AM Awards 2021 winner: Best Aftersales Team, Sytner Harold Wood BMW/Mini

The aftersales team at Sytner Group’s Harold Wood BMW/Mini dealership at Harold Wood claimed the AM Awards 2021’s Best Aftersales Team category.

Here is AM’s citation detailing why the awards’ judges deemed them worthy winners:

When the pandemic and resulting lockdowns meant this London dealerships’ sales department had to shut – or, at best, work remotely – the service team stepped into the breach.

A ‘skeleton’ team volunteered to carry on working throughout with the aim of keeping key workers on the road and to provide police car repairs.

Harold Wood BMW was also the first site in the manufacturer’s network and the only one in London to open 24 hours a day, Monday to Friday, with customer appointments available throughout.

Absorption rate reached 101%, covering the cost of the Sytner site in 2020.

Round-the-clock opening at the Romford site meant all vehicle preparation work moved outside of the working day, cutting preparation lead time from nine days to three.

The aftersales team also helped with vehicle logistics and deliveries, demonstrating what head of aftersales Ben Orwell refers to as the company’s ‘One Team’ ethos. Stability in his team, he believes, played a critical part in doubling direct profit from 2019 to 2020, and it’s on plan for another 50% growth in direct profit in 2021.

CSI scores for the BMW business are at 85.9 against a national average of 83.59; for Mini 91.77 against an average of 86.53 – and number one in the London area and top 10 nationally out of 156 businesses.

The business also achieved a 20 Star BMW/Mini award for 2019 – the only business within the M25 to ever receive this.

And in the past four years staff satisfaction has increased from 70% to 96%, with annual staff turnover falling from 30% to below 10%.

Attention to detail is key. Orwell says: “We deep dive every week into a days’ worth of bookings and will inspect for quality, and pre-, update and post-calls for every visit. We then make these calls in coaching sessions with everyone involved, whether it be the advisor making the call, the technician sending the CitNOW video or the parts advisor pre-picking the parts.

“Together we will look for opportunities in how we can take our service to the next level.”