Welcome back to Reputation Management! Here we reveal the underbelly of ordinary automotive retailers—places like car dealers and service shops—with fictional service tales inspired by real customer reviews. How do we make these stories seem like they could really happen? Because of my years of experience with a Fortune 500 automotive retailer as a—you guessed it—reputation manager. —Sajeev
Automotive journalists shouldn’t care about what happens in automotive retailing, because the “car business” is eye-wateringly boring for their intended audience. Perhaps it would be more interesting if the automakers owned their retail outlets. Based on the forays of some newer brands, car companies certainly aren’t avoiding the practice merely because there are franchise protection laws at the state level. I reckon that, up till recently at least, it’s mostly been because the car business is shockingly labor-intensive and terribly cost-prohibitive.
While a charming tech bro can drum up enough investment hype to finance the necessary retail infrastructure for a prestigious electric sedan, your average corporate accountant likely sees the benefit of closing the books after the car rolls off the assembly line. And while I don’t know who first said, “make it someone else’s problem,” they were clearly onto something. Other people’s problems were my life as a Reputation Manager for CarCountry, and there was one brand that had the stickiest and stinkiest problems for retailers: Nissan.
Nissan’s engineering prowess and high-performance history cannot be understated. But for reasons beyond the scope of this discussion, Nissan never made a serious competitor to the Honda Civic, Toyota Camry, or Ford F-150 for these United States. They’ve been retailing in America for over 50 years, but even Hyundai came out of nowhere (so to speak) and ate their lunch.
Reasons abound upon a hindsight-driven examination, but the controversial Stair Step incentive program of the 2010s was a bad move for the brand’s long-term prospects. The program operated like its name, incentivizing dealers to sell more vehicles through lower and lower prices in the hopes of getting all their money back (and more) with monthly bonuses at the top of the staircase. Half of Nissan’s dealer base allegedly hated it, as they were dumping cars at a loss in hopes of big rewards that never surfaced.
Selling cars on price isn’t nearly as fun as doing so on features and competitive attributes, which is why this journalist Reputation Manager was disappointed to hear that Nissan is bringing back the Stair Steps as of last February. Sometimes bad news is justified, and this might be the case. It brings about a sense of urgency, much like any request coming from my CarCountry brethren at our Nissan dealerships.
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Joe Bowers was a Hurricane Katrina refugee who made a good life for himself selling Toyotas in his adopted hometown of Houston. I first met him when he was a sales manager, and I admired his warm but blunt strategy of dealing with corporate suits like me. When he realized we were both on the same side, we became supportive of each other’s needs.
Being a hard-core Who Dat with a flair for the culinary arts, Joe cooked a mean pot of gumbo to share with every Toyota employee at his dealership, every Saturday. The guy knew how to treat people, so it was only natural that CarCountry promoted him to a General Manager role at a new Nissan dealership. Shortly after I heard the news, Joe emailed me for help. It involved setting up an online presence like I had previously done for a palatial collision center. Personally, I was excited to make a day trip to a place with both the new car and the new building smell.
Setting up an online presence for a business is easy, as tech companies make simple interfaces for mass adoption by small business owners and customers alike. All I needed to do was take photos, ensure correct data (like hours of operation), and upload everything to multiple places on the Internet. But there was one guy who stuck out like a sore thumb in my photography of this Nissan dealership. I asked Joe about him and he proudly said, “That’s our first customer! We transferred a Frontier from another CarCountry dealership just to ensure he’d stick around and be a guinea pig as we work through all the finance/back office procedures for the first time.”
Bless this man, because he spent several hours doing nothing while we were scrambling to get our act together. Joe pointed to a silver Frontier Crew Cab in Nissan’s signature delivery area. The gray walls and off-white floors were beautiful, and the wall had a message that all but ensured customers would pose with it for a social media post.
It heartwarmingly said, “Thank you for choosing Nissan. Now hit the road.”
I noticed stressed-out faces everywhere I walked in this Nissan dealership, which made the delivery room’s message strike a chord in my Reputation-focused soul. I grabbed a ladder from a back office in the (empty) service department, placed it near the Frontier, framed my intended photo, and then made my request:
“Get the customer behind the wheel, and put everyone around the Frontier for a photo!”
Not one to shy away from a good photo op, Joe’s eyes lit up as he grabbed everyone in the budding Nissan dealership for this photo. The customer planted his posterior in the seat, and I took one professional photo.
Then I hollered, “NOW PRETEND YOU ACTUALLY LOVE YOUR JOB!”
And in that moment, the Reputation Manager’s heart grew three sizes.
Looking back, I wonder how many of these people have moved on from Nissan, growing their careers elsewhere. Or possibly leaving the car business for good? Because, like a struggling car brand, a new dealership experiences so much turbulence that employees will learn valuable lessons through unintended consequences. I suspect something similar happens to customers, even those you’d least expect.
Reviews like this were not uncommon for Nissan dealers during the Stair Step incentive era. But it’s especially heinous when the customer mentions they were “double-teamed” by the sales/finance staff. That behavior was the first and only time I raised my voice at a retail worker, when my then-girlfriend was being bullied into purchasing GAP insurance. I told one guy to leave the office, and told the other to call my salesperson and tell him why you “pissed his friend off and cost him a sale.”
The transaction went smoothly after that, but I still left irritated. I suspect the customer in this Google review felt the same way. But I didn’t expect to have Joe call me after I emailed it to him:
“Sajeev, I’m heartbroken. Not only is Stair Stepping turning my balance sheet into a black hole, my staff is increasingly frustrated with the monthly goals I cram down their throats. They are making bad mistakes like this, and it’s my fault.
That customer found the same vehicle at a much larger dealership, and they are digging D-E-E-P into their holdback to ensure they can meet the monthly Stair Step goal. It’s not fair, and now we’ve lost our first and most loyal customer.”
“Wait, you mean the guy with the Frontier and that phot…”
“Brother, the one and the same. Please write whatever reply you want, I trust you. I just don’t care anymore.”
Stress makes people do dumb things. Often, they revert to bad habits that worked in the past. Double-teaming a customer is one such bad habit, and it’s about as corrosive to customer satisfaction as the Stair Step program was to pitting big dealers against small ones, all while tanking the brand’s equity.
Joe and I moved on from that experience, but the bond remains. He’s still a Who Dat doing right by people, just not with CarCountry. I’d like to think our last phone call built character for both of us, because we knew the car business would one day come for our souls. It certainly tried, but we overcame the odds.
The Reputation Manager will return…
