Amazon, Spotify, Lyft, Purple, Dollar Shave Club. You have heard of all these companies and chances are you use at least one of them on a regular basis.
All these products made a major splash when they debuted in the marketplace and many of them have grown into multi-million, or even billion-dollar companies. So, why are all these products so successful?
When you stop to think about it, are they really offering anything new?
Lyft isn’t the first cab service, Spotify didn’t invent music streaming, and Amazon wasn’t the first online store. What makes them stand apart from the competition and made them innovators is that they offered services that were vastly more convenient and removed friction from the buying process for their customers.
Lyft removed the need for a customer to hail a cab (or even ride in a cab), Spotify eliminated the need to buy, download, and save copies of all your songs, and Amazon offered every product you could ever think of just a couple mouse-clicks away.
By focusing on a better user experience and selling convenience, these companies have become a part of our everyday lives (and made quite a bit of money doing it).
So, why is this important to you as a car dealer? It shows that the market is changing.
Customers have grown accustomed to having what they want, when they want it and will choose to do business with companies that offer them that luxury. Businesses that used to compete on features like price or brand alone now need to include speed and ease of experience in their business and marketing model.
Now, we’re not telling you that you need to completely re-invent the dealership model. What you do need to do though is be aware of how customers’ expectations have changed and how you can use this to both increase your customer satisfaction and gain an advantage over your competitors.
The first, and most important step in increasing your customer satisfaction and removing friction from the buying experience is to identify customer pain points.
To make that easier for you, we have what we like to call a Convenience Audit that you can download and assess your dealership with. It’s not a long or exhaustive list, but it’s a good starting point to get you thinking about how you can improve your customer experience and reduce friction at each point in the buying process by highlighting the most common customer complaints about dealerships.
Over the last several years consumers have spoken and what they have told us all is that convenience is king. They didn’t tell us with a survey or polls, they told us with their wallets and we think that is a much more trustworthy source.
To open the audit, click the big blue button below.
If you would like to learn more about what Edifice does or how we can send you more customers click the Learn More button below.