SHOPSMART AUTOS – CUSTOMER INFORMATION – NOVEMBER 27, 2020
A friend recently commented that “I should not be trusted to buy a car.” She was correct, as most of us are in no way qualified to select and buy a complex and extremely expensive machine. Once basic comfort, safety, price, performance, efficiency concerns are met, it all comes down to emotion. There’s not much that is rational about the process even if we try to convince ourselves otherwise. It’s a cognitive mess.It’s always been a matter of trust
Mintel also reported in April that “Half of consumers say they dislike visiting dealerships and that they find salespeople to be untrustworthy.” This is yet another hurdle for the industry. In the past, the industry has been viewed with a profound lack of trust so the virtual buying experience will need to overcome that. What effect will this lack of trust have in the execution during the final moments of the digital car purchase experience? Someone once said our current world is not so much a disrupter as it is an accelerator. I like this sentiment. We’re seeing the auto industry accelerating the path into digital (but not yet VR). Young people were previously discounted as potential car owners. There were, after all, often not even interested in getting drivers licenses. They have fundamentally changed their attitudes around ownership of cars and are now appreciating the freedom and safety that come with car ownership. On the whole, our spending and savings habits are accelerating into the behaviors of retirees. Spend less, save more, travel less, cook more. Focus on health, safety, and wellness and spend more time with a smaller circle of friends. Given this acceleration of both good and bad, what can the auto industry do? (aside from VR…)
The car buying experience: Three factors contribute to overall outcomes
A Tesla owner once told me that the first time he test drove his car, it was a transformative car buying experience. It’s not the futuristic iPad like dashboard or even the speed of the car that was the most compelling aspect. It was the feeling of instant torque. He said that once you feel this physical sensation, you can’t do without it. The electric power is instantly translated to kinetic energy which flows to each wheel. There are blessedly no gears, shafts, gee-gaws, and doo-dads to get in the way. It’s elegant. It’s simple. And this is what sells the car: The experience is everything. There is a semi-permeable membrane that we must struggle through that stands between a person and actually owning a car. It is inherently uncomfortable because – for most people – it is saturated with unknowns. Navigating landscape with no trusted GPS for this journey means it is easy to make a wrong turn, it is easy to get lost, it is easy to feel vulnerable. Some car manufacturers have figured out the car buying experience, like Tesla. Given the industry trust issues and new safety issues, auto manufacturers need to rebuild the buying experience, so it is commensurate with the significance of the investment. I don’t think we’re going back to 2019. All the components of experience have to be re-evaluated, for the sake of the industry, and the sake of OPPORTUNISTS like me.
In a dramatic over-simplification of experience, one can think of experience being broken into three components – UX, CX, and BX:
User Experience – Head: “This works great.”
Customer Experience – Heart: “I just love this.”
Brand Experience – Soul: “I cannot believe I ever lived without this.”
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