Measuring Car Showroom Effectiveness For Business Growth

Car dealerships are made or broken through the effectiveness of their showrooms and the abilities of salespersons to work through the processes they have been taught in order to sell to prospective customers. Building instant rapport and relationships with new customers is vital to the growth of your business; building a rapport that leads to repeat business and referrals is even more central to a business plan. Auditing your car showroom is a great way to ensure both are performed admirably, and with great effectiveness.

Auditing Your Car Showroom

Auditing your business is a good way to look at the big picture and analyze each individual part of your business in order to improve across the board. There are a number of things that you can have audited to improve your service to prospective customers and increase the chances of repeat business to your car dealership. These include:

• Compliance in terms of vehicles found on the forecourt/exterior and within the showroom itself
• Compliance from staff members, in greeting at reception, sales staff, and service desk
• The cleanliness, hygiene and safety standards within the showroom for both staff members and the public alike
• Internal record keeping and the procedures your company adhere to
• Courtesy car and demonstrator fleet compliance and safety features

Benefits of Auditing

Once an audit has been completed, you as the franchise owner of a car dealership can look in-depth at each facet of the organization and how to improve where possible and which areas require tightening in terms of legislation and compliance.

Improving the standard of your showroom and the presentations on the show is an important aspect of maintaining high-quality customer service, The same can be said of the knowledge of the products and competence of a test drive, as well as the financial side of things, with finance options clearly demonstrated to potential customers before moving ahead with a sale. It is all about improving the customer experience from start to finish, even with the aftersale checks and common courtesy.

Checking Showroom and Finance Compliance

Not only can an audit look in depth at the customer service you are providing your customers, but also the financial compliance in terms of your services to offer credit. In April 2014 there was a change in regulation that led to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) taking responsibility for consumer credit regulation. In terms of motor credit, car dealership franchises had to make the change towards fresh applications to be able to offer motor finance to customers. The reason for the change was explained by the FCA’s director of policy, Christopher Woolard before it came into effect:

“The key issue here is that the current regime is struggling to protect consumers – the National Audit Office has talked of at least £450 million of potential financial harm not being addressed at the moment.

“In other words, the evolution of the UK consumer credit industry has outpaced its current regulation. That is why we find ourselves where we are today – with the FCA on the cusp of taking responsibility for some 50,000 consumer credit firms.”