There is a wind of change blowing through dealerships, bringing with it a realisation that automotive retail has to follow trends that consumers now take for granted in other sectors.
There is a wind of change blowing through dealerships, bringing with it a realisation that automotive retail has to follow trends that consumers now take for granted in other sectors.
There is a wind of change blowing through dealerships, bringing with it a realisation that automotive retail has to follow trends that consumers now take for granted in other sectors.
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Jeremy has been a journalist for 30 years, 20 of which have been in business-to-business automotive. He was a writer and news editor on AM-sister brand Fleet News for three years before setting up the AM website. For the last five years he has been Bauer B2B’s head of digital helping to manage the digital assets of AM, together with Fleet News, Commercial Fleet, Rail and Smart Transport.
busterrabbit - 26/11/2014 12:27
Working on similar assumptions to Knights to give customers more choice/convenience, back in the early '80s the Sytner BMW workshops in Nottingham were open from 07:00am until 11:00pm. We used to work either an early or late shift with a handover period from 3-3:30pm. The biggest problem was getting customers to come in outside of the "normal" working day. Calling customers at 10:00pm asking for authorisation for extra work wasn't well received either. I guess the same would apply to requests to fleets via 1Link. We actually ended up doing mostly internal work in the evenings, so there was an improvement in retail lead times, but I guess the extra costs weren't recovered and after a year or so the system was dropped and we returned to normal hours. Most people are reluctant to "lose" their car during their leisure time, yes they'll have a distress purchase like tyres fitted; it usually doesn't take long and there are few variables. Taking your car for a service in the evening and "having a coffee" which turns into pads/discs and missing your evening meal/putting your kids to bed is not for the majority. It might help reduce unnecessary upsell though, with customers itching to leave to get home.