SHOPSMART AUTOS – CUSTOMER INFORMATION – MARCH 25, 2021 – PART 2
Car Buyers Want A Hybrid Of Online And Offline Shopping Experiences
The Road to the Sale
In addition to long anxious waits, customers also dislike having to interact with many different people at the dealership or go through what salespeople traditionally refer to as the “road to the sale.” “Consumers don’t want to do that,” Dyke says, adding that online tools allow them to go at their own pace in an environment of their choosing. This ideally results in interacting only with one staffer if they choose to come to a store. Sonic launched a set of digital buying tools in 2017 and heavily upgraded them in 2020 so customers could transact end-to-end online. Only about 5% of Sonic customers actually go that far, but more than half do their trade appraisal and financing via digital interactions, according to Dyke. The goal was adding consumer convenience and reducing in-store purchase times to less than one hour. This was the ideal amount of time that customers indicated they wanted to spend in-store when Sonic was designing the user experience for its EchoPark stores, Dyke says. Deloitte found similar sentiments among consumers in many past surveys and research initiatives. “When customers walk into a dealership, they have a clear expectation of how long it should take to close a transaction, and it’s about an hour,” says Jody Stidham, managing director at the consulting firm. Economy Honda of Chattanooga, Tennessee, one of Sonic’s many stores, sped up the adoption of eCommerce tools when many dealers were forced to temporarily shutter due to the pandemic.
Removing The Finance Office
The trip to the finance office is probably what most consumers like least about the in-person experience. One area of particular contention for many customers, and for dealers, is the set of extra finance and insurance products traditionally offered near the end of the purchase (the “F&I menu”). The menu includes staples like extended warranties and gap insurance, but also window glass etching, paint and upholstery sealants, clear-film stone chip protectors and nitrogen-filled tires. They can add thousands of dollars to a purchase and most customers eye them warily, unsure of their real value and worn down from hours of car buying. Similarly, many dealers resisted digital retailing in the past for fear of not being able to sell or properly present items from the menu. “I was trained early on that you present 100% of the products 100% of the time,” says Dyke, noting that at some stores if there are 12 products, all 12 will be presented. “That’s not a good use of time; the consumer isn’t going to buy all of them and not every finance manager feels comfortable selling all of them.” It’s better for dealerships to focus only on a small set of products that provide real value, Dyke says. Online tools can do exactly that. In a one-stop experience, Sonic’s online tools allow customers to arrange their own financing and they present a range of warranty and service products. When given the opportunity to evaluate and research these products on their own time, many buyers still choose to take them. “We’ve seen no fall-off in terms of what people buy online versus in-store,” Dyke says, “And extended warranties are a big part of our revenue.” There are still some challenges to pushing all of the financing process online, however. Though several states still require physical signatures on documents, customers are more willing to come in a sign if they’ve done most of the transaction online, Dyke says. People still want to see, feel, and sample the product. That’s particularly true of used-vehicle buyers, 86% of whom, according to Sonic’s Harris Poll, won’t buy a used vehicle without test driving it first. Sonic Automotive
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