Lots of OEMs fail to provide useful technical support for their dealers. Recently, Carlise & Company started reporting results from their 2009 NASPC North American Automotive Service Manager Survey. Responses were received from over 9,000 dealer fixed operations managers representing 20 different brands. (Therefore, the survey seems to have statistical significance.) In a blog titled, “Decoding Satisfaction,” David Carlisle begins to highlight some findings that indicate a real problem for automotive dealers. He notes that, “’Technical Support’ is the one area of the survey that gets the lowest scores from all 20 participating brands—it is pretty close to the heart of a fixed operations manager.”

Carlisle uses the scores for Overall Service Satisfaction to break down the data and focuses on two categories of dealers, those that gave their OEM a rating of “highly satisfied” and “somewhat satisfied.” (He explains why those two categories in his blog.) To detect any trends, he then compares each score from the detailed questions to the Overall Service Satisfaction score. The resulting picture—using red, yellow and green color-coding—indicates that dealers are comfortable with the quality of OEM technical content, finding it easy to use and comprehensive. On the other hand, technical and parts support (online and phone) is an issue, across all brands.

I bring this up because many OEMs have been trying to improve dealer relations and dealer support. One approach, taken by many, is to improve technical content—manuals, catalogs, service bulletins, etc. The problem is that just as manufacturing a great car does not guarantee great sales, writing great content does not guarantee great customer/dealer support. Based on our experience, OEMs have been spending too much money creating wonderful technical content and not enough helping dealers make use of that content. A lot of critical information remains stand-alone, with no easy way to deliver and integrate it to dealer management and business systems. As a result, OEMs’ investment has not improved dealer throughput, or customer satisfaction and loyalty. It’s wasted money.

As if to prove the point, every time an OEM asks Enigma to speak with their dealers we hear the same two questions, ‘Will it help me find/order the right part faster?” and “Will it accelerate the diagnosis and repair?” Carlisle’s survey results prove that an OEM can produce the best technical content in the world but if it doesn’t help dealers improve their business it’s of little value.

The solution is to automate delivery of updated service/parts information and to easily integrate that content with existing parts inventory and service management systems. This is the type of system that has allowed our OEM customers to improve dealer support—increasing service bay throughput by 12-18%.

Based on dealers’ low scores for technical support, there is a clear opportunity for OEMs to improve the situation and gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. There will always be disagreements between OEMs and dealers over things like pricing strategies, warranty programs and franchise requirements. But when dealers start complaining about something like technical support—a problem fully within the OEM realm of control—OEMs must offer a solution. With years of experience helping some of the most sophisticated OEMs improve customer and dealer support, Enigma helps OEMs deliver the solutions their dealers need.