“You’ll also never get a true picture of your business because they’re your customers. What you’re really interested in is the satisfaction of an Audi driver at a Citroën dealership or a Jaguar customer in a Ford dealership.”

Burch offered the analogy of doctors being incentivised with a £20,000 bonus if they got satisfaction scores over 98% at their surgeries. No doctor got the bonus, he said, because “there is always one stinking customer”.

“I don’t care if there is a distance between what we’re providing and what the customer expects, you just want it out in the open. You want the truth so you can start moving towards what the customer actually wants.”

Dealers need to ask themselves if a customer knew they could get their car £5 cheaper at the dealership next door, would they leave?

Burch believes the key measurements for dealers are:  Would you tell your friends? Would you send a friend here? Would you come back? Nothing else matters.

 

'Everyone in your organisation is a salesperson'

Building the right culture within a dealership can also fall down if dealers forget that every customer contact represents the company. Burch used the example of when photocopiers break down and the engineer sent out to fix them tells you how terrible they are.

Burch said: “Everyone in your organisation is a salesperson. A culture will automatically build within your business, but if it happens to be a bad one, all your sniping and angry staff will bring you down from within.”

Finding customers and keeping them is the only thing that matters, everything else is cost.

Burch gave another example, of a US dealer that paid for a £600 Gucci handbag a customer had accused the showroom of stealing because they couldn’t afford to lose her custom.

He said: “What’s the difference between a bogey and a Brussels sprout? You can’t get children to eat sprouts. However, if you give them a packet of sprout seeds and they grow them, they will eat them.

“You need to build your businesses culture the same way, giving your staff the seeds to grow their own ideas.”

 

Q&A

Why is the US used so often as an example for customer service?
“Everyone is equal there and they’re very good at building teams. They can also fire people very quickly.

“US staff will also buy in to an idea quite quickly because they’re a bit thick, so they will instantly ‘believe’, whereas in the UK we’re quite cynical people.”

Has the UK economy recovered?
“We saved ourselves from the recession by cutting from the bottom line. We cut away the rigging, but now we’re just bobbing around in the ocean. We’ve got to get the ship moving again.”

How can we encourage young people to join the automotive retail industry?
“We don’t use our chief executives enough. Let new starters spend their first day with the chief executive. You’re the ones that have all the best stories to tell.”

 

Next Executive Breakfast Club: May 16

♦ James Bannerman, the author of GENIUS!, will be the speaker at the next event on May 16.
♦  AM’s Executive Breakfast Club is free to join and exclusive to senior dealer group executives. It meets every quarter. Delegates enjoy a full breakfast, a presentation from a guest speaker and a chance to network with senior figures in the UK’s motor retail industry.
♦  For more details, email luke.clements@bauermedia.co.uk or visit www.am-online.com/breakfast-club/