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Park’s is one of Scotland’s largest multi-franchise groups, rated 32 in the Motor Trader Top 200 with 45 outlets and 21 different franchises across the volume and prestige sectors.
New brands added in the last 18 months include Maserati and McLaren. It has come a long way since it was formed in 1971 by Douglas Park who started a coach-hire business in Hamilton with three vehicles.
Park’s enjoys much success in the volume sector, the latest accolade seeing its dealership in Coatbridge, near Glasgow, being voted Renault’s Dealer of the Year. Andy Giles, Renault franchise manager for the past 12 years, relates what it took for the dealership to win the award.
How did you win Renault’s Dealer of the Year?
A multitude of things contributed to the Coatbridge dealership winning the award. We are a family-owned business and from the very early days our ethos was that if we looked after the customers they would come back. To this day that is one of the keys that our team is measured on.
We train our staff to be customer focused as we are in a very competitive area. We have a number of other Renault dealerships within a 30 minute drive time but we know so long as we maintain our standards our customers will keep coming in.
From a process point of view the head office team focuses on specific elements. We meet with each dealer management team every month on site and a major element of each meeting is performance, in which customer care plays a key role.
Such high standards must require high levels of staff training?
We have an in-house trainer at head office and he spends a number of days each month in branches, on a rota basis, talking with front-end staff and management and looking at the development needs of key individuals and catering for those needs in future training programmes.
The staff react well to this. When we started it we were hesitant, feeling they would be guarded, but in fact both old and new members of staff are very open to saying when they need help with something. That has worked really well for us.
How do you keep management in touch with employees?
We operate from 45 outlets but our top management are rarely at head office in Hamilton and we will be in every site at least once a week. Our training centre is at head office and staff go there and enter through the main corridor where all the directors are located, connecting with staff at all times.
We need to keep an open environment with strong communications. So, every induction session is opened by a director and all the directors are introduced at the end, putting faces to names.
Staff vacancies are offered internally and we try to grow our people from the inside.
I’m a prime example, I started in the workshop and came through the business. Our head of business at BMW was a valeter, as was our general manager at Coatbridge. If an individual shows willing we will progress them.
What difference has the new FCA regime made to you?
Even before the FCA we have had a group compliance manager in place. We recently held a roadshow and the compliance manager and the financial director visited every site, met with management and staff and went through our Treating Customers Fairly process as a refresher. We also have an auditor who visits once a month to ensure that we are 100% where we need to be with FCA compliance.
Do upsells like paint protection and warranties play a prominent role in your business?
We have seen visits to our website and customer enquiries dramatically increase over the past couple of years. We believe add-on products do help when they are suitable for each customer but our main focus regarding used cars is on having the correct stock at the right price, properly prepared and with the minimum of a one-year guarantee. In today’s used market you must have a daily focus on your stock, how it’s priced and presented as you will only get one opportunity.
How would you describe your approach to customer aftersales?
We’re very careful with our aftersales customer service. We send gentle service reminders out by mail or email, and then our in-house contact centre gets in touch. We also do our utmost to keep our front-of-house staff in situ. They get to know the customers creating a more friendly environment.
We have a 3+ programme aimed directly at older cars, geared to help such owners come to us. Every car is given a free health check, which is videoed and sent to the customer. We’ve been running it since the start of the year and the customer reaction has been fantastic.
We’re also very conscious not to over upsell. We use the traffic light system and explain the likely timescales for components needing replacement, but we focus on the red notifications.
What impact has Renault’s four-year/100,000 mile warranty had on sales?
It has been very positive and customers have welcomed the peace of mind and the reassurance that they were looking at a quality product. The high level of vehicles covered by service plans for the three to four-year period has definitely helped our contact centre confirm service bookings and has increased customer satisfaction levels.
How will the new car market fare in 2015?
I think it will level off to a degree – there was an element of pent-up volume last year that came to the fore and if the market can maintain that this year it will be doing well. Certainly we are happy with our growth. We’re confident.
FACTFILE
Park’s Renault
Established: 1971 (first Renault outlet 1992)
Locations: Irvine, Ayr, East Kilbride, Coatbridge, Motherwell, Dunfermline
Brand: Renault (mostly on multi-franchise sites)
Staff: 66 sales, 80 aftersales
Ramps: 34
Andrew Charman
