Dealerships Must Reinvent the Car Showroom, from Driving Sales.
“How can the average salesperson at a BMW dealership be expected to educate shoppers on an increasingly complex number of choices and facilitate sales transactions all day long? They can’t, and that’s why BMW is radically rethinking the entire customer experience.” – Carmine Gallo, Forbes Contributor
BMW is reinventing customer service and the customer experience in their dealerships. Its leaders realize that today’s customers experience products very differently than they did even five years ago. So they’ve introduced a new employee on the lot – the product genius. The BMW product genius is a non-commissioned expert who will spend as long as it takes to educate car shoppers about their choices.
But here’s the best part (if you’re a potential car buyer): The product genius is not a salesperson! They are there to explain the products and to help the customer understand the product in more detail. Amazing, right? Most incredible of all is that BMW’s strategy is working. In the pilot dealerships, customer satisfaction scores went up because customers did not feel pressured into a sale, and the salespeople could spend more time on what they did best – facilitating trade-ins, financing, and completing the transaction.
