The Light Is Green

The magic question

Of course the more we can learn from our customers, the more we can improve, but if you had to whittle down your customer satisfaction survey to just one question, what would it be?

Business consultant Fred Reicheld says it's: "Would you recommend this business to a friend?", and that's the basis for his latest book "The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth" which I haven't read but plan to.

In a March 23 article in The Financial Times, titled "How companies can end the cycle of abuse", Reicheld and fellow consultant James Allen say that a direct satisfaction metric helps companies focus on earning customer loyalty, They cite GE and Amex as examples, who "... focus on one statistic that nets the percentage of customers who are unhappy (scoring 0-6 out of 10) from the percentage who are loyal promoters (scoring 9 or 10). The Net Promoter Score [NPS] provides a single number as clear and actionable as net profit or net worth...GE ties a significant portion of managers' bonuses to meeting NPS goals."

Food for thought.

DMS feature wish-list

What frustrates you most about your current system? What would you love to have in a DMS?

Email me with your comments, I'd love to hear your ideas... we'll compile everything into a future post...

The worst word of mouth

I think we all know by know that a happy client will tell 3 (or is it 4) people but an unhappy one will tell 11, since we've been bombarded by this factoid in countless articles, books, etc. etc...  :)

So it was refreshing to read at Church of the Customer's blog about new research on the terrible damage that bad word of mouth can cause.

Salient fact:  50% of Americans will not set foot in a store due to a friend or colleague’s negative experience.

The study was done by the Verde Group and the Wharton School.

First podcast

Check out our first foray into the world of podcasts, courtesy of Peter Daniel of ADC and myself.

It’s 10 minutes long, and covers common problems with systems use we've seen at dealerships, modern software features we think dealers should be focusing on, and also the reasons we've just partnered. Click here to listen.

I hope you find it useful. Please send in your comments and ideas for future podcasts!

A DMS is not a magic bullet

What's the main problem with dealer management system implementations?

Well, assuming a quality DMS, I'd say it's that dealers tend to think that a DMS is a magic bullet, that in and of itself it will solve whatever problems they may be having from an organizational standpoint.

Myth be dispelled! Not even wonderful Autologica :) will magically fix a dealership. I'm sure you've read of the high failure rate of CRM deployments that typically come about due to the excessive (unfounded?) expectations involved.

With a DMS, the outcome won't be as catastrophic as with a CRM (where failure signifies non-adoption and a wasted investment), as the dealership will usually deploy successfully and widespread use will ensue. But the problems that were there before will probably still exist.

Of course this can be prevented.

How? By attacking the root of the problem: bad or non-existant processes in each department.

We recently formed an alliance with ADC-Automotive Dealer Consulting LLC, a cconsultancy firm based out of Virginia and Puerto Rico that specializes in providing process improvements and training to automotive clients in throughout the Caribbean and Latin America.

Now, when we work together on a project, ADC analyzes the dealership from top to bottom, puts best practices/processes into place, and only then do we deploy Autologica, configuring it to meet the dealer's precise needs.

And that's the closest to a magic bullet that I can think of...

Raison d’être

You might say: Another blog! Even: Another blog that starts off saying "Another blog"!

Surely there are many of 'em out there (Technorati says 30 million, a new one every second), and some are quite informative.

As CEO of Autologica, I am fortunate to work with manufacturers and dealerships in many different countries from the automotive, construction and ag equipment industries. This blog's humble goal is to share useful business and marketing ideas, culled from what is (and isn't) working for our clients.

So let's move ahead... the light, after all, is green...