Automotive News - October 25, 2021 - S27

OctOber 25, 2021 | 27
ALDERMAN'S CHEVROLET-BUICK-GMC, RUTLAND, VT.
Ending remote deliveries boosts loyalty
Against the trend,
store brings customers
in so they'll come back
Published in Automotive News June 7, 2021
Jackie Charniga
autonews@crain.com
iming to capitalize on the growing
trend of offering remote services, Alderman's
Chevrolet-Buick-GMC in
Rutland, Vt., in 2011 began delivering
newly sold vehicles across New England
free of charge. Similar practices were enabled
in the service department, where some employees
were engaged full time in picking up
and returning customer vehicles in need of
repair and maintenance.
The goal was convenience and customer
satisfaction. Up to 30 percent
of the 1,100 new and
used vehicles the dealership
sells annually were
delivered across state
lines.
But Mark Alderman, the
Alderman: Store
was spread thin
store's general manager,
noticed a trend. Most of
the dealership's hottest
vehicles were shipped out
of market, and those customers
wouldn't return for their next purchase
or even for service work.
" What we were doing was really spreading
ourselves thin, not executing as well and raising
expenses, " Alderman said.
Another casualty of free delivery was finance
and insurance revenue. Offering ancillary
products over the phone, or making
last-minute pitches in customers' driveways
while they signed contracts, didn't do the job,
Alderman said. In fact, after interacting with
the store's least-trained employees and never
stepping foot in the dealership's expensive facility,
customers had fewer qualms about taking
their business to a competing store, he
said.
In December 2014, the dealership's loyalty
retention rate - the percentage of new-vehicle
customers who returned for their next
purchase - reached a low of 42 percent.
" We were doing it because we wanted to sell
more cars, " Alderman said. " When we looked
back on it, there were a lot of benefits to the
dealership and the customer experience that
get lost when you ship a car. "
Tamia Fleming celebrates her 2015 Toyota RAV4 Limited with a sign the store made for photos.
So Alderman decided his employees would
stay put - and so would the dealership's inventory.
No
regrets
At the end of 2018, Alderman's Chevrolet-Buick-GMC
instituted a new policy: All deliveries
would move in-house, and service
customers would drop off and retrieve their
vehicles in the service lane.
Taking inspiration from a General Motors advertisement,
Alderman had signs made up for
customers to hold while standing next to their
newly purchased vehicles with slogans such as,
" We switched to Alderman's " and " We stayed
with Alderman's. "
Employees would take photos of the customers
and tag them in posts on the dealership's
Facebook page.
The result? Higher loyalty rates and lower
costs. Alderman said he doesn't regret the
change, even when the pandemic forced dealerships
to close in spring 2020 and sent customers
online seeking dwindling inventory.
The inside of Alderman's Chevrolet-Buick-GMC
closed for two months, and
Alderman's Chevrolet-Buick-GMC in
Rutland, Vt., began requiring buyers
to take delivery in-store in 2018.
Ending out-of-state drop-off has
increased the number of customers
who return for service work and a 2nd
purchase.
customers took delivery in the store's parking
lot during April and May last year. The dealership,
which uses Darwin Automotive software
for digital retailing, was able to have most vehicle
purchase paperwork completed online
ahead of delivery.
Dealership employees would also use Zoom
to video chat with customers and go through
paperwork together.
Sales employees created videos to demonstrate
vehicle features since they could no longer
sit in the vehicle with customers and show
them firsthand.
New heights
The dealership is actually recording its highest-ever
loyalty levels during the pandemic,
Alderman said.
In 2020, 62 percent of the store's new-vehicle
sales came from returning customers. In
the last three months of the year, that figure
reached 69 percent.
Alderman said he is sure he would have sold
down more of his inventory sooner if the dealership
were still delivering out of state, particularly
as microchip-related production constraints
reduced vehicle inventory this spring.
But he says keeping car sales and service local
is helping employees focus on how they can
deliver better customer service to the immediate
market.
Other dealerships " are afraid of the customer
walking away, " Alderman said. " We just
made a deep commitment to not try to be everything
to everybody, of trying to be just really
excellent in our space. " a

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