News Published on : 19-Jan-2022 10:04:51

Expectations among car buyers are almost always satisfied by dealers but customers remain less happy with the quality of dealer staff new research has revealed. Every aspect of the buying experience is examined in Autovia s Driver Power research - which is drawn from the reports of up to 60 000 participants a year - and dealer staff appear to be the weakest link in an otherwise almost universally satisfying process. Dealer efforts to overcome the challenges of the pandemic have been especially successful with the quality of virtual tours to demonstrate a vehicle and contactless handover of the car consistently beating expectations. Investment in the quality and comfort of showrooms has also paid off with customers typically rating their dealer s premises as better than expected. But among the thousands of customers who bought a car from a traditional dealer over the past two years criticisms of staff accounted for three out of four areas in which expectations were not met. Despite the overall strong performance of dealers in overall customer satisfaction they are failing to attain top marks in the four areas to which buyers attach most importance. Customers remain wary of trusting sales staff and are more likely to find fault with transparency honesty and communications than almost any other aspect of the purchase experience. The other area in which dealer performance falls below customer demands is vehicle condition on delivery or collection. Driver Power s Shopper Survey invites car buyers to rank the most important aspects of the buying process and then report on whether or not the dealer meets those expectations. A surprise finding was that despite the reputation of finance being a confusing area for many people customers rate dealer staff knowledge of finance options and their ability to tailor finance products to their specific needs lowest of all in terms of importance. Despite dealers apparently failing to meet customers highest priority demands a majority of buyers also told Driver Power that they will go back to the same dealer for their next car.