Higher customer satisfaction can bring an extra $106,315

Higher customer satisfaction can bring an extra $106,315

$106,315 – thats how much a dealer can add to the bottom line by raising the dealerships customer satisfaction level. So says the 2012 Customer Experience Payback study from Maritz Research.

Maritz interviewed owners of five-year-old vehicles to see how they would behave when they came back to the market. The study found that 47% of buyers were completely satisfied with their dealership experience, 23% were very satisfied, 16 percent fairly well satisfied and the rest somewhat or very dissatisfied.

The researchers wanted to know what would happen if each group moved up one level of satisfaction – if very satisfied customers became completely satisfied, and so on. Multiplying the average number of vehicles sold per dealership (726, according to NADA) by the percent of customers in that category yielded the average number of vehicles sold by a dealer in that category – for instance, 343 for the average dealership with completely satisfied customers.

Moving up one level of satisfaction would result in 46 incremental sales, the study found. At an average gross of $1,401 (NADAs figure), thats an extra gross profit of $64,669 for sales and $41,646 for service – a total of $106,315.

Its an economists attempt to put a dollar figure on what your common sense already tells you – the more satisfied your customers, the better your bottom line.