Automakers and dealers daydream of selling new vehicles to order, of washing away all the inventory carrying costs onto their respective bottom lines by delivering vehicles to ready buyers as soon as they’re driven off the truck.

But if the U.S. auto retailing market is ever going to migrate to those more profitable practices — instead of just temporarily stumbling through them as happened during the pandemic — both automakers and dealers are going to have to get exponentially better at customer communications and managing customer patience.

How do I know? Let me tell you the story of “No matter what.”

Nine months ago, on Sept. 16, 2022, I placed an order with my local Ford dealership for a new Maverick Lariat hybrid pickup in Atlas Blue Metallic. I knew that I would be waiting months and months for delivery, given ongoing production constraints across the industry.

I was — and still am nine months later — completely OK with that.

My ordering process started great. I received an email directly from Ford Motor Co. that day acknowledging my order: “YOUR ORDER HAS BEEN CONFIRMED” it announced across the header, with my name and the details of my order, including an image of my coming pickup, along with my dealership. The email told me that I’m in line and just awaiting my turn. Exactly 45 days later, a second email arrived from Ford, reconfirming my order, explaining the situation, and promising to update me “as soon as we can, at least once every 45 days regarding your vehicle’s production schedule status.

“No matter what.

“Thank you for your patience and understanding.”
Great idea, this note. The problem? I didn’t hear from anyone again until last week, when I got a brief note saying thanks for sticking around, and they’ll now get back to me in July. “Every 45 days” had turned into seven months of stone silence.

I reached out to Ford and was told about the note I ultimately received June 19, which said that part of the reason my Maverick was being delayed was battery availability for its hybrid powertrain. A spokesman for Ford sent me this statement: “Our No. 1 priority is to always be clear and transparent with our customers on what we know and the efforts we are making to deliver the vehicle a customer has ordered. Like the rest of the global auto industry, we continue to work through supply chain challenges and are doing all we can to get our customers the vehicles they have ordered.”

I realize this whole customer-ordering thing is new to many automakers, and they are slowly adapting. But ample communication creates patience: It’s one of the reasons that Toyota, for example, instituted its “Project ETA” in 2022, allowing dealers to see in almost real time the status of ordered vehicles both in production and in the delivery pipeline, so the information can be communicated to waiting customers.

And to be fair, Ford did an admirable job keeping in touch with consumers who ordered all those high-dollar Broncos, showering them with updates and even tchotchkes to keep them on the farm.
If the pandemic taught us anything, it is that consumers are often willing to wait to get what they want, but the key to making that wait worthwhile is communicating. Keeping your customer informed and being transparent are paramount to keeping them satisfied with their purchasing decisions — even those hit by unexpected delays.

If this industry wants to keep those profitable customer orders alive, it must learn how to manage them better.