It has been 20 days since the world as we knew it was pulled out from underneath us. So many devastating things are happening to people I know and care deeply about, both on a personal and professional level. Local businesses have been shut down and people are being laid off or furloughed, many of whom can no longer make ends meet. It has a domino effect across our entire society. Like most of you, I find myself full of emotion– in a state of immense sadness, full of shock and concern as very few are left unscathed. I hold this in one hand, and very close to my heart, but in the other hand I hold something else — an intellectual curiosity about where we will find ourselves once the storm has passed.

I am fascinated with the changes happening before my eyes. My daughter is now taking virtual dance and piano lessons, while my son completes Boy Scout merit badges online. I have enough teachers in my life to know that they are struggling to learn video conferencing, Google Docs, and Google Classroom so that kids across the country can finish the school year virtually. People are sheltering at home but crave human connection. I can’t tell you how many virtual happy hours I have attended, or how many smiles and waves I have gotten from neighbors as we go outside to stretch our legs. 

Professional relationships are key to moving the automotive industry forward 

I have also been checking in on beloved dealer partners and other industry friends each day. I see people banning together professionally in deeper and more personal relationships than ever before — everyone committed to helping the automotive industry get back on its feet. Competition has been put aside and everyone is sharing what they are seeing and doing willingly and openly.

Regardless of where you sit in the automotive ecosystem– everyone is impacted by car sales. Dealerships are on the front line of this and while the impact has been different across the country, everyone is suffering– some are open for business, but walk-in traffic has dwindled; others have only their service department open for parts and repairs. Many have had to completely shut their doors, laying off huge portions of their staff in order to survive. Dealership employees are either working from home, or as part of a skeleton crew with social distancing in place behind locked doors.

Yet, people are still shopping for cars

With everyone at home and technology usage skyrocketing, those in need of a new vehicle during these unprecedented times are visiting dealership websites, submitting leads, and starting the deal-making process from the safety of their home.

At Roadster, we have been monitoring online traffic volumes closely and on a national level, the number of people shopping now vs. pre-COVID-19 has remained fairly flat. Of course, this varies greatly by the metro area and brand, but even in the areas most significantly impacted by coronavirus cases, dealerships have maintained 60-70% of their traffic.

So, here we are as an industry. Our physical doors may be closed, but our digital doors are wide open. What an interesting world we have found ourselves in. If you dial back to NADA, which now feels like a lifetime ago, most dealerships across the country were in “wait and see” mode as it relates to online commerce. No one was doubting that the car buying process needed to be modernized, but there were serious concerns about staff buy-in, process change requirements, and bottom-line impact. So, while there was a growing percentage of dealerships embracing digital retailing capabilities, the vast majority weren’t prepared for what was about to happen.

Dealerships who embraced digital retailing before the pandemic are ahead of the curve.

I have spoken to dozens of our dealer partners over the past few weeks and the one thing I have consistently heard is that they felt prepared. They had done the work months (and in many cases years) ago to evolve their sales process, empower their teams, and train their personnel on what it means to provide a guided online buying experience. They had already moved past the “get them in” appointment mentality and into a world of efficiency — encouraging customers to do some, if not all, of the buying process online. Sure, their sales are drastically down, and like many, they had to cut their teams back, but they knew exactly whom to keep and how to operate. There was no huge pivot in the sales process, other than remote test drives and the litany of safety protocols they now have to follow during delivery.

These digital-enabled dealers are watching other dealerships scramble to catch up — sometimes within their own dealer groups. They know from experience that it requires more than a plug and play solution. It took them months of planning and training to get the process down and now the rest of the dealer community needs to do that work in days and weeks, not months. You see, the truth about digital retailing tools, and any technology really– it is 20% technology and 80% what you do with it. It is about evolving the way you have always done things, the roles you have always had, and sometimes even the people who have been there forever. It is about making hard choices, streamlining the process and cutting costs out of the equation. I know as an industry we talk about modernizing the experience for consumers, and that has never been truer as we focus on the health and safety of our customers — but it is equally as important to optimize our businesses to survive.

The truth about digital retailing– it is 20% technology and 80% what you do with it.

So, as we stare catastrophe in the face, we find ourselves as an industry forced into optimization overnight. It is scary. But know, you do not need to go at it alone. Lean on your dealer friends who have done the work already, and your partners in the ecosystem to help you fast track through it.

What will our businesses look like post-COVID-19? What will any business look like for that matter? The world around us is being optimized for virtual and online activity. We are training our country on just how much can be done remotely. There is no doubt in my mind that life as we knew it will be changed forever.

Just remember, we’re all in this together, and as an industry, we will weather the storm united.

Michelle Denogean is the Chief Marketing Officer of Roadster, the leading Commerce Platform for the automotive industry, where she oversees Marketing, Insights & Analytics.

To see what other dealers are doing during this unprecedented time, visit the Roadster COVID-19 Resources section, or join our weekly live discussion with dealers around the country. 

When you think of amazing omnichannel experiences, do Walmart, Target, Best Buy and Apple make the top of your list? They did for the 1,000 people we surveyed who regularly shop both online and in-store. The goal of the survey was to understand which industries provide omnichannel shoppers across the country the best and worst retail experiences. To be honest, I had to sit with the Walmart finding for a while. My in-store experience of Walmart is full of uncertainty about inventory location, as well as long lines in the self-service checkout area.

However, when I unpacked this finding, I found that the key to these retailers' success is the strong connection they have built between online and in-store activities. The accessibility of a physical store and knowing the inventory they have in stock for in-store pickup has been the key to their success. Walmart’s entry into the grocery business reinforces this point as the grocery industry ranked #1 in Best Overall Customer Experience, according to our survey. Cable and automotive industries came in last.

Many articles point to omnichannel capabilities as the reason for such high scores. In addition to customer service, free shipping, and easy returns, almost 50% of consumers said that having a consistent and connected experience between online and in-store is a significant driver of satisfaction. With brick and mortar stores blending their online and offline experiences in order to stay relevant, consumer expectations are growing rapidly.

This leads us to automotive retail, rated as the industry second-most in need of modernization, behind only the cable industry. I recently came across data from Qualtrics stating that the Net Promoter Score for automotive retailers has declined significantly over the past 3 years, going from 48 to 39. It isn’t that the experience has taken a turn for the worse, it is that customer satisfaction with car buying is influenced by the buying experiences consumers have elsewhere, especially for everyday purchases like they would make at the Apple store — fast, easy & transparent. In fact, according to our survey, the #1 modification that would improve the car dealership experience is keeping the salesperson with the customer from start to finish, which would streamline the experience and build more trust. For the first time, we see this has become just as important, if not slightly more so, than transparent pricing and inventory selection. 

This finding ties back to the Time Study Roadster did at the end of last year which found that salespeople tend to leave a customer’s side on average every 20 minutes, resulting in an hour of time wasted. In a world in which we have been conditioned by the likes of Amazon to expect same-day retail gratification, it is not hard to believe that customers want to expedite the car buying process. The more they can do digitally before they head into the store, the better. 

And, here’s the real kicker. More than half of consumers we surveyed said that having a positive experience is even more important than price. In fact, 80% stated that they would pay up to 10% more to ensure a fast, transparent & painless car buying experience. Great news for the bottom line of the industry at large.

While the technology to facilitate this type of experience is available today, it isn’t automatic and it doesn’t happen overnight. It takes preparation and planning to modernize a shopping experience and connect online experiences to the in-store transaction. The reality is that you won’t get it perfect out the gate. When we talk to our most successful dealer partners, they tell us that having a plan and being prepared to iterate on it is an absolute necessity. 

As I mentioned at the start, my own in-store experience at Walmart has left much to be desired. Even Walmart hasn’t gotten it 100% right yet. It is a good reminder to not be too hard on ourselves as we adapt to change.

But, isn’t it time to at least start?

Want to learn more? Email us for a full copy of the report. 

Last week my daughter needed a yellow shirt for a school dance performance. Instead of heading to the store that evening, I turned to Amazon and had it ordered in less than 5 minutes flat. And when I picked up my coffee at Starbucks the next morning, I ordered it on their mobile app so I could skip the line altogether and have my coffee hot and waiting for me when I walked in the door. Sound familiar?

In today’s day and age— time is the new currency, and it applies to every buying experience in our lives.

Buying a car is no different. It is a more complicated purchase for sure, and people still want to go to the store to test drive, ask questions and go over the ins & outs before they buy.

In fact, according to a recent study by Bain & Company— people are going back and forth between online and in-store 4x on average during the car buying experience.

But today’s discerning buyer wants to do as much as they can to complete the transaction before heading into the store to take delivery. We have all seen the stats in one form or another— The vast majority of car buyers wants to do some or all of the transaction completely online. So, in marches a flurry of ecommerce platforms to enable this.

The truth: < 10% of car buyers today will actually buy their car 100% online.​​​​​

As an industry, we need to unpack this. Time is the new currency and most customers are still coming into the dealership to complete the transaction. So, as we implement new capabilities that allow our customers to start the buying process online, we also need to think about how we bridge that efficient online capability with the in-store experience. If as an industry we implement express purchase options online but can’t expedite the process in-store we lose the customer for life.

It would be like ordering your coffee on the Starbucks app and then being forced to stand in line with everyone else to pick up your coffee when you get there.

Connecting the online and in-store experience together is what is referred to as Omnichannel Retail. Omnichannel means allowing a customer to enter from any channel and pick up where they left off– consistent and continuous.

When done right, Omnichannel Retail benefits more than just the customer, it is also great for business. By enabling the customer to do some or all of the process online, you are saving the valuable time of your sales staff, who as a result can attend to more customers. Some of our dealer partners claim to be saving 3-6 hours per transaction. And this goes beyond just what the customer can do themselves. Imagine a world where your employees have access to all of the information necessary to walk a customer from A to Z of the sale. You can redeploy resources to make your entire staff more efficient & effective.

“I don’t want to pay a sales manager to quote out the door figures, I want them coaching and training the sales team. From an ownership standpoint, I want to take them away from a low value task to a higher value task.” —Marker Anderson, Anderson Honda

Omnichannel experiences skyrocket customer satisfaction by 172% over the traditional experience, per Cox Automotive’s Driving the Digital Deal Study. Not to mention, that efficient technology-driven experiences in-store are a great recruitment tool for the younger, Millennial generation.

If all of this sounds great, then why aren’t more dealerships jumping on board?

Change is unknown. Change is scary. Change is hard.

So, what makes Omnichannel Retail successful? You do! Success needs a champion. If you are inspired and ready to champion the Omnichannel evolution in your store, here are 5 quick rules of the road to keep in mind:

1: BELIEVE

Ask yourself, “Do I fundamentally believe we will transact digitally in the future?“ Leaders who start with this conviction will be able to ride the wave of initial setbacks that may occur and ensure the team understands that this is the way of the future, if not the present. There is no turning back, but don’t expect 80 years of inertia to be overcome in a few short weeks. Lead with a strong vision and adjust course as needed.

2: HAVE A GAME PLAN

Change is hard, and while Omnichannel is the goal, you don’t need to rip the band-aid off all at once. Smart partners identify the department in their store that will be most successful at using the technology platform effectively. They pick a department as a beachhead, prove success and then expand the program from there. This could mean starting with the Internet/BDC teams who can move from static price quote responses to interactive deal sheets, or the sales floor team who can leverage the technology to do a needs assessment and deal presentation side by side with the customer. 

HINT: Don’t boil the ocean; rather start somewhere you feel has the best chance for success.

3: PRICE FAIRLY & CONSISTENTLY

If you are still insistent on pricing your new car inventory at MSRP, then Omnichannel Retail is going to be a struggle for you. Fair & consistent pricing breeds trust with customers. Nothing stops a customer faster in their tracks than if they feel like the price they are seeing is much higher than pricing they have seen elsewhere, or worse, is different than pricing they have already seen from you. Think about adjusting your pricing to maximize efficiency and customer experience as opposed to the current model of subsidizing your grinder deals with the occasional laydown deal. Put another way, don’t make all your customers suffer through a long sales process because you are looking for that occasional home run. There is a fair market price that can work well for both parties.

4: ENCOURAGE OWNERSHIP

Communicating early and often with your dealership personnel is imperative to getting the buy-in needed for success. Let staff have input into decisions, including the vendor selection process. They will feel more ownership. If they own it, you will be far less likely to start the initiative and flame out quickly. Weekly meetings with key stakeholders to help tweak processes and to maintain feelings of empowerment are key. The worst thing you can do is introduce your staff to the concept at the time of implementation and training. The communication must start well upstream of that.

5: RECAST ROLES

With any change, the first question that comes to everyone’s mind immediately is “how does this impact me?” If there is an inkling of doubt about the longevity of someone’s role, they can and likely will sabotage the change. So, before you make significant changes to your process, share your vision for how this change is going to make their position at the dealership even more valuable.

As business people, we all need to be thinking about the evolution of our customers and the changes required of our business to remain relevant. As an industry, we are in a unique position as we transition to time as the new currency. Time is something that both sides can benefit from in the long run.

Want to learn more? Request a full copy of our Omnichannel Commerce report by emailing insights@roadster.com.

It’s a New Year and everyone is buzzing about nascent trends that will go mainstream over the next 12 months. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the ever-evolving retail space. The important thing to remember is that the retail evolution is completely driven by consumer demand; Expectations from experiences in one category, translating to the next. So, it behooves us to look at macro trends and see how they apply to the industries we each live and breathe every day.

For me that means Automotive, so -- here are my predictions on how five trends touted by the retail experts at Daymon Worldwide & IDG will apply to the Automotive retail industry of 2017 and beyond.

1. ecommerce moves in-store

Digital retailing has been a buzzword in Automotive over the past several years. However, like most buzzwords, the definition has been hazy at best. For some it has meant vehicle merchandising, while for others it has meant online credit apps, calculators and F&I. Last year, this definition began to converge around ecommerce solutions that allow customers to desk their own deal. However, for most, the word “digital” still equates to online activity outside of the dealership itself.

Retail experts predict a transformation of the in-store experience in 2017. Retailers will need to focus more than ever on how their employees can leverage retail technology to enhance the customer experience.

Shoppers want tailored solutions that lead to experiences—not just transactions.

For automotive, this means putting tools at the fingertips of the sales agent and ultimately providing a seamless experience from online to offline and vice versa. Gone will be the days when a customer walks in and roams aimlessly around the lot. Dealership personnel will be empowered with tools to assist the customer in narrowing their options, even integrating all of the research and preparation the customer completed prior to arrival.

At Roadster, we now offer our dealer partners an in-store app to facilitate the transaction in concert with a white-labeled ecommerce solution. We have just added a Vehicle Recommender tool to the App that empowers showroom agents to help the consumer explore and assess vehicle alternatives that satisfy their needs on the path to finalizing the perfect deal structure.

2. Shoppers demand co-creation

Since the dawn of time, the vehicle transaction has been a black box for consumers. They want a fair price but have a hard time understanding if they got one, let alone deciphering the details of the deal.

Retail experts predict a move to co-creation of the retail experience:

Thanks to the digital revolution, shoppers are empowered to take things into their own hands, often times translating their frustrations into solutions.

This is by far, the biggest opportunity in automotive, where frustrations can be fairly high. By allowing a customer to co-create their own deal, automotive retailers can put the consumer at ease, make them feel in control of their own destiny, and by doing so, give them the space to digest the details of what is in front of them for a much more satisfying experience.

How much more satisfying? Dealers in the Roadster network who have embraced co-creation are seeing Net Promoter Scores in the 80-90 range. This is unprecedented for an industry that regularly generates scores in the 40s.

3. Convenience becomes table stakes

Let’s face it. If you were to rank the traditional car buying experience from 1-10 on convenience, most consumers would give it a -1 rating. Between the dreaded phone calls and 5-6 hours at the dealership, who can blame them? And to make things even worse, these frustrations grow as other retail experiences get easier. Startups have emerged to address this frustration-- trying to disintermediate the dealership model with the promise of convenience, but I believe dealerships are ready to embrace it themselves.

Why now? Because convenience for consumers means less time for dealership personnel too. In an industry with shrinking margins, this means embracing technology that makes your entire staff more efficient and therefore able to touch more customers. The challenge is that convenience means different things to different people and people expect what they want, when they want it.

Talk to five shoppers and you will likely get five different answers to what convenience means—and retailers are expected to keep up with all of them

Automotive retailers who adopt flexible systems to accommodate the needs of each customer will win. We have dealer partners already reporting an average of 3-6 hours of time saved per transaction… and this is just the beginning.

4. Technology fosters human connection

In a world where everyone walks around buried in their phone, it is refreshing to think that technology can play a role in humanizing the retail experience both online and in-store. With trends like chatbots and easy messaging systems ala Airbnb, retailers have more opportunities than ever to connect one-to-one with their customers; and not just company to customer, but person to person-- putting a face to retail employees.

What this means for automotive is that we will see a blending of automation and relationship. An experience where technology is used to provide the details and sales agents will participate as consultants. With 30% of dealers already using iPads in-store, it is easy to see how this trend quickly becomes a reality. Technology becomes a conversation enabler to customize the experience and close the deal.

5. Generalists emerge

Okay, perhaps this is my own prediction. But with all of the above at play, it is easy to see how technology enables retail personnel to handle a customer’s needs from soup to nuts. When all of the information is at your fingertips and even customers can desk their own deal online, breaking down silos and removing layers of approvals makes room for a much more efficient sales process. It also means that you now have even more people to touch your customers. Remember that NPS score I was talking about? Those who think outside the box will be rewarded.

In short, 2017 is shaping up to be a transformative year for automotive retailing. Not just because the macro retail predictions are gospel, but because the dealership community is ready for it. Do you agree?