Vauxhall boss Stephen Norman has seen a surge in demand for his company’s new phone-based sales system during the coronavirus lockout, and now believes that buyers will embrace this way of doing business even after things return to normal.
In fact, he believes in this new system so much, he spends two hours each day personally answering phone calls from potential customers, reports Autocar.
“Even when we’re clear of the epidemic, I believe retailing will never go back to the way it was,” he argued. “I expect car buyers to keep doing what we’re encouraging them to do now — phone the company, get a response from a human being who can guide them through the process, then carry on their business through the retail network in the usual way.”
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Norman thinks that while this new trend won’t go as far as to make dealerships redundant, he believes that it will likely leave a scar, financially. He also says that the eventual return to normal day to day activities will highlight what he claims is a “recent, society-wide over-consumption of premium products and values.”
“Before the epidemic, this trend had already arrived in the food and clothing industries. I think it’s coming to the car industry.”
On a similar note, Ford U.S. sales chief Mark LaNeve recently told Reuters that the current status quo will trigger a more permanent shift towards online car sales.
“Good dealers have been doing remote delivery for the last 20 years, but it was maybe one a week,” he said. “Now they’re doing almost every delivery that way. This has just turbo charged the adoption of those processes by both customers and the dealers. To be honest, I think a big chunk of that stays with us even when we’re through the crisis.”
