Two examples of dealers letting business slip through
Yesterday we received our first request on the new consumer-facing portal at AutoConverse.com. The request was for vehicle service and you can view it here. The experience was, to say the least, disheartening and it has me baffled at the disinterest and incompetence I witnessed at the dealer level.
In attempt to fulfill the request, I contacted two local dealers to schedule a service appointment for our member. The dealers included:
MVP Nissan Exton Service Page
Ardmore Nissan Service Page
The website Google gives for the first dealer is http://mvp-nissan-of-exton.ebizautos.com/. When I completed the service request form, it didn’t go through. I attempted in Firefox and in Chrome hoping it was just a browser issue. After a few attempts it went through (I thought).
The website Google gives for the other dealer is http://www.ardmorenissan.com/, whose service request form I was able to successfully complete.
All this was done around midnight. I received an auto response from latter store but nothing from the former.
The next morning, expecting to have responses from each. I had nothing, so about noon I called the Exton dealer. The woman I spoke with seemed flustered. She rambled on that 3 leads were given to her from yesterday but that she could not read the writing and therefore did not call them to follow up. I assumed she meant hand writing which would have made no sense.
After a little questioning it appeared that they just came out of the printer funny. In the end, she did not have my info from the initial request so I booked the appointment over the phone. When I told her the website I was on, she said, “that must be some mistake. All the requests we get come from Nissan and they send them to us b\c we are the local dealer.” If this is true, then I guess it hasn’t struck anyone odd that they get no requests from the eBizAutos site I was on. Although, based on what she conveyed, no one seems to know they have that site.
Shortly after fulfilling this request for our member, I replied to the auto response from the other store which had still not responded. I let them know we had fulfilled the request but that they could sign up to receive others. The response I got was, well, here…
Dear AC,
I sell new cars here….you can contact our service department for a service issue or appointment.
The funny part is that I used the Service Center on the website to submit the request. Seems odd that a sales rep would be handling it and then tell me to contact the service department.
So what are we to make of this? As stated in the beginning of this post, I was baffled by the technological breakdown with the first dealer that a website could exist and seemingly be losing inquiries unbeknown to anyone. But maybe that was just a fluke because I did it again this morning and it went through without a hitch. I was disheartened by the lack of interest experienced with the second dealer in taking care of a customer request.
Do I expect these situations to go smoothly? No, not really. But let me tell you. When people contact me to bring me business, I like to know how they found me and what compelled them to contact me. If they experienced difficulty I like to know why and address the problem. If they need to ultimately speak with someone else I put them in touch with the more appropriate party as opposed to telling them where they can go.
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