VANCOUVER -

Destination Auto Group, a family-owned Vancouver-based retailer of new and pre-owned vehicles, says it finds the perfect customer service balance by taking both an artistic and scientific approach to serving customers.

Adil Ahamed, marketing and business development manager at Destination Auto Group, says the dealership’s approach to customer service is as much an art as it is a science.

The dealership group — which serves North Vancouver, Vancouver and Burnaby — first opened its doors in 1983 with Jubilee Plymouth Chrysler, known today as Destination Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram on the North Shore in North Vancouver.

The dealership acquired University Toyota in 1991 (Lougheed Highway, Burnaby) and Kingsway Honda (Kingsway, Vancouver) in 1992 from the Docksteader auto family.

In 2004, the stores were rebranded as the Destination Auto Group, and the company added several dealerships, including a new Hyundai dealership (Kingsway, Vancouver) in 2009, and a Mazda dealership (Boundary Road, Vancouver) in 2011.

The group also acquired Happy Honda in Burnaby in 2013.

Combining the Art & Science of Customer Service

What has led to such significant growth in such a short amount of time? Well, let’s talk a bit about the group’s art and science customer service approach.

“The artistic side is driven by our recruitment, training and staff mentorship; we aim to instil understanding and empathy for our clients' sales and service needs. Only upon achieving this level of connection can we play a value-added business role and build a meaningful trust relationship,” said Ahamed.

The dealership group explained that the “scientific side” lies in a meticulous focus on improving processes, procedures and systems.

This  focus, Ahamed said, “drives us to pursue several objectives: provide customers with ample and relevant information at the right time, minimize wait time at every stage of the customer experience, and seek ways to make ourselves more efficient, more effective, and more responsive.”

The dealership explained that it views every customer's choice to come to one of its dealerships as an opportunity to build and maintain trust.

An example of how this philosophy works: one of the group’s senior sales managers has served the same family of customers for more than three generations.

Not only is this a testament to customer retention, but also how long employees stick around at the company.

Ahamed said many of the Destination Auto Group staff has been with the company for more than 15 years.

To Destination Auto Group, staff training and appreciation are critical.  

And this requires the dealership group to go above and beyond what manufacturers require, Ahamed said.  

“We recognized that a tremendous amount of organization, patience and management buy-in are required. After establishing training capacity, we conducted a gap analysis to determine where we could improve,” Ahamed said.

“While manufacturers do a great job of providing staff with technical training, we believe this is the status quo — to be a leading auto group, a much more comprehensive approach is required.”

The company also shared that it realizes a lot of knowledge gets lost over time, “and as a result, habits get formed and become very hard to change when a new technology or way of doing business emerges,” he added.

“With more attention to training, we can be more nimble and encourage open-mindedness, which helps us be more effective,” Ahamed said.

Lastly, the dealership group works to “harmonize among all staff our company’s core values, principles and basic understanding of what we do and why.”

The company’s new hire orientation program addresses this need.

“As a company we don’t just have a responsibility, but an obligation to promote the development of our staff, and raise the bar for professionalism and customer service in the auto industry,” Ahamed said when asked why staff training is so important to dealership success.

Bringing Customers Back

Destination Auto Group sells between 15 and 30 used cars per month per dealership. And that’s not an easy feat when faced with the tight used inventory situation in Canada that dealers have faced since the economic downturn in 2007 and the leasing drop-off.

When asked where the dealership finds the best quality pre-owned inventory, on top of auction sales, Ahamed said the stores utilize customer database mining from its service/sales database.

And since the company also owns a Toyota certified body shop in Burnaby, these databases prove very useful to sales managers across the dealership group.

Commenting on its strategy to create repeat and trade-in customers, Ahamed said, “It all comes back to our principles. Every customer that buys a car from us, or trades-in, becomes a part of the Destination family. Before a customer drives off the lot, we take great care to inform them of the importance of servicing their vehicle to the manufacturer-recommended programs.

“We also offer a great Rewards program which provides real cash credit towards future vehicle service and sales,” Ahamed added.

The Rewards program is easily accessible online, the company said, and is designed to be “simple and transparent” and “enables customers to know exactly at any time how much value we create for them through the business they bring to us.”

Lastly, the dealership group has started a monthly newsletter which it has piloted in two of its dealerships and will be expanded to all stores.

Ahamed said this works to “further give our existing customers special deals and opportunities on sales and service offerings to show how much we appreciate their continued patronage.”

What department does Destination Auto Group employ to connect with customers in an effort to create repeat customers?

“If marketing is the brain behind our efforts, our Business Development Center is the heart that keeps us personally connected with customers,” Ahamed said. “BDC has the responsibility of reaching out to customers and sharing information on new product and service deals and opportunities, as well as building relationships to boost referrals and generate new business.”

‘Not All Tools Are Right for Every Dealership’

The company also recently underwent a shift in its digital marketing strategy — one that is definitely paying off.  

“There is no doubt that digital media tools such as social media, website optimization, SEO and SEM have a valuable role to play in helping to establish customer relationships, but not all tools are right for every dealership,” Ahamed said.

After using a “shotgun strategy” and adding all the new, popular, digital and social media marketing gigs, Ahamed said, “Within a few months, we had a complicated web of vendors with overlapping responsibilities, little control over messaging and quality of output, and growing costs without a way to measure ROI.”

In 2012, the dealership group took a step back and began looking at which tools really worked for its business.

“We assessed our needs based on our target demographics, products and services offered and the digital footprint we wanted to make, and our internal capacities,” Ahamed said. “We then studied every angle of digital media and the tools available, in order to arrive at which ones would fill the gaps in our marketing/advertising presence.”

By contracting the right partners, the dealership group explained it has not only saved costs, but also boosted its online presence, established itself as regular and value-added contributors to social media, and advanced on the relevancy and speed of information delivery to its customers.

In fact, over the last few months, the company’s overall lead traffic has increased by 300 percent.

For social media, in particular, the dealership has found that a simple, straight forward and earnest approach is what helps them best connect.

On Twitter and Facebook, they share industry and product news, as well as posts that are meant to invoke laughter through automotive humor and fun.

The dealership group has a blog, as well, touting informative posts that are written by its own staff, and a YouTube page of videos produced by the staff, as well.

It also utilizes LinkedIn, “which has been a great resource for reaching additional customers,” Ahamed said.

Editor’s Note: For more market intelligence on the Canadian remarketing environment, see the latest issue of Auto Remarketing Canada Digital Magazine.