Sometime last year, we ran a series of posts on the shopping experience for jewelry, electronics, skincare and cosmetics, high street apparel and other premium goods.

Adding to that series is this post on the experience of shopping for mid-segment cars. A few months ago, my husband and I were in the market for a mid-segment car, more specifically a sedan, with automatic transmission, ample legroom in the rear and boot space. Our consideration set consisted of Honda, Volkswagen, Skoda, Nissan, Toyota and Ford. We are both car enthusiasts and had done our research prior to visiting these dealerships for further information on the cars and test drives; not only this, through our conversations with the sales persons we’d made it amply clear that we knew about what we were looking for in the car and that we already knew a fair bit about the cars themselves.

Given below is a summary of our experience at various dealerships :

Impressive: None

Satisfactory: Honda

  • Knowledgeable staff, understood what we were looking for and told us exactly about that, weren’t gimmicky or trying to sell us anything we did not care for in our car.
  • Not only was the sales person prompt in attending to us, but when we needed assistance or needed questions answered by the accessories or finance person at the store, they were quite prompt in showing us seat cover options, color options, or different EMI plans, etc.
  • Ample waiting space and engaging reading material at the showroom.
  • While the first interaction was impressive, the same cannot be said for the follow-up conversations, where we had to end up waiting for longer, cars weren’t ready for test driving, the formalities for the test drive took longer than expected. Finally when we decided to go ahead with the car, the payment formalities took too long, the car registration personnel were not professional, in the meantime the prices got revised and there was no communication for the same and eventually they did not even deliver in the stipulated time period.

 

Not-so-good: a few examples of what we didn’t like at other dealerships

  • Despite prior appointments with a specific sales person, the person was either out for another meeting or was on leave on that day.
  • Some sales persons did not know their cars at all. For simple questions, they needed to refer to the brochure or call their manager to answer our queries. Similarly their accessories and finance teams weren’t prompt with answering our questions either.
  • Despite taking prior appointments, the test drive cars were either out for another test drive or were still being prepped for the test drive.
  • Did not have ample seating space in the showrooms, so we were kept standing and waiting to be assisted.
  • Did not understand us, their customer, at all. In some cases, they did not really talk about the features of the car, instead demonstrated things like how to take the driver seat back and forth, how to turn on the AC and audio system, etc. Now if they understood us, they’d have also understood that we weren’t first time car owners and did not need to be shown such obvious things. In the bargain, they did not focus on the more important or uncommon aspects like fuel economy or sports gear or valet lock feature or parking sensors, etc.
  • One of the companies called us up with a new deal everyday!
  • Called up everyday to find out if we’d reached a decision despite making it amply clear that we’d get back to them the following week (‘cause we still had other cars to check out). Sometimes we got multiple calls in a day from different car/ accessories sales staff to ask the same questions.

Our verdict: Overall, a C. Major scope for improvement. While speaking to a lot of the sales representatives also realized that the attrition rate in the industry seems quite high; as only 1 out of the 6 sales people we interacted with had been with their company for over a year, rest had been employed with the firm for only  4-6 months.

  • Roshni Jhaveri

[Disclaimer: This post deals mainly with one aspect of the shopping experience – interactions with the sales staff. Also, the list of outlets visited for the purpose of observation is not exhaustive.]