A lot of dealers spend big bucks on things such as targeted ads and mailers to persuade people who are already their customers to come back through the door once they purchased a car.
But Paul Garavel knows there’s an easier, cheaper and better way: It just takes a little effort, a lot of kindness and a few tchotchkes.
At his two stores in Norwalk, Conn. — Garavel Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram and Garavel Subaru, which are about 2 miles apart — customers go on what amounts to guided scavenger hunts through the dealerships as they wait to take delivery of their new vehicles.
Customers, with a small paper bag emblazoned with a dealership logo in hand, meet the leaders of each department during their hunt and receive a series of useful branded items with each interaction, including a key chain, an ice scraper and a coffee mug. Each gift is accompanied by a business card dropped in the bag.
The end result is a lot more than a bag of small gifts, says Garavel, owner of the dealerships. It’s an introduction, so that when that customer returns, there’s a familiar, smiling face to greet them.
That familiarity crushes the fear and anxiety some customers feel when they walk into a franchised dealership.
“Other than maybe a fear of public speaking or a fear of heights, I think coming into a dealership and buying a car is one of the hardest things some people do,” Garavel explains.
The scavenger hunt — and the resulting gifts from different department managers and staff members — “connect with them, so that customers are not totally unfamiliar with Garavel when they come back.”
The two Garavel dealerships — each of which averages about 100 new- and 50 used-vehicle sales per month — started their in-dealership scavenger hunts around 2015 and quickly incorporated them into their respective customer processes, Garavel said. The result was higher customer satisfaction scores and more returning customers.
Each customer is accompanied by his or her salesperson on the post-purchase scavenger hunt, and it incorporates all of the customer-facing pieces of the dealership. Customers speak with a parts manager at the parts counter and get both an ice scraper and a business card in their bags.
They visit the service lane, where they’re introduced to either the service manager or their service adviser, and get a coffee mug and another business card for their bags, and where they might set their first service appointments.
Then they visit the sales manager — and if they haven’t already met — they’ll get an introduction and a Garavel key chain, along with another business card dropped in their bags.
“The total cost of all those items is about $7.50, but it’s not the money being spent, it’s that the customer realizes that they know someone in that department, a friendly face that they know can help them if they have an issue,” Garavel explained.
The stores don’t have a lot of turnover, he said, so the introductions and the store’s processes allow customers to develop a relationship with their service adviser “like it’s their own concierge.”
Most of the scavenger hunts are done before the customer visits the F&I office, and while the vehicle is being prepped for delivery. And they usually don’t end until either Garavel or his son Jeremy, general manager of the Subaru store, has met the customer personally and a photo is taken with their new vehicle out in front of the store.
COVID-19 has made the stores’ scavenger hunts “a little more challenging, but when your intent is to connect with the customer, we do it, and we do it safely and socially distance during the process,” Garavel said.