Auto Case Study | The AHA Group

Creating a Premier Ownership Experience in Auto

Client: One of the top twenty largest U.S. privately held automotive groups with 40+ stores across multiple U.S. states, representing 20+ automotive brands, and employing several thousand associates.

Customer loyalty, retention rates, and repeat buyer purchases were all on a slight, but compounding, three-year downward trend. While sales performance had initially held up very well, these factors were beginning to affect key performance indicators. The sales-driven and proactive CEO saw the need to reverse these nascent trends by creating a new bar for exceptional customer service and experience.

The leadership model was decentralized with regional VPs overseeing store-level GMs. The customer service varied widely across stores, service processes and principles were inconsistent, and there was little to no infrastructure around creating exceptional customer experiences. The result was no consistent brand-defining identity around either customer service or experience.

An audit of the organizational culture across all forty-plus locations found inconsistent associate alignment to the corporate mission/vision/values and a wide variance in the scope and quality of new associate onboarding and training.

Social media scores reflected this reality, and the group held a 2.7 / 5.0 score on Google reviews with over 80% of the comments left citing poor performance and missed expectations on service and/or experience.

Scenario / Goals

The CEO sponsored a company-wide overhaul of the customer service and experience model and the creation of a single framework and processes to be adopted throughout all forty-plus stores.
Sustainability and scalability were critical factors in the model, but also allowed the VPs and GMs to retain the ability to localize the work for geographic differences.
A dashboard of metrics was established to measure success. Key KPIs incudes sales conversion rate; customer retention rate; first-time referral sales; repeat buyer purchases; “intent to recommend” scores; Google review scores; CX scores; CSAT scores; EX scores; and voluntary associate churn.

“I knew we had room to improve our service and experience throughout our network, but I didn’t think we could see results like this. I have people asking if we have new leadership because the experience is night-and-day different. Our employees are making a huge difference every day to every customer that walks through our door. We aren’t playing follow-the-leader in automotive - we have the chance to be the one everyone else looks to!” – Client CEO

Project Structure / Deliverables:

Our project consisted of the following elements:

The creation of a set of Service Standards, Associate Behaviors, and Steps of Service to support a world-class ownership experience across all brands and markets while honoring the decentralized performance model.
The creation of two experience playbooks (one for sales and one for service) to create brand-defining experiences and empower individuals to create unique and memorable experiences for all owners.
Building two bespoke modular workshops to operationalize the playbook content and train all VPs, GMs, and corporate trainers on the content and delivery. GMs were responsible for championing the work within their stores.
Building out an implementation framework that would allow the workshops to be deployed through their corporate training programs - both in total and embedding into other content.
Building out a sustainment model, new employee on-boarding, 12-month new hire experience, and annual experience for tenured employees reflective of the same standards delivered to customers.

24 Months Select KPIs / Results:

Sales Conversion Rate increased by 15%
Customer Retention Rate improved by 28%
First-time Referral Sales increased by 115%
Repeater buyer purchases improved by 18% (and continues to trend upwards)
Owner “Intent to Recommend” increased by 21 base points
Google Reviews improved to 4.1 / 5 (from 2.7)
Client Experience (CX) Score improved by 41%
Employee Experience (EX) Score improved by 31%
Employee voluntary churn decreased by 35% (largest improvement in service team)