetically as possible, smart dealers have geared up their digital platforms in harness with the more traditional selling streams.

It’s a tough time to be on the front line delivering sales targets, though, and although most showrooms are now more inviting places in terms of customer friendliness than they once were, they’re still essentially transaction centres rather than somewhere for an enjoyable exploratory browse. So maybe there is still more to be done to make showrooms less about the deal and more about the experience.

Last summer I wrote about a VIP event at a local dealer that was unashamedly hard sell, ineptly done, and acted as a deterrent to a friend who had been invited along as a recent customer. Wooed by what seemed to be a friendly ego-massage, come-and-see-us invitation from the dealer – who had sold the car that was by then still less than a year old and with under 12,000 miles on the clock – my friend was dismayed by the pressured experience.

Happily the same dealer has had a recent event this summer that has been decidedly lower key, more intelligently organised and more relaxed. But it begs the question why more isn’t being done to engage customers less aggressively but more winningly, with the aim of garnering loyalty built on a more positive ongoing experience. Showroom events that are not so blatantly pushy are more appealing, and potentially better for longer term customer loyalty

Maintaining an ongoing friendly, welcoming relationship with previous buyers can have a very positive effect on customer satisfaction index scores, which can so directly affect financial success or otherwise. And yet, for all the expertise and psychology that is applied to achieving strong CSIs, the burning drive to achieve sales targets still wrong-foots some businesses. Today’s car customers are more genned up than ever before, but still as human as ever, and canny nurturing breeds loyalty.

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Written for Motor Trader by Sue Baker.