Ford Australia are changing the way they do showrooms in the future to deliver “An outstanding dealership and ownership experience”. With a new focus on customers, the company will introduce technology into the showroom to assist in the buying process. Looking to customer service champions Apple and Starbucks, Ford are looking for that experience that transitions into a long-term relationship with customers. By delighting them the first time, there’s a dramatically increased chance they’ll be back in the future to buy or service vehicles. Staff will use new technologies as part of this transformation, these include digital displays that surface the latest information about products, interactive iPads that let users browse and interrogate vehicle details at their leisure.
Sales experts will also use iPads to help customers with shopping experience. While educated consumers will research their purchase at home, some consumers aren’t educated and look to dealerships for more of a browsing experience and the iPads will help bring these two experiences together. The mobile apps can also nail down the vehicle that best suits the client needs as well as comparisons against competitor vehicles. This shows confidence in their lineup, however the comparisons won’t be as extensive as ones you’d do yourself.
These “dealerships of the future” are being designed around a wave of new products by blending the best of brick-and-mortar retailing with web-based tools. More than 20 dealers in Melbourne and Sydney have completed the first pilots of the program, with 80 dealerships to be transformed by the end of 2015.
“Ford’s new vehicles are widely being credited for competing with the best products in the world”.
“We now are taking a similar approach to innovating and transforming our dealerships to make it easier to buy and service these great vehicles.”
Bob Graziano, Ford of Australia President and CEO.
A key highlight for customers is their own personalised reveal after their purchase. Just as has been done for decades at motor shows, the staff reveals the car at the centre of the store by pulling off a silk sheet off to create a special moment to remember. Of course sharing a photo of yourself with your new proud vehicle purchase is a common function for customers and Ford can assist in taking that selfie for instant sharing on the customer’s social channels. They’re not currently asking users if they are happy to be shared through the Ford social accounts, but it’s probably not a bad idea if they want to leverage this for PR reasons. Having happy customers next to new products is never bad for the brand and I suspect most wouldn’t have a problem with it.
All of this sounds fantastic in theory, and at the core what Ford are trying to do here are good intentions, but in a world where more consumers are happy buying online, Ford still don’t offer a way to avoid the showroom all together. I get it they have invested in dealerships and like Harvey Norman,have to protect the model they’ve built over decades. But if they are serious about putting the customer first and I meant all types of customers, they should at least off this hands-off approach for an education customer. They should also be prepared to follow Apple’s in-store experience as well. By that I refer to my experience many years ago of buying the MacBook Air. I’d done my research, compared the specs and feature list, and really just went to the store for the convenience of getting it that day. Entering the store I had the Apple staff approach within seconds, after no less than two sentences out of my mouth the staff realised I knew what I wanted and 10 minutes later I walked out of the store with my product. The only upsell was Apple-care, but they’re made to offer that. So this is the benchmark for customer service of an educated consumer, sure you need strategies in-place to deal with the mums and pops of the world that haven’t joined the digital revolution, but gear up for a day where those people no longer exist. That day is coming and fast.
Sales and service experts may be about to service customers from iPads and compared to today, that’s a step forward, but companies like Ford need to train staff in the operation of these devices exceptionally well if it’s to reduce time in-store. The last thing you want is a sales person fumbling with the technology and the experience actually being decreased by tech, instead of enhanced. It was never explained why the choice of iPads over competing tablets, it feels like a decision made from the developer skills they have available. Side note, Ford are investing and growing the R&D team in Australia (to around 150 people), although not by much, it is a positive sign for life after production.
Customers will first notice the changes when they are greeted by a dedicated dealership concierge, right at the front door. Public perception of dealerships is one of sales-driven service from start to finish, but Ford is working to change that perception. The concierge greets new customers, welcomes them to the lounge area and prepares refreshments. The goal here is to transform the experience into a VIP one, rather than you being one of a thousand humans that enter the store on any given day. As customers this will give you all kinds of warm and fuzzies, just like being upgraded at an airline, you feel somehow like you’ve cheated the system and won. The question is raised though, if you’re down to deciding between two manufacturers, is this in-store ‘experience’ really going to tip you over the edge? Probably not, although I’d be gladly proven wrong. A $500 discount or extra features would likely be far more compelling. So Ford aren’t stopping there.
Ford is changing the buying experience to allow new owners to track the progress of their new car. From the time of purchase users will sign up for an account with Ford. At this point you can receive email alerts when the status of your order changes. In a demonstration in Melbourne today, Ford showed the new owner being informed when their vehicle was being manufactured (no you can’t see photos of it), then again when it was placed on a boat and shipping began. Again when the car arrived at the dealer and finally when it’s ready for pickup. What is a nice touch is that users can submit driver preferences to the car prior to its arrival. This means you log onto the website, you set your favourite radio station, maybe the seat position, maybe your favourite radio stations and when you get in the first time, all of that is configured just the way you like it.
Awesome right? Yeah it’s a neat tweak to the experience of picking up a new car, but right now it’s just a guy at the dealership who jumps into your car and configures it on your behalf. What really needs to happen to scale this up is for the settings to be controlled be software. This would work be having the new owner enter the settings in the website before it leaves production, for those of you not familiar with web technologies, this info is stored in a database. When the car is on the production line, the user preferences could be drawn from the database and pushed to the car via software, completely hands-off at the dealership. Maybe the test driver needs to adjust and test some things, so it’s also possible for an over-the-air update of these preferences to be pushed as late as the arrival to the dealership. We’re talking ideal world here, but nothing I’ve described is not possible using today’s technology, it’s more about how serious the company is in really making every driver’s experience the best it can be.
Maybe I’ve watched too many ‘homes of the future’ or ‘a world made of glass’ videos from Corning, but I expected the ‘dealerships’ to have more displays. There were a few that contained promotional videos for current vehicles which makes sense, but nothing like a big interactive table where users could visually compare 2,3,4 or even more products or variants like you can in the Telstra experience store in Sydney. I get that phones are cars are very different products, but consumers need a very similar set of information to make the purchasing decision. I also think the dealership of the future has to focus more on the website of the future. It’s the biggest and best front door you can have and that needs to deliver the experience consumers want, just like the retail version. The two need to work hand-in-hand without the website simply saying, go in-store, that’s not always convenient for people. In fact while we’re on convenience, going to the dealer for pickup isn’t always convenient either. Maybe adding a service where Ford deliver the new car to where your choice of location, could be the customer service experience that people are will to choose differently for.
I guess overall I left the day feeling like this ‘reinvention’ or ‘new direction’ to focus on consumers more feels like something technology companies learnt long ago and car manufacturers are playing catchup. The strategy feels really underdeveloped at this point, their doing some things to move the company forward, but missing out on some massive potential opportunities to really execute on the vision of ‘customer first’. Hopefully this is just the start and iteration on this strategy shrinks from months to weeks and responds much faster to changing consumer demands.
“Innovation is at the forefront of design in all of our vehicles, so we are investing in technology on the dealership floor to give customers the most personalised, transparent experience possible,” said Graeme Whickman, Vice President, Marketing, Sales and Service for Ford Australia. “While we are re-inventing the dealership experience, many customers will actually find it very familiar to the technology they use every day or even from online shopping.”
Below are some panoramas I took at today’s event which provide an example of what the new dealership showrooms could and should look like. A single model of each car, with car families naturally sitting together. Ford personnel told us that dealers will have some freedoms to adapt the new setup, given space constraints at some locations. The cleaner, less cluttered vibe certainly works and is clear they borrowed from the Apple model here, space is a feature in itself, and to maximise sales, doesn’t mean you have have to maximize product per square meter.
Let us know what you think in the comments. Will any of the new announcements convince you to head to a Ford dealer in the future or sway your buying decision ?
Changes to servicing are also rolling out:
Online service scheduling (ability to book your appointment online, whenever it suits you);
Automated reminders via email or SMS to let you know when your appointment is coming up and keep you informed of the status of your vehicle on the day of repair.
An interactive service reception where the customer is greeted by a Service Advisor equipped with an iPad, and together they review the work to be carried out, the condition of the vehicle, and capture any other concerns or work the customer would like carried out. The advisor can use the iPad to log any customer requirements or concerns, take photos or record noises, and then the customer signs the iPad to authorize the work. The iPad then generates an email which goes straight to the customer and includes the signed Estimate and any photos of the vehicle.
A vehicle report card, provided free with each service, keeps you up to date with the condition of key maintenance items like brakes, tyres and the vehicle’s battery, and provides transparency on cost and required repairs.
This builds on Ford’s expansion of its Ford Capped Price Servicing program and added several new customer-focused features. Ford customers also can take advantage of Ford’s Auto Club Program at participating dealers. Ford has partnered with each State’s auto clubs, the RACV, RACT, RACQ, AANT, RAA, NRMA and RAC, to provide this service. As part of the Auto Club Program, customers receiving a Capped Price Service will receive 12-months’ free State Auto Club Membership in their State (excluding FPV and Transit Custom). The Auto Club Program is with any capped price service up to 7 years/105,000 kms.
If you got this far in the post, you’ve done well.. here’s a picture of a shiny gun metal grey 2015 Ford Mustang as your reward. Pulling back the silk cover on this guy would be pretty special.
Disclaimer: Jason attended the event as a guest of Ford Australia.