Net Promoter Score Explained: The Future of Automotive Customer Loyalty

Welcome, everybody, to the big show. I am Chris Collins. That is Adam and Hoagie.

Hello.

Today we're going to talk about the net promoter score, something that. That we've been getting a lot of questions about. It's evolving, it's changing, but we're going to have a very deep conversation about the psychology of it, what we understand about it now, and then the ongoing conversation that we can have about it and how, you know, we can use it to our advantage.

And.

And then we talk about our recent trip to Indiana, which was really, really fun, but a couple little interesting things that happen and much, much more. Coming up right now on Service Drive Revolution. Well, hello, gentlemen. We just got back from Indy, la, last night. I got home pretty late. We were. There wasn't. It was a fun trip. We met some incredible people, had some good meals.

Yeah, almost.

Almost died.

We got there in record time, safely and effectively.

Yeah, efficiently. I did. I didn't. First of all, you know, Ricky Bobby was driving a race car, not a Ford death box like a escalator. Whatever. It's like the. The Explorer is easy to flip. The Escalade just flips on its own.

The Expedition has twin.

Expedition, whatever it is. Yeah. Twin turbos for sure. Which is not. Not meant to go that fast on icy, snowy freeway, isn't it?

How everybody perceives in their own mind that they're a great driver.

Yeah, man.

Man. Hey, when I said we're gonna get there at this time, we got there at this time, picked you up. It was safe. We had snacks and beverages. So I feel like I'm a. I'm a good.

Yeah. So let me just kind of tell the audience that. That whole thing, because Adam's gonna tell you a different story than what really happened. So first of all, he got a new truck, which I was excited about. He got a new Ford F150. What is it called? Leprosy. Model Lever. Lever. Brie.

What is the model?

Lariat. He's got a lariat. I was excited to hear the stereo in it.

The lariat. The lariat.

Is that how you say it? Is it like. What does Larry mean?

Don't have one for you on that one.

So he gets this new. This new truck, and then I'm like, hey, why aren't you picking us up in your new truck? I want, you know, want to check it out. And he's like, whenever I take. He goes in this long thing about whenever I take my truck on a long road trip, I get a rock chip and I don't want to get a rock chip on my new truck, which is. Is the epitome of how soft men have become, that they think of trucks. They think of trucks is like show cars. You know, trucks were invented to get rock chips. Is like, the purpose of a truck is to work. You're not gonna work. It's like calluses on your hand.

Just not yet. Okay. I want to enjoy this investment of astronomical amount of money you've been saving up to get. I got it with five miles, so I'm, like, really scared. It's like a precious little baby. Just got to take care of it for a little bit.

I. I worry about a guy who has a truck where there's no scratches on it and the. You know, they have, like some bedline. Like, everything's perfect. Like.

Yeah.

Anyway, so that. That was the situation. So he picks us up in a rental, and it's literally like snow. Snowing, cold, freezing snow everywhere. Black ice. And we're. We're. So we have to go from Indianapolis to Fort Wayne. And. Yeah, you were driving like Ricky Bobby. It was nuts. And a couple times I'm like, you got to slow down. We're going to die. Like, I was just thinking, like, yep, this is where it ends in Indianapolis, Indiana, in between. Yeah.

There's nothing used to it by, like, in la, just people cutting you off. At least we had some room in order to.

Nobody ever gets going 90 miles an hour in LA.

Well, then it's an experience, Chris. I was just trying to show you how we do it in the Midwest.

Yeah. So that. That was. That was my life flashing in front of my eyes. And then the other thing was I had to fly American Airlines, which I hate, absolutely hate. But it was the only direct flight. And it's like, okay, do you take Delta and layover somewhere and go. It's longer, right? Because you're going to have to fly to Dallas or somewhere and then go up. So I did American Airlines. Absolutely chaos. I don't understand how American Airlines is as busy as they are. It's rare. I fly American and it's not delayed. They. They just. The people running American Airlines just do not understand. Well, they just. They don't have common sense. Like, for example, the. Before the plane's taking off, I hear this lady ask the stewardess, how do I get on the WI Fi? And she goes, oh, you have to have an American Airlines advantage number. And I'm like, oh, you know, I don't book my travel. I don't know what that is, how am I going to find my advantage number? So I'm trying to find it, I'm trying to log in. Meanwhile the plane takes off and we're up in the air. So you go, like I was trying to do with my email that I thought was the advantage number and it says that my password's wrong, I don't know my password, so I'm trying to reset my password. And then it says you were, we're sending you an email. But I can't get my email because I'm not on WI fi. And so then I feel like I'm Back to Like Windows 95 all of a sudden, where the steward, I'm asking the steward, it's like, what do I do? Because I can't check email without WI fi and I can't get on WI fi without your stupid American Advantage number. And she didn't, you know, she didn't know what to do. And so then, you know, you're what, on a flight for five hours without WI fi, which is impossible. They, they messed up my, they have you order your food before the flight. They didn't have my order on one of the flights. And the lady could have cared less. The, you go to the gate, nobody's there and the, they change your gate like three times. And you know, thankfully the airport in India is kind of smaller, but they change the gate a couple times. It's just, they're just a mess. I don't know. Well, you do you like them, Adam? You like American Airlines?

I, I, I tried, I tried them. I tried to go full committed. I'm, I'm a United guy and I went to American because of the, the flights out to la and I, I fully committed to never flying American ever again. For even not to be the guy that one ups. But not that long ago with all the winter storms and everything. Not only in the what, their headquarters is in Dallas. So you would assume that they'd at least be a hub and have their stuff straight. Nope, that was chaotic. And then we're going out to Midland. So then there was a mechanical failure in the air and they diverted to what, Lubbock. After they said they were going to go somewhere else. So we got into Lubbock. We're the only people at 7:30 o' clock at night. This is right after all those snow, ice, storm stuff. So I guess thankfully we made it somewhere. But then I just rented a vehicle and drove two hours south at 10:30 at night to our destination in Midland. But I started at 4:30 in the morning. So, like, it's nuts. American figure it out and they don't care. So at least they do not.

They do not care. Like, they're almost like the employees for, for their company have something that they call in psychology, which is learned helplessness. They've just given up. They don't hear it. They're like, yeah, you're going to yell at me. And, you know, not that I yelled at anybody because it wouldn't do any good anyways, but it. Yeah, they are. They are drones, basically. They're not humans in. In their empathy. They have no empathy. It's crazy.

Nope, not at all.

And so they're. They're hubbed out of Dallas. So I love America, but I hate the Dallas Cowboys, which is America's team, supposedly, and American Airlines, but I love America.

And then you. I, I seem to always get the person next to me that is still wearing a mask no matter what.

Yeah.

Hanging around, always the mask. Always.

Yeah. Why are people still wearing masks, dude?

I don't get it everywhere. And it's just like, all right, well, you know, that's cool if you want to keep breathing in your own, you know, carbon dioxide. That's awesome.

Yeah. I sat next to a lady out there that was wearing a mask. I thought it was so funny.

You still see a few of them funny.

Yeah, they just probably smell their own bad breath or something, you know. It's okay.

Adam, I think you took the brunt of the American Airlines trauma. I think our perception of your driving was because Chris and I both flew American and I, I had a first with American last week also where we had to sit. We, we. We were late and, and then we finally pull away and we're sitting on the tarmac forever, and finally the captain comes on and he's like, hey, they over fueled us and so we have to burn off. We have to burn off another like 2,000 pounds of fuel or something like that. So we literally just sat on the tarmac, like, idled up, burning all fuel. Did.

Did the pilot, like, juice the throttle?

Yeah, like, I mean, you can only do it so much on a jet without it moving, you know, so like, come on. It was not. It was nuts. So we're just sitting there and I'm like, we're, we're literally like. I mean, it's amateur hour there. It almost makes me afraid to fly them just because, like, everything is amateur hour, from the ground crew to the ticket agents to the, like, all of it. It's just. Yeah, it's Nuts. And then on top of that, like, I was joking with Adam because all of my American pilots lately are all trying to grow a mustache. And it's. Yeah, I just. I miss the days of the. The like full broom mustache, like, middle. Like, I just like my pilots, you know, a little, you know. Yeah.

A little Boogie Nights.

Yeah, yeah. Like, think slowly. Like, I want my guy to be able to land it on the river if we need to. And like, these kids are, you know.

A little gray hair. I like a little gray hair.

Yeah, yeah.

They are a mess. I don't understand how all the flights are so full too. Like, every one of them is full.

The.

Also the way they order airplanes, like a regular suit, regular carry on, doesn't seem to fit in half of their airplanes. And so, like, literally, like, half of the people have to get off and check their bag. It. It's just such a mess. How much do you think? Is it a thousand or two thousand gallons of fuel cost that you. That they burned off?

Imagine. I can't imagine.

Okay. They're just gonna pass it on the consumer. And it's another thing though, too, when with all.

It's so expensive, they just make the.

The amount of flights get lower, they raise the cost, so they just pass it on. So your flights are. Are more booked or they're fuller just because they have less flights. I mean, it's. It's crazy, but it's kind of genius on their part because we still keep to follow just like in a cattle call line. Right. Just keep going. You gotta fly somehow.

I don't know.

That's why I drove to Indianapolis. So you guys are the suckers on this trip.

No, it's smart. I. I usually try to drive if I can. If it's a. If it's a couple hours difference, I'm driving every time. It's good. Well, it was super fun. We had a good time. Like, the. The meat sticks were good. Once you. Once you got the condom off of them.

The casing. The casing, clarify the casing.

That was. That was the best. The best jerky I've ever had. But that deer jerky, man, it was so good. So really good. I loved it.

It's a good spice to the end.

Yeah.

His little kick.

Yeah, yeah. Everyone too like that. I've had a bunch of beef jerky, and it seems like, I don't know, like the. The deer jerky was so lean and sliced so thin.

I don't know how you get it that thin. No. Every once in a while, when I call Adam. I'm like, hey, what are you doing? He's like, hello. I made a deer blind waiting for some poor, poor little deer to come.

Don't give away my secrets.

How many days a year do you think you. You hunt?

Well, yeah, it's definitely becoming more so. We have two seasons, so I'd say probably I'm trying to get more like 15 to 20. That's the goal. 15 to 20. The season's actually pretty long, depending if you do shotgun in Illinois or it's archery.

How many tag. How many tags do you get a year?

Two of each. Like, so two for bow and then so four. Yeah, you can, man.

Either.

It's like he goes, either sex or male or a buck for Illinois, at least. So it's a lot of waiting around. But it's all. It's all regulated. It's just like anything else. A state just wants to get a piece of their. Piece of their money. There's enough deer around. Well, you saw on our. On our road yesterday, we had, what, two or three deer that were just on the side of the road? And then we're like, I'm the guy yelling at you guys, hey, look. Look at the deer out there. You're like, where? There's like a herd of them over there. As Hoagie's telling me, hey, look at my backyard. I've got a herd over here. But you're pretty large. Yeah, that's fun. But what we were talking about, even if you're not a hunter, just getting up and seeing everything in the morning, right? Just kind of. Oh, yeah, Everything just starting the day. I. I'll tell you what, though. In a couple months here. Yeah, three. Three months or so, we're gonna be having, what, deer season or turkey. Turkey's way better. But, yeah, it's fun.

In a couple months here, we'll be putting the boats in the water.

It's hard to think of it like that when we still got, like, almost a foot of snow on the ground and.

No, it's 80. It's 86 here. It's 86 here. Today. I was showing Hoagie the boat I want. That's nice, but I probably have to wait another year for that. I don't think my. My parents could handle it, but we'll see. It's good. Okay, so what we're going to talk about today is net promoter score. This is coming up a lot, and we're getting a lot of questions about it. I think Adam knows somebody who is an expert on this, we're going to invite them to come on the show and talk about it. But we thought today we would just kind of lay out what we understand of it so far and then this will be an ongoing conversation. But it is something that, you know, the manufacturers are going to. And it, it is a subject that is constantly brought up. I would say the first thing is whenever something new comes in or the way things are measured change. I am of the opinion, and this is a mindset thing, I'm of the opinion that you should know more about it than everybody else. Like when, you know, CSI came out, we knew more about it than anybody else and knew how to, you know, maximize the opportunity that was there. When manufacturers started going to a retention number, we figured out how that retention was calculated. And, and I will say this, like, in these situations, you want to know more than everybody else, so you can, you know, not, not be a conspiracy theorist and like, be chasing the wrong thing and, and have a situation where it's inconsistent. But the other thing is, is so you, you're not mousing the system. Like, the worst thing you can do. And I, I've seen this with CSI and with different stuff is people that I respect and I would have never thought end up cheating, trying to cheat the system somehow. And I know, you know, you could, you could justify anything in your mind if you want. You could say, oh, well, the manufacturers are always changing and they don't know what they're. So that's why he cheated. But that's not the right way to do it. We should never be cheating. We should, we should try to understand what's going on and then we should adapt and play the game the best that we can and just understanding that, you know, life is a game inside of a set of rules. And once you understand the rules, then you can, you can play the game. Like, for example, with retention, years ago with Nissan, we would go pick up customers, cars so we could open a repair order on those cars and achieve our retention. So we would drive 30 miles to pick up a car if that's what we needed to do, because we understood how many we needed to achieve the number that we wanted to achieve, because we knew the math, and we knew the math better than anybody else. Now, I would see other people trying to cheat and do weird stuff, and they still wouldn't get the number that they needed or achieve consistency because they didn't really understand how it was calculated or what the spirit of the, you know, measurement was in a sense. Right. So we want to do it right. We want to do it the right way and we want to know more than anybody else. Now, that being said, every manufacturer is going to be doing this a little bit different. So you have to, you have to know the nuances of the, of the manufacturer. But net Promoter Score, the way that I understand it, and gentlemen, please, please jump in, is different than CSI in that we are trying to achieve a higher level of influence. And what the manufacturers are kind of trying to align the measurement with is community and more of a global measurement than an individual measurement. Example being CSI is measured very much about your experience. Were you greeted, was your car clean, were you happy or satisfied with the experience? That's very much just you one on one with the dealership. Net Promoter score is saying, would you recommend, would you recommend the dealership or the brand to your friends, your family, your community, your church? Right? It's. They're trying to achieve a higher level of influence through, through this measurement. And so they're, they're going up in what they're expecting or what they're wanting to achieve, but they're kind of coming down in what is an acceptable number. Although I will point out that that happened with CSI in the beginning. And then they inch it up, right? So as the service departments or dealerships figure out what it is, they start to inch up the number quarterly or yearly as we go. Adam, do you think I explained that right?

Yeah, I think that's pretty good in, in a nutshell, and we can get a little bit deeper in, in some future discussions. But I'd say, like, what I appreciate more manufacturers going to the NPS is that it's all about data quality coming in. Right. And getting that. But also they're trying to look at the customers in mind where they do not over survey or get that survey fatigue. So with going to some of these folks going into this nps, I mean, there's nothing more than I like just filling out surveys or getting hit even from Ford on my new truck with surveys, right? Like, I got it, I got it. But like, that's where I think in mind when folks go to the NPS or certain, whether it's an OEM or anybody for that matter, it's really trying to get that to that upper tier. Like how well would you recommend the overall experience? Which that's in my opinion is the true customer experience. But when you start saying like the overall arching and in that community and you know, kind of piece, I just think that it resonates a little bit more than the individual, it's more socialism.

They're commies. They're trying to turn customer satisfaction measurements into communism.

Sure.

Why, why not just give a good rating? Like when I'm looking at promoter scores, in some cases it's like a, a nine to a ten. Well, am I a nine or am I ten? And then you get the middle piece where you're kind of like in those that passive. The way I understand it, that's seven, eight. Well, am I seven? Am I a nine? And then like you know, six and below. I'm just going to detractors and focus on, on that. What if I wanted another slice in there? So it's kind of like, I don't know, I'd be curious to see, you know, getting somebody on here to explain it to us a little bit better to be experts in this. But are we, are we making it, is it watered down?

Yeah, I don't know. I, I, I agree with your point wholeheartedly about, it's just a simple, you know, how likely are you to recommend this service department or, or just mps on a broader scale? Right? Like it's, a lot of people, a lot of businesses are adopting this even outside of, even outside of car and truck and transportation. And, but yeah, that is the gist of it. And, and it'll be fun diving in more to the scoring system. But that's exactly right. A 9 and 10 are promoters. 7 and eights are passive and 0 through 6 are detractors. So you have somebody that's a promoter of your brand. They, you know, they scored you a 9 or a 10 when, when asked that question of how likely they are to recommend, you know, your service department, your whatever. And then the seven and eights are passive. They just don't count. They're just kind of, it's a zero. And then detractors all kind of count the same. So your scores on NPS range from, you know, negative 100 to positive 100. And so the scoring of it can be, you know, a little bit, a little bit difficult, but it is, it's focused on the whole. And that piece of it, I don't know if I agree with as much. I still think the individual, you know, in our case, the individual service advisor, we need to be able to go pull individual scores for each one. But yeah, I don't know, it's, it's interesting. It is simple. That's, that's one thing I like about it. Like there's some of the manufacturer surveys right now where like 70 something percent of them don't finish the survey. Because you, when you open a book, you're like, okay, well I told this guy I was going to fill out my survey, but you know, I changed my mind 23 questions ago.

Yeah, survey fatigue. Because like you just, you, they get tired of it. Like I, I'm a product of it myself. Like, I want to be able to provide some feedback, but if I have to do more than like five clicks within a survey, I'm done. I don't have that kind of time. I don't, that's, I don't, I, I, you gotta think about the, the, the customer in, in that sense. Right. So this could be a better way. Maybe there's a combination of leveraging both depending on the situation, but it's definitely something that's, that's growing out there.

Yeah. And I don't think we, we think about this stuff enough from, from our perspective in the service drive or in parts, in, in the sense that brand loyalty is probably the most valuable thing a manufacturer could have, but it's also the thing that has been eroded the most. And you know, people don't, they don't attach their identity to a brand or a car anymore, like, like we used to. And then that means that there isn't loyalty. And when there isn't loyalty, then it just becomes about price. Right. And so what you want from, from a brand point of view is you want people to attach the brand to their identity like it represents who they are as a person. And you know, one, one thing that is always kind of bugged me when you talk about this high level of psychology and how valuable that is to a brand, like it's very valuable, you know, the most valuable thing that there is. Because if people attach it to their identity, not only are they going to do what the net promoter score is trying to measure is they're going to enlist other people into your brand. Right. They're going to invite other people into that in a sense, like ecosystem. Well, it's a cult. Yeah. Right. And so when we, when we look at it from the service point of view is like if a customer comes into service and they feel ignored, they feel like they didn't like the transaction, which is most of the experiences that happen on a daily basis across the country. You know, the, the thing that happens is you, you don't want to attach your identity to something that makes you feel alone and not wanted. I mean, just think about that for a second. If you are in a situation where you feel unwelcome or that you're not important or irrelevant. You, you're not going to attach that to, to your identity. And so that's where, you know, we could really, as an industry create better retention for the brands, but also create better experiences for the customers. Because the customers are happier when they can talk about something that they're excited about. Like any of us, right? Like when there's something we're excited about, there's nothing better or more fulfilling than sharing that thing with somebody you care about. Right? And I mean, just, just for example, Adam talking about his new truck, like he gets excited, like he's getting chemicals are going to his brain and it, it's, you know, akin to a fun experience. Dopamine. Like he's getting all this stuff that is connected to fulfillment, to belonging and to the, the thing that makes us human, you know, and we lose that on the service side so much for brands. It's such a mess. Like, that's one thing that Tesla got right in a sense is they made that part so easy that you never had the chance to disconnect from the identity of. Early on, you were buying a Tesla because you cared about the environment, which was very culty. Like you, you felt, and I'm not saying me because I wasn't an early adopter of a Tesla, but you, the people who felt like they were doing something for the environment, attach that to their identity to the point that they felt superior to other people. And when, you know, they were in a group of people that had Teslas, it was, it was a community. They all felt like they were superior and they were doing something. Now you could look down on that and say, well, they're not superior. That's irrelevant to what we're talking about. We're talking about brand loyalty. And if your customers feel superior because of your brand, oh, you've won, like, yeah, you, you've won the brand game in that way. And so now if we just go through, like, think about how loyal Porsche customers are and how much Porsche is struggling, they're doing a poor job of executing this, this side of it, right? Think about Mini Cooper had that, Harley Davidson had that and they shot a hole right through the middle of it with, with the, you know, the things that they've, they've done as a corporate company that didn't align with their, the identity of the people that were die hard Harley customers. But, you know, BMW is the same, right? Mercedes, like the brand loyalty is eroding and I mean, just think about things that happen in our lives Right. That make us identify with a brand. So say there's a specific artist that I like and I buy a painting from that artist. What starts to happen after that is I start getting invited to openings of that artist. Then I'm in a room with a bunch of other people that like that artist. Maybe I'm in the room with the artist and then I make friends with those people and then they turn me on to another artist. All of that is feeding belonging and it's feeding my interest, the things that I care about. If you own a pickup truck, and Adam wouldn't be the example here, but let's say you got a guy who owns a pickup truck that actually does work with the pickup truck and then you invite those customers to some sort of an event about tools and you know, building or whatever it is that, that they're doing. I mean, it would be different in Midland, Texas than it would be here in California because it might be more about the oil fields or whatever out there. But whatever it is they're interested in, if you invited them to an event and they were around other people in their pickup trucks, they, they would attach that to their identity and they would start to feel belonging. They would start to feel like, oh, this thing is a part of me. It represents me and their, that it's going to be really hard to get them to go and join, you know, another cult and get them to buy a Chevy in that way. I mean, we had that conversation on the drive. I was asking Adam about if, you know, what he thought of the Chevy and he like went through a story about how his father in law or somebody had a Chevy and he liked it and he thought it was good, but he still bought a Ford because his identity is the Ford. And that thing is very powerful. And we don't, we don't think about that enough from, from the service driver, even from the dealership. Like we think, oh, we're a department inside of a business. Well, to consumers it's one thing, it's one experience. And if they have a great experience in sales and then they feel ignored in service, it's all the same thing to them.

Same thing. Yep.

It's, it's not different. And so the net promoter score is, is trying to touch on that and we should try to understand that and we should try to align the, the events that we do. The, the way that our drives are set up, the way our waiting rooms are set up. Like we do all of that so wrong. It, it, it. None of it is designed around the identity of the person that we're trying to attract in loyalty. And it's. It's designed around, oh, we have to have a waiting room, and we let some architect that doesn't know anything about our business design it. And, you know, I mean, when I design a dealership, I'm putting a coffee shop past the showroom because I want service customers to walk through the new cars. I'm not putting one big TV with ESPN on it, you know, with one person controlling the remote. I'm having individual experiences with a really good cup of coffee. Like, all of those things make people feel important, important and like, they matter. But most of the time, that's the stuff that's an afterthought. And it really doesn't cost that much more money to do it the right way. It's the. It's the same thing. In fact, sometimes it can be cheaper. It's just designing around an experience and emotions and. And, you know, endearing those customers to our brand in a way that's meaningful, not in a way that's passive and disposable.

Yeah. And I think, you know, thinking about that, we're. You're. You're speaking to some of the leadership. You're speaking to operators and managers that get to make some of those decisions. And feedback I get a lot from advisors is, hey, you know, I listen to you guys, and I. I agree with a lot of those things, and that our leadership isn't, you know, taking that stance or taking that approach to it. And, you know, what am I supposed to do if. If, you know, I can't control. I can't control that thing. And so I think it's an important conversation to have for each individual advisor, how they view these concepts you're talking about. And one thing I. That always kind of helped me wrap my head around this concept of I'm selling something bigger than myself. Right. If I want to be able to get people to answer something like NPS and say yes, I would recommend, you know, going here wholeheartedly. How, you know, how do I do that? And I think any of us in the car business, I was attack. And so I might get more of these phone calls than other people, but I know I've been with Chris and Adam at different times where somebody's calling them. When. When you're the car person in your family, you get phone calls. You get, like, you know, I got. I have cousins that I didn't know were cousins until they needed help with the car situation. And. And the thing is, is most people don't have a car person in the family. The vast majority of the American public doesn't have that. And what your customer wants from you is for you to be that for them. Right? Like they want their car person in the industry. And so, like, if your goal is to be their person when they come in. We just had it a couple weeks ago where I had a pretty good customer that I have a great relationship with. And I know he wouldn't mind me telling him this story or telling the story, but he, he's like, hey, this other, this other store over here, that's in, in the comp, which, our top dog competition, if you don't know people that are on our coaching program, we have a top competition we call Top Dog Underground, where different stores of like, brands and, and size compete. And one of the things we have in our comp is how many perfect surveys that you have. And, and he didn't believe the amount of person perfect surveys that this other store was getting. And so, you know, part of keeping the integrity of our comp is you can audit someone else's numbers at any time. And so we got the numbers and we sent them over. But when I sent them back over, I said, hey, what I want you to do is I want you to call and ask for this top advisor and I want you to tell him you need help pairing a phone. And so he calls and the guy sends him a YouTube video of how to pair the phone and says, I want you to text me in two or three minutes if you don't have it figured out and I'll jump on with you and we'll figure it out. And, and so anyway, like, it was a great experience. The guy was really nice. The guy was petting the dog over the phone, like, you know, all these different things. And then I asked him, I was like, okay, what's going to happen when we call your advisors? You know, and it was just kind of crickets. And so how, how you're responding to the people that are coming into your business every day for whatever it is, whether it's how to pair their phone, connect their carplay, like whatever it is, it's how you view, you know, how you view those situations. That's what get people to respond to, to, to these. And, and for that reason, I really like it. I feel it's a better indicator than a lot of other survey systems we've had over the years.

Right, Yeah, I, I, I agree with that. I think it's, it's closer to where we need to go, it's, we need to hold ourselves to a higher standard. And I, I also think, you know, just really unpacking this, the, the frustration for the manufacturers, right is like when franchises were sold originally from manufacturers. So if you bought a Ford franchise, the idea was that you lived in that community, that you were in the service drive, that you were involved in that business. There is such a disconnection now between the public companies that own dealerships, the basically investors that own dealership. Is very rare that somebody owns a dealership and they're involved in the dealership like that the ownership is involved in what's happening in the customer experience. They're so detached from it. The only time they get involved is if they're getting sued or you know, they're, they're losing their franchise because of CSI or what, whatever it is. But that creates a problem for the manufacturers because they have no consistency because people are running dealerships as an investment, not as an experience or a part of the community. Empathy for the people that are, that you're doing business with. And that's the, you know, that's where we're headed, is that that has something about, that has to change. You can't survive in, in such a competitive market if you don't have the customer experience part of it. And the, you know, the business savvy at a local level there, you know, the advertising doesn't work right. Like think about how local dealerships used to advertise, doesn't exist anymore, doesn't work in any way. The manufacturers are, are advertising but the local, you know, advertising dags or whatever they, they are are very ineffective also. Like so much money is spent on that and it isn't moving the needle. And what it's missing is the psychology of identity. Attaching something and meeting people where they are and having a real relationship. And you know, the products now that people buy need to make them feel like they belong and they're important or there's not going to be any loyalty. And, and so like also I would just say like Tesla is proof of this and they might have messed it up more recent because now people are anti Tesla because of Elon's political views or there's a group of people that are. But there, there is a model there that's proven that when you go direct to consumer and you can control that experience, you can grow really fast. You can grow really fast and have really high margins and the margins are shrinking. The, you know, the pension liability for these manufacturers is going up and they're, you know, they're. They're swinging and missing constantly over and over again. The products aren't that exciting. Right?

And so services that differentiate, for sure.

Making the connection and just the, The. My. My final thought and the. The thing I will leave us on with this is like, the consumer has changed. The way people buy has changed. The, The. The way people use vehicles or transportation has changed, but for the most part, what hasn't changed is the way we run a service department. And we're so focused and caught up in this, you know, almost hypnotic automatic pilot of the way we do things that we've. We've really lost touch of where the consumer is and where we need to go if we want to be successful in the future. You know, we're barely holding on right now, and I don't think. I don't think we realize that to the degree that it really is happening. Like, you know, we can put tariffs on Chinese cars, but we should also pay attention to the fact that if those Chinese cars were coming in here, it would put a couple American brands out of business. And we. We should be doing. We should be the ones that are, you know, not in a. In a position of blocking. We should be in a position of being ahead. You know, and, and like, I understand that the, The Chinese government is subsidizing those cars. I get that. But our government can subsidize cars, too. There's things that we could do to create that advantage. Because the, The. The thing that the Chinese are doing there better than us is, is not the technology. It's not the talent, it's the execution they're executing at a higher level than we are, because we're stuck in how we, you know, the nostalgia of how we wish it was back in. Back in the day. Like, how many times you hear that back in the day? It's like, yeah, I'm pretty sure that this is the best time to be alive. There's. I'm not. I don't want to go back. I don't want to go back in the day where Reynolds and Reynolds crashed and I had to do handwrites. That's not. That's not nostalgic to me. I think that the. The tools in. In what's available to us and the opportunity has never been better than what it is today. But we're. We're. We're leaving ourselves vulnerable by not evolving to where the customer wants us to be. It's that old Wayne Gretzky quote where he says, I skate to where the puck is gonna be. Right? And that's the thing that I think we're missing. And, you know, net promoter score is. Is. Is a step in that direction, but we should really try to understand it. And from the local level, we should. We should be focused on a customer experience that makes our customers feel like they're a part of something special. They attach it to their identity, and it's something they want to tell their friends about, which is a high bar. It. You know, it would require a change in process, a change in mindset, a change in what we invest in training, the, you know, the honesty that we would have to have with each other in order to constantly involve and improve all of that. So it's good. What is it time for dinner? Did somebody ring a bell? Like, I'm a bulldog. I'm a bulldog. When a bell rings, I'm like. I start drooling, and I'm. I'm ready to go. What was that?

It was my. My. My cup.

It's nice. I like it.

Does that mean we're done or what's it. Is this new.

We're done Taking notes, and I just kind of hit it. Yeah.

But let's. Let's try to get somebody on Adam to. To talk about this more, and I think this is a conversation we should be having for our friends out there. It's good. Well, thanks, everybody, and we'll see you next time on Service Drive Revolution. Thanks so much for watching this episode of Service Drive Revolution. We're uploading new stuff every day, so make sure you subscribe and click the bell icon so you don't miss out. If you have a question you'd like us to answer on the show, call 8333 Ask SDR and we'll answer your question on the show. That's 8333 Ask SDR. For special deals on our books and training, head over to offers.chriscollinsinc.com now, that's offers chriscollinsinc. Com. I'm Chris Collins, and I'll see you in the next video.