Tips for Car Dealerships to Survive the Recession

I'm not knowledgeable about the inner workings of car dealerships. I only know of them through my experience as a consumer, but it seems obvious to me that the way to survive this recession is to maintain a customer base. The best way I know of doing that is through customer service, which unfortunately is given much lip service, but not much actual practice in my experience.

My last car purchase was from a company that invited new car buyers to a catered supper within three months after the purchase. It seemed like an expensive perk to offer customers, but it was easy to see how it improved customer relations. During the program, the service manager gave several tips about maintaining the new cars, maintenance schedules and several other items of interest. There were drawings for key chains, car care buckets loaded with sponges and cleaning products and basically I think everyone went home feeling like a winner. It was an easy decision for me to take my car back to the dealership for maintenance.

Another tip is to always make the customer feel important. I have been totally shocked by the number of times in recent trips to a service counter that I have been ignored while an employee carries on personal business on the telephone while I wait for attention. I'm not looking to be treated as if I'm the center of the universe. I just want to be treated with common courtesy. Since this might be taken for granted, it might be a good idea for new employees to be given some training in what constitutes good manners. Using a customer's last name instead of a first name, taking complete telephone messages and not using a cell phone to talk to a friend when a customer is waiting for help would be examples of basic polite customer interactions.

Another suggestion is to remember to take all customers seriously no matter what their dress or gender. I will never returned to a showroom in particular where I decided to dress in casual and on a whim decided to check out the showroom without my husband. I said I was just looking since buying a new car was just a kernel of a thought. The woman in the showroom smirked, "Come back and ask for me when you are serious," she told me. I didn't, of course, because I found her comment to be totally insulting. Instead I went to another dealer within a month and purchased a car. All people with financial stability don't dress in business suits and all women don't need a man to purchase a car-even if they are married.

These tips would improve a car dealership's reputation whether or not there is a recession, but during hard times it's even more important to maintain good customer relations.