Westside KIA selects DeliveryMaxx to share their Automotive Customer Service for the World to See

“We want to put all of our customers into the right vehicle that meets their needs. In addition, we want to exceed our customers’ expectations in their vehicle purchase experience” states Cesar Prado, General Manager of Westside KIA.

Oct 31, 2012 -

Westside KIA in Katy, Texas selected DeliveryMaxx to share its message to the world about how they are providing consumers with one of the Top 100 Best Global Brands according to a 2012 study made by Interbrand, the world’s largest brand consulting agency.

Recently KIA was named best total cost of ownership brand by Kelly Blue Book while the 2012 KIA Soul was honored as a top KIA vehicle. This past February, Kelley Blue Book’s kbb.com released its list of the top automotive manufacturers with the lowest average total cost of ownership for the first five years after purchase. In first place is KIA Motors America.

Not only does Westside KIA carry an outstanding product, but their primary concern is the satisfaction of their customers. “We want to put all of our customers into the right vehicle that meets their needs. In addition, we want to exceed our customers’ expectations in their vehicle purchase experience” states Cesar Prado, General Manager of Westside KIA.

DeliveryMaxx will help Westside KIA communicate with their customers to assure the most pleasant buying experience in the Houston area. “With the power of the internet, and social media Westside will be able to share with the world showing how great they treat their customers and the value they provide” says Josh Deaton, Chief Operating Officer of DeliveryMaxx.

Westside KIA is located at 23005 Katy Freeway in Katy Texas. The dealership boast highly trained experienced technicians, and all of their auto parts possess the highest quality coming from the best manufacturers. The lobby is comfortable with amenities allow any customer to relax during their visit.

DeliveryMaxx provides a total automotive dealership care program providing their clients consumers with social media marketing, online reputation management, search engine optimization, customer loyalty, and retention. They utilized their proprietary software and patented programs to help automotive dealerships maximize their effectiveness positively influencing consumer behavior.

Westside Chevrolet and DeliveryMaxx partner together to provide Consumers with top Customer Service

"We are all about our customer because they are the entire reason we are in the business. Our mission is to meet every need in every way possible” states Cesar Prado, General Manager of Westside Chevrolet.

Oct 31, 2012 -
Westside Chevrolet in Katy, Texas is the premier option among Chevy dealerships in Houston dedicated to providing service, maintenance procedures, and the largest selection of Chevy vehicles in the Houston area. For more information visit www.westsidechevrolet.com 

“Some Chevy dealers in Houston are in business only to turn a profit. We’re here for our customers, whether it is showing you the car of your dreams or maintaining their current vehicle. We are all about our customer because they are the entire reason we are in the business. Our mission is to meet every need in every way possible” states Cesar Prado, General Manager of Westside Chevrolet.

Not only does Westside Chevrolet carry an outstanding product, but their primary concern is the satisfaction of their customers. DeliveryMaxx will help Westside Chevrolet communicate with their customers to assure the most pleasant buying experience in the Houston area. “With the power of the internet, and social media Westside will be able to share with the world showing how great they treat their customers and the value they provide” says Josh Deaton, Chief Operating Officer of DeliveryMaxx.

Westside Chevrolet is located at 23001 Katy Freeway in Katy Texas. The dealership boast highly trained experienced technicians, and all of their auto parts possess the highest quality coming from the best manufacturers. The lobby is comfortable with amenities allow any customer to relax during their visit.

DeliveryMaxx http://www.deliverymaxx.com provides a total automotive dealership care program providing their clients consumers with social media marketing, online reputation management, search engine optimization, customer loyalty, and retention. They utilized their proprietary software and patented programs to help automotive dealerships maximize their effectiveness positively influencing consumer behavior.

The Right Tools for the Job: Internet Technology in the Service Drive

There are many generations of vehicle owners pulling into dealership service drives across the nation.  Furthermore, they can be driving anything from a late model relic to the latest in automotive wonderment.  You pick the letter in the alphabet to define the generation...Boomers, Gen-X, Gen-Y, Millennium-Gen.  That's a lot!

As a service professional, it's your job to pick up your customer's highest expectations and maximizing profits per repair order.  Oh yeah, did I mention you've got to do all that AND get high CSI scores?  A circus juggler might come to mind as you try to wrap your head around it all.  But let me highlight the concept of Effective Communication.  Without a doubt, effective communication between you and your customer is the single most critical aspect of your success, your business, your R.O. averages, and your CSI scores...PERIOD.  Are you still using the telephone to do that?  Let me expand that thouught just a bit.

I have a Time Magazine from April 1993.  The cover reads, 'The Info Superhighway' (Time Magazine: April 12, 1993 / Vol. 141 No. 15/ www.time.com/web ).  There is a page after page of concepts pertaining to internet technology in the future.  It was all so foreign to the average consumer that it seemed like science fiction.  However, now, looking back on all of that in the rear-view mirror, it's like "(yawn)...what's your point?"

The point is this, when that article came out I was writing service for one of the largest Honda dealers in Portland, Oregon.  The computer at my write-up station had a green-screen for crying-out-loud!  The most sophisticated car in the suite of automobiles available to our customer had 24 on-board computers, very few people had a personal computer at home, cell phones were flip-phones that made phone calls...that's it, and Data, he wass a character on Star Trek: The Next Generation.  Nevertheless, the basic elements of service consulting in the dealership service drive haven't changed that much over the last 20+ years.  The tools for communication have.

The basic tenants of added-value customer service are still the same: courtesy, cleanliness, promptness, professionalism, product knowledge, effective communication, active delivery...all the same.  Yet the products are more sophisticated and so are your service customers.  My boss at that Honda store summed up customer perception like this, he said, "if you're customer has to call you before you contact them by the end of the day then you've lost their perception of a high standard of customer service."  Are you still using the telephone to do all of that?

I like to get out into dealerships and talk with the pros working on the front lines of service consulting. In fact, the other day I was at Southwest KIA of Rockwall in Rockwall, Texas talking to a few of the writers in that store. It’s a new store with an exciting suite of products. The service area and write-up area are clean and very modern-looking. It’s a really nice store. They have a consultant named Kevin Leary who’s been writing service since 1979. Do you think he’s seen some changes?! Needless to say, Leary is a valuable asset just by his years of experience alone. I was talking to him about some of the modern technology they are using in their service drive. Leary says “We’re reaching our service customers in ways we’ve never dreamed of before.” By that he’s referring to internet technology via emails and social media like Facebook and Twitter as well as texts and data sharing on customer’s smartphones. Leary also utilizes powerful write-up tools like remote pads to do the customer write-up at the car. The remote table also allows him to pull up vehicle and customer history, previous service recommendations, current service recommendations, and any current recall information from the manufacturer for that customer’s vehicle. John Monigold, also a service consultant at Southwest KIA of Rockwall, has developed an email template to interact with his Generation-Y service customers after they’ve visited him. John says he uses modern internet technology to cultivate a high volume of highly favorable CSI review responses by his younger, tech-savvy customers. Leary concedes that he prefers the telephone to do most of his consulting and communication but, he realizes the power and value in internet technology, especially with the younger generations of car owners. Regardless, it is easy to understand why Southwest KIA of Rockwall’s service department has earned the highest CSI averages in their district. Great job!
 
Another service pro I talked to is Richard Ancheta at David McDavid Lincoln in Plano, Texas. With 11 years of experience, Ancheta is the highest producing Assistant Service Manager in the service drive at the Plano store. He also uses email, texts, and data sharing with his service customers as a form of effective communication. He conveys estimates, pricing, progress reports as well as up-to-date warranty and recall information to his customers throughout the day. Like Kevin Leary, Ancheta says that “At the end of the day, there’s nothing more solid than a verbal conversation with your customer…” but the internet and technology via social media and smartphone technology make him vastly more effective in conveying the perception of the highest standards of customer service to his service customers. So, are you still using the telephone to do all of that?

Isn’t amazing how quickly technology in automobiles change? Earlier in this article, I mentioned that in 1993 a “high-end” car had about 24 processors on-board. Since then that number has more than doubled. All of those processors are synched with control sensors and monitors; it is a marvel indeed, the cars we drive today. So why would any service consultant in the modern dealership not want to employ all of the benefits of modern technology to communicate with their customers?  These customers who are likely to be tech-savvy, and at the very least, as sophisticated as the cars they drive. According to Kevin Leary, “It’s important to keep technology fresh and updated.” In other words, is your service customer’s perception of your operation up-to-date and modern, or is it lacking?  Updated, modern technology is often a large expense for dealerships, but that cost is a small price to pay when compared to the loss of customers, revenue, and low CSI in its absence.  Perhaps perception can be improved by a service consultant simply asking their customer which method of communication they prefer, “Email, text, phone calls, or smoke-signals.” Regardless, effective communication is at the forefront of every service transaction, and crucial to the success of your service business. And so, if you are a service professional working in the modern dealership today, are you still using the telephone to do all of that?

DeliveryMaxx in the Automotive Industry Leader in helping dealerships with customer loyalty, increasing CSI Scores, higher SEO value, published positive reviews, strategic social media marketing, additional fixed operations revenue, more sales, and repeat and referral business.  Our company was founded by “Car Guys”, and we make it a practice to hire the top talent that has automotive dealership experience.  Craig Rodenmayer, the author of this article, has spent years working service in the automotive industry.  His experience allows us to provide programs that are advantageous for fixed operations.

Automotive Service to Sales...Seamlessness...Really

From time to time, we will have members of the DeliveryMaxx family share their experiences from the automotive industry with you.  We hope you enjoyed this read from Craig Rodenmayer, DeliveryMaxx’s Customer Service Professional.

 In the 16 years I worked in the automotive industry as a service writer, consultant, and assistant service manager on the dealership level, I faced many opportunities and challenges. However, the greatest of those challenges and opportunities continually focused on how to retain my client base and represent the dealership well to my customers in order to achieve and maintain a high level of CSI and repeat business. That was the crux of what I learned in those 16 years. 

 During my tenure, car dealerships began to develop a focus on “seamlessness” between the front end of the store and the back end, or fixed operations of the service and parts departments. There were, in essence, two franchises under one roof operating out of step, often in competition with one another. The disjointed nature of these two competing entities worked to the detriment of the dealerships client base because the customers of that dealership were becoming lost to the schizophrenic nature of the messages they received either at the point of purchase or at the point of service. There was a lack of dialogue or familiarity between the sales staff and service staff which created a lack of trust or loyalty with the customers on both ends resulting in a loss of repeat sales and returning service customers. Worst of all, this lack of trust was being expressed through the customer’s word of mouth and CSI reviews to the dealership. Disaster! 

 What I learned in my time writing service, and what I began to understand of human nature, is that people want a friend they can trust when it comes to their automobile purchase or service. They want experts who will lead them down the path with integrity and sincerity. They don’t want to be “sold” on something they don’t want, don’t need, nor can they afford. So, my approach to the concept of seamlessness became communication and knowledge of what the other half of the dealership was doing. Likewise, I developed relationships within the sales staff so that I could better serve my customers and the dealership as a whole. The better I understood the sales end of the car business, then the better I could assist my service customers in making wise decisions about a car they own that may be, for a lack of a better term, a “money pit” if they continue to dump money into it to fix it. I and my customers needed friends in the sales department.

 I never cared much for the notion of a “bird dog” fee for flipping a service customer to a specific sales person; to me that seemed more like a scheme. Of course I wanted to be well compensated for my efforts, but more than that I wanted to make sure my customer was being treated with the same level of integrity and honesty that I provided in my relationship with them. After all, a car purchase usually takes place within the confines of a day; a service customer however, is won over months and years! Therefore, it was imperative that any customer of mine was treated with the highest level of care by the sales staff. What is more, I didn’t want to develop a “racket” with just one sales person who would pay me to flip my customer. No, keep your bird dog fees and spread the love. My desire was to work as a team, seamlessly taking care of our most valuable asset, the customer. If we won the trust of our customer, we earned a customer for life. 

 And so now, with the ubiquitous internet and social media, it is even more imperative to take the concept of seamlessness to task within the automotive dealership. There should be absolutely no gap or perception of a void to the customer between the point of sale and the point of service. Furthermore, the client base of the dealership, both young and old, have become more sophisticated and educated in the process of car buying and automotive service. Dealerships owe it to themselves to cross train and educate both the sales staff and service staff in an effort to better enhance the dealership’s customer retention, online reputation, brand reputation, and CSI reviews. It is in our nature to want to trust and that is the key to winning customers for life; loyalty is the point of becoming truly seamless. Really. 

DeliveryMaxx was founded on the principles of creating a more efficient method for successfully completing the sale at the point of delivery.  We have developed a system that effectively increases the positive experience of buying a new vehicle, accurately tracks the process, and generates increased customer retention.  The net result to our dealer network is increased sales, residual profits, web domination through social media marketing, strong SEO value and Locals, Published Positive Reviews and a Customer Loyalty Program that assures “Keeping the Customer for Life.

Our founders have over 60 years of experience in Automotive Sales, Management, Fixed Operations, Corporate, Marketing, and Customer Support ensuring a complete understanding of the sales process and the knowledge to help you grow your customer base.  We understand how hard it is to win a customer, and DeliveryMaxx arms you with the tools necessary to build continuous, strong relationships with your customers and retain them for generations to come.