What is FCA Thinking?

[Steve Stauning]

Perhaps this is an oversight by the dealer I'm working with, but we received the voicemail below during a recent mystery shop.

The voicemail was the first call received to a new lead submitted on the dealer's FCA-approved Dealer.com site. It came in one minute before the dealer's BDC called and this call provided a different phone number (a toll-free number, which I removed, since it dials back to the dealership) and the agent on this call mispronounces the dealership's name twice (which I removed, as well).

The dealer's BDC Manager and the GM said they had no idea these calls were being made on their behalf to their customers.

While I'm not against using an outsourced BDC to make calls, these must be pre-approved by the dealership, be part of a well-defined process, and should be completed by a native speaker of the language.

 

[john.quinn]

OEM's are good at making; they should make.
Dealers are good at selling; they should sell.

 

[ryan.leslie]

OEM's are good at making; they should make.
Dealers are good at selling; they should sell.

...that'll NEVER work.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

This is crazy. I wonder if this is an option the dealer was able to opt-out of and overlooked it?

 

[Rick Buffkin]

The longer that I'm in this business, the more that I completely and utterly despise some of these manufactures and their freaking programs!!!! With some of the programs, the leads are routed to FCA first and they will attempt to contact the customer and then FCA routes the lead to the dealers CRM.

 

[Steve Stauning]

This is crazy. I wonder if this is an option the dealer was able to opt-out of and overlooked it?

That was my guess. Of course, this should be an opt-in effort, not an opt-out. (IMHO)

 

[Alex Snyder]

OEM's are good at making; they should make.
Dealers are good at selling; they should sell.

One of the most eye-opening insights I got from working at OEM-program-central (AKA Dealer.com) was how few manufacturers actually cared about what was best for retail. The number one priority was always branding protection because they were so concerned about how the dealers trash the OEM branding. In reality, this is such a small issue that it was brain-damaging trying to get past it toward a productive conversation. Retail.... or just selling cars came up in these meetings enough times for me to count on one hand.

I always wanted to talk about making sure cars were displayed properly and that incentives data was timely. OEM reps were more interested in how many slides could be on a homepage along with how prominently the OEM logo would show. This is the kind of crap that made me

Is it any surprise that FCA would be this dumb? In my opinion, the OEM should consider car dealers like Sony, Samsung, and Apple think of Best Buy stores and adopt a "guidelined" approach to online and in-store merchandising. Trying to be Best Buy has, is, and will always be the wrong approach for everyone who is not named Steve Jobs.

 

[Alexander Lau]

The Dunning-Kruger Effect Shows Why Some People Think They're Great Even When Their Work Is Terrible
https://www.forbes.com/sites/markmu...theyre-great-even-when-their-work-is-terrible

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect
In the field of psychology, the Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people of low ability have illusory superiority and mistakenly assess their cognitive ability as greater than it is. The cognitive bias of illusory superiority comes from the metacognitive inability of low-ability people to recognize their lack of ability; without the self-awareness of metacognition, low-ability people cannot objectively evaluate their actual competence or incompetence.

 

[joe.pistell]

I agree with Alex L., OEM's see how consumers hate the dealer's buying process and conclude they can do it better. They despise dealers and want to sell direct (and keep the profits themselves). From an OEM POV, Dealers exist due to laws that keep them there... nothing else.