Enhance core proposition satisfaction and create surprises

Since the virus has kept resurging, many consumers have to be confronted by such problems as how to get timely maintenance of their car or how to have their car inspected before the warranty expires. While it is an opportunity for automobile enterprises, especially authorized dealers, to attract customers back to 4S stores and increase customer stickiness. To grasp such opportunities and deliver quality service that achieves customer delight instead of just offering basic core service is helpful for effectively inviting customers and leading them to in-store service.

According to ISO 23592: 2021(en) Service excellence — Principles and model, there are four levels of service, among which the basic foundations of implementing service excellence are the two lower levels of the service excellence pyramid (see the figure below). Levels 1 is about meeting the basic expectations of customers by offering them core service proposition and Level 2 is about bettering management and improving service quality through the customer feedback so as to further guarantee customer satisfaction. Excellent service provision refers to upscale services at Level 3 and Level 4. A serving organization offers personalized services or tailor-made services that leads to emotions of surprise to deliver unexpected outstanding customer experiences and achieve customer delight.

According to the study of Car Research, the satisfaction of customers with dealers’ after-sales service in 2021 kept the same as that in 2020, a slight dip from the average between 2016 and 2020. At the basic service level, there are still a number of items with low user satisfaction: the satisfaction index customers scored for the dealers about “ability to correctly diagnose problems” ranked at the bottom, and the third least satisfied item was “ability to fix cars the first time” . Besides, the satisfaction index about “reasonable maintenance time” was also lower than the average level. In terms of customer complaints management, nearly half of customers expect dealers to follow up on their complaints in time by phone calls or other means.

In addition, some of the hardware facilities of authorized dealers are not in line with the usage scenarios of most customers. Compared with unauthorized repair shops, the dealers enjoy a higher TV supply rate in their lounges, but lack sufficient free WIFI and mobile phone charging equipment. In terms of children’s activity areas, drinks and snacks, and audio-visual rooms, the dealers have more advantages.

For personalized services at Level 3, most dealers tend to send greeting messages on holidays or on customer’s birthday. According to the research, this kind of concern for their customers, however, is more likely their wishful thinking, which ranks in the last two of the things that customers want dealers to do for maintaining their relations.

At Level 4, service is not simply about making a promise, but about creative commitment. Heart and creative ideas need to be put into if you want to give customers surprise and offer them unexpected experience, like the Swedish meatballs in the IKEA restaurant and the two-yuan ice cream at its exit. When it comes to consumer feedback, the value-added services provided by dealers, such as car delivery, free on-site maintenance, car inspection agency and owners’ club, have not yet brought customers surprising experience which exceeds their expectations.

During the period of 2017-2021, the data from Car Quality Network, a leading automobile product defective information collecting and auto consumer complaint handling platform shows that the number of consumer complaints about service increased year by year, with an average annual growth rate of more than 50% from 2018 to 2020. The complaints volume in the first four months of 2022 was nearly half of the total amount of complaints in 2021.

These complaints show two characteristics: an extension of complained issues from after-sales to pre-sales service; a surge in issues caused by automobile intelligentization. In 2021, for example, the amount of complaints about “deceptive advertising” was on the top of the most complained issues list, that of “new car delivery delay” ranked second though it was listed for the first time, and “system upgrade” jumped to the third from the eighth in 2020.

Due to poor basic core service satisfaction, the increasing number of customer complaints year by year, the impact of epidemic prevention and control against vehicular production and transportation for automakers, and customer’s little need for cars with their risk aversion psychology after lessened income, considerable pressures can be evidently seen in automobile business. According to the survey of the China Automobile Dealers Association, during the first four months of 2022, nearly 1400 4S shops shut down, that is, about 11 4S stores shut down every day, and many dealers ceased their operation with joint venture brands, of which at least 4 brands lost 57% of their dealers.