Why Your CDJR Dealership Will Never Be a Luxury Brand

The Wagoneer goes in for an alignment 0:00

Steve Shaw: And we're back again. Dave Rogers, what's on your mind? How are you doing?

Dave Rogers: Doing great, buddy. How are you?

Steve Shaw: Man, life is good. It all of a sudden went from 75 and wonderful to 85 and hot here in Tampa. So life is great.

Dave Rogers: Yeah, I heard Fort Myers hit 100 degrees.

Steve Shaw: Isn't it crazy? There's a switch, man. They turn the switch and we are full-on summertime.

Dave Rogers: So the other day we talked briefly on the phone in between stuff, and you were telling me you were going to experience the Jeep Wagoneer concierge service and get what was promised to you from the beginning. So tell me, how was your adventure?

Steve Shaw: Well, it's funny that you brought that up, because I just had my Jeep Wagoneer in for service. I had it in and got the radio fixed, and I'll give them all the credit at the local shop. They did fix the problem. They were very unfriendly and very unprofessional, and they never called me back. And while I was in for service, I drove over the Treadspec tire machine and they said my alignment was out.

And obviously those tires on my Wagoneer are pretty expensive. So I thought, well, I want to get an alignment. And while I was in that previous shop, no one asked me to do it. So I'm going to get it done at a reputable place here in the big city. Instead of doing my local deal, I'm going to go back to where I bought it and get my alignment taken care of. So I called, and I never play this card, but I said, "Hey, I'd really like to have you guys do the service on my car and do an alignment. By the way, could you pick up and deliver?"

And they said, "Well, Steve, we don't really pick up and deliver in your area, but if you want to pay $60 for a pickup and delivery fee, we would be more than happy to pick that up." It's about 40 miles from the store. And I said, "Well, I'm not really interested in paying $60. I do have a Wagoneer." And the last time I checked, I actually went online and looked through the propaganda.

Going up the chain to the fixed ops director 2:13

Steve Shaw: And it doesn't say anything about a mileage radius or a fee for concierge service. It did say, though, that many people have experienced very poor concierge service with Jeep dealers. I know the owner of this particular organization, but I don't want to play that card on an alignment. So I went from the BDC person to the advisor to the manager, with no avail. So I decided to send a letter to the fixed ops director. I was very polite, and I was just giving them the saga of Steve's Wagoneer, the poor service I received from them, as well as the repeated issues with the truck.

Well, this guy was amazing. He picked up the phone and called me within seconds and said, "Mr. Shaw, I'm going to have somebody at your house in 45 minutes." I'm like, "Sounds great to me, bro." I said, "Look, you don't have to, you could wait for the weekend, whatever." He says, "Nope." Sure enough, 45 minutes later, he's there, picks up my truck and takes it to the shop. No phone call, no nothing. They did the alignment, and they did the number two Jeep Wave service that I had available. No follow-up call. Now, they did send me a video of the multi-point inspection.

It was one of those two-minute, three-minute videos where I learned absolutely nothing about my car. Bottom line, after two to three minutes, they said, "You don't need anything. You're okay. Everything looks real good." So I did waste two minutes of my life watching a video. And then the manager calls me right at the end of the day. Like I said, it was noon when they picked up my car. Now it's the end of the day. First phone call from the manager: "Would it be okay if we keep your car over?" Sure, why not? I said, "I do need the car by one o'clock on Friday." "Absolutely. We'll have it back to you first thing tomorrow morning." Sounds great, bro.

The truck comes home dirty 4:10

Steve Shaw: So the next day, not first thing in the morning but at 11:30, my truck gets dropped off. Now, some people may say I am splitting hairs here. My truck gets dropped off in my driveway. I was on a phone call, and I told them it was okay to just leave the keys. So they dropped the truck off in the driveway and left the keys in the car. That's all fine. But I didn't get my concierge wash. I was very appreciative of the gentleman taking care of me. That was absolutely wonderful. But I sort of would have expected that they follow through on the concierge service, and I get my car back and it's filthy dirty.

And I'm having some photos taken for my house sale, and I wanted to stage the car, and I couldn't do that. And I felt like if I picked up the phone and called this guy, I'd be a real dick, not a nice person. So I just decided not to do it. But I did send in a request and said, "Would it be okay if somebody provided me the RO? Could I get a copy of the multi-point? And could I get a copy of the before and after specifications?" I think somebody's mouth dropped, because I have not heard back from them. They did say within a week or so I would be receiving a copy of my RO. So I'm going to say Stellantis, whoever owns Jeep anymore, sort of failed miserably on their attempt to get into the luxury brand market, and they failed miserably on my truck. How do you feel about that?

A mainstream store asked to act like a luxury dealer 6:09

Dave Rogers: Well, I think that's probably not very unusual. I think there are a lot of issues there. One is you're taking a mainstream car line, Jeep, Dodge, whatever it is, and then you're telling the people in the store that all of a sudden now they have to become a luxury dealer. And they're not geared for that. It's just not part of the DNA. And listen, I think there's a big difference in price between a Kia and a Mercedes, but all those customers should be treated the same. That's a different expectation for the concierge, though. You might not do these things for a Dodge Charger, whatever, but you're going to do it on an $85,000, $90,000 Wagoneer. It's funny, Stellantis owns Maserati, and they own Alfa. So they do have some higher-line cars. It's not like it should be out of their field of expertise to give you a premium service. But I've had my experiences at the Chrysler and Dodge store too.

They got it back to you before they said they would, so I'll give them that. But how hard is it to email a copy of the repair order or the multi-point inspection? The alignment one isn't going to be digitally archived until they scan it. That might take a couple of minutes to scan. But everything else should have been readily available. They could at least give you two out of three documents right away.

Steve Shaw: You would think they would have sent the repair order and all of those documents with the vehicle. That could certainly have been taken care of. But you said something.

Dave Rogers: Well, I will say one thing on there: a lot of manufacturers require you to sign a copy of the invoice. I don't know how you do it when you're doing the concierge delivery, but maybe the guy should have had you sign something, taken it away and given you your copy of the invoice. What are you going to say?

Steve Shaw: I was going to say, you were saying a Dodge store is just not set up for luxury brand type of service. And that leads me to think about Hyundai and Genesis. They want them to separate those stores, because if you have a Genesis, you get that experience. Or Ford and Lincoln. I'm sure it's the same thing at Ford dealers, where they're just not capable or set up, or the mentality isn't, "I've got to take care of this Lincoln owner."

And I love the Jeep-only stores. This one happens to be a CDJR store. The Jeep-only stores are a toy store for Jeep owners. Those places are the coolest places I've ever been into, and I've trained at some. It's like going into a Harley store sometimes, the guys that do it right. And you're treated well even if you have a Wrangler. We don't have a local Jeep-only store here, but I feel like I would be treated better at a Jeep-only store, with that mindset for us knuckleheads that actually own a Jeep. So I think you're right, there is that mindset: this is a $95,000 truck, and this guy deserves better. Why do I have to go from BDC to advisor to manager and hear, "Well, if you pay 60 bucks, we can do that"?

Keeping the promises the showroom makes 9:28

Dave Rogers: That's a typical disconnect between sales and service. I'm sure they never told you that when they sold you the truck. There were no contingencies on it. The salesperson promised the world. And then what happens? Then you go to execute and fulfill the promises. This is where we fail in the car business most of the time. We just don't live up to the expectations somebody sets. Sometimes the expectations are unrealistic, but this one really wasn't.

Think about it. If you're going to sell somebody a vehicle and promise concierge service, it shouldn't take anything other than one phone call to get it done. It doesn't matter where you live. You bought the car from there, you get the service. I've been in service departments my whole life. I understand it's inconvenient. You're not always staffed for these things. But you've got to fulfill the promise made by the showroom, as difficult as it is. You really have to make those promises come true. Otherwise, you're never going to buy another car from them.

What a lost customer is worth 10:33

Steve Shaw: Well, I read too, because I'm Steve Shaw, the researcher. I went online and did some research, and it said the lifetime value of a customer is $47,000 right now. That's pretty huge. And then they said the people that buy cars outside of your radius... this is even funnier. I use Claude now, Claude AI. They said they'll pick up and deliver within five miles, maybe 10 at best. They'll make an exception for 10 miles. So I asked Claude, what is the registration of Jeep Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer owners within 10 miles of this dealership? If you took a wild guess, how many Wagoneers are within 10 miles of this dealership?

Dave Rogers: Wagoneers, is that what you have? Fifty?

Steve Shaw: Yeah. About 155 Wagoneers and Grand Wagoneers within a 10-mile radius of the store. And I don't think we all just sit by our Wagoneers and live right next door to the store. What are the rest of us that live outside the radius doing? We say, "Oh, forget it, we'll go somewhere else." And Claude also told me that people outside of your radius have a much higher spend when they come in. Because if you're going to make that effort and drive past one, two, three, four, five stores between you and your selling dealer, you're going to spend money while you're there. So there's a compelling reason to take care of those of us that live outside the market area, versus your neighbor.

Dave Rogers: I'm not quite sure what people are thinking or not thinking when they do these things. Or it's the Stellantis training. I worked for Chrysler years ago. They used to have really good programs back in the 90s, when we had transmission problems and a lot of issues. They had some really customer-focused training programs that they put us through. I'm still friends with one of the guys that was a trainer. It was all about seeing things through the customer's eyes, a bunch of customer-centric processes. And it just amazes me that 26, 27 years later, you're still going to go through the same battle with Chrysler. It's just amazing.

I heard a story today from a guy from the factory, not that factory. He was watching a transaction where a customer was brought back to a service advisor in a Jeep store. They had just bought a used Camry from that store, and there was some issue with it. The service writer couldn't find him in the computer by last name, asked for the VIN, started typing it in and said, "Hey, this isn't a Jeep." The customer said, "No, it's a Camry." And the service advisor said, "Did you see the sign out on the road that says J-E-E-P? We don't service Camrys here. We service Jeeps." And the salesperson and the customer were speechless. Who trained the advisor? You almost have to think they were kidding. You couldn't be that obnoxious in real life. But he told me that was the response.

Steve Shaw: That's hilarious. So I just pulled up this research report, and it did say $47,000 is the average lifetime value of a retail automotive customer. It says it's five to 10 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one. And the number of people a dissatisfied person will tell is nine to 15. Well, I'm telling 3,500, 4,000 people right now about my dissatisfaction with this store. And look, I'm just a podcaster talking to the industry. How many other people are out there with their phones getting on LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok and all that BS, talking trash about that store? It's pretty crazy.

"You guys aren't as bad as I thought" 15:17

Dave Rogers: It was so bad. I'm not a perfectionist, but I can be nitpicky. We had a store right next to a Dodge store, and I used to ride the advisors about every little thing they did. I wanted professionalism. I wanted a really good dealership. And after the experience I had with my Dodge at the Chrysler store next door one day, I drove back to our store, the Honda store, and I apologized to all the advisors. True story. I said, "Listen, guys, I've been really hard on you. You guys aren't as bad as I thought. I was just at the Dodge store next door, and they sucked. You aren't the worst in the neighborhood, so I'm going to take it a little bit easier on you." That's how bad it was. I just couldn't understand it. And you had a good experience at the other place, right? It was an okay experience. They finally fixed your car.

Steve Shaw: They fixed my car. I took it in for a warranty repair. My other buddy, who's a fixed ops director at Chrysler, said, "Steve, you've already qualified for lemon law." So I'm well beyond a lemon law situation. I took it into the original selling dealer twice for this repair. Still unfixed, "normal operation." I've had my truck at that particular store for nearly 30 days just for those two operations. And then I took it to that store to get a camera put in. It sat for two weeks while I was traveling. They never looked at my car and never installed the camera, and they came back and said, "We don't do that," after it sat there for two weeks.

So I said, well, I'm not going to drive all the way back there. And that's why I went to my local store, one or two miles from my house, with the same electrical issue with the radio. I can joke about it, but it was starting to get annoying. The service advisor was first class, not a nice person. The first time, he wrote it up, I signed the paperwork, and he said, "We ordered a part for you. I'll call you when it's in." No call. And then Chrysler has the galactic back order, as you like to say. It's ordered through the technicians, not through parts, so nobody knew when it was ordered or when it was going to be there.

Then I had to make repeated calls two, three weeks later to get the part. They told me I could come in on a Saturday, because it was convenient for them to put it in on a Saturday. I drop it off at 8 a.m. on Saturday and he goes, "Yeah, if I don't call you today, just be here at five to pick it up." My expectation was, you're obviously not calling me today. And that's when I had driven into that store two times and driven over their Treadspec machine, and it said my tires were out of alignment. And I'm thinking, do you think somebody might ask me if I'd like an alignment? Everybody that knows me knows how much I like alignments. I would have bought an alignment once or twice. And I had my first Jeep Wave service done with these guys.

There were a lot of missteps along the way. Let's put it that way. Everything was a misstep. One of my other friends said, "I wouldn't have my car serviced there," and told me a story. So I thought, all right, I'm going to go back to the original selling dealer. It's in the city. They're going to have the best technicians. That's why I wanted my alignment done by somebody reputable. As I understand it, it's a very labor-intensive alignment, setting the radar and all that. I want it done right on those expensive tires.

And by the way, I did drive it to North Carolina once and had it in the shop there. So I'm three, four, five services in for the electrical. And you would think there would be a flag somewhere. If you ran my VIN, whatever you call it at Chrysler anymore, there would certainly be all of the repair attempts. It should put out a flag like, "Hey, this guy could get his car bought back at any time."

So yeah, a lot of missteps along the way. Both of these organizations are very large auto groups. If I had to give somebody advice: don't listen to Steve. I'm just a knucklehead customer. Nobody knows I'm Steve of Steve Shaw Training. I never talk about that. But these are very reputable, large auto groups. One has 18 stores, one has 40 or 50. You would think they would be in the market of taking care of their customers. They think they're doing everything great. Maybe their CSI is good. But I'm a real customer out here talking about it, and I think there are probably more people than me talking trash.

Dave Rogers: I think our last guest, Tyler, when he was on, mentioned that you have to care. One of the things for an advisor is you have to give a shit. They really do have to care. We talked about this very briefly on the phone the other day: the whole concept of whether these advisors are career professionals. Are they sticking with the job? Is this what they want to do? Or is it a stepping stone, just an in-between thing? I think we should chat about it. I really do. I think we should get some career advisors on here as guests and talk to them, because there's a difference.

And there are people that have been doing it for 20 years that are just assholes, we know that. But if you have a big organization, and I've got a pretty big group too, can I vouch for every single advisor? No. Do I think stuff like this might happen in my stores? I'm sure it does sometimes. The bottom line is, when we find out about it, we take corrective action. And hopefully it happens on the minimum of visits. We've got some premium stores. When we fall flat in the premium stores, we hear about it all the time. When you're in a Mercedes store, a BMW store or a Jaguar store and those customers don't get treated right, they have no problem complaining. They have no problem putting out a Google review. If you were anybody else, you might never come back to that store. You keep giving them chances.

Steve Shaw: Right. I wouldn't.

Dave Rogers: And I think it goes back to what Tyler said. It's caring, and you've got to find employees that really give a shit about the customer, the company, their coworkers, all the stuff that matters in this world. It's a shame that it's still this way after all these years. That was the 1980s and 1990s, and it still goes on in Florida. It doesn't happen up here, though. No way.

Steve Shaw: No, it wouldn't happen in PA. PA people wouldn't take it. You guys would just be in somebody's face saying, "Hey, bro, take my truck back and go get it washed."

Part of the research I did said that a 5% increase in customer retention is 25-plus percent in profit. So it's about taking care of, and retaining, one of your higher-end customers. I don't know how many Wagoneers they've sold, but out of the 155 that live next door, I'm part of the group that has the money to spend. And even if you bought a Jeep Wrangler today, a four-door Wrangler is $50,000, $60,000. And if you get any toys put on it, holy cow.

Dave Rogers: There are some that are a lot more than that. Get the ones with the 392s and all the packages, and you're probably talking $80,000, $90,000, $100,000. It's not a $25,000 vehicle. But I go back to my original point. Does it really matter how much you spent for the car? You should just get good service. I used to say that all the time. A friend of mine years ago was in a Cadillac-Hyundai store, and there was one counter where people got written up.

So the Cadillac customers are right next to the Hyundai customers. Different advisors, but the same counter. The Cadillac customer says, "I'm bringing my car in, I want a loaner car," and everything else. And this is going back years. Then the Hyundai customer says, "I need a loaner car too," and they're like, "Get the fuck out of here. You don't get a loaner." And he used to say it was the most difficult thing to deal with, because you had polar-opposite customers side by side in the store. If they're treated differently, "Oh, you're a Cadillac customer, you get a loaner. If you're a Hyundai customer, you have to walk," I can see that being a challenge. Things have evolved since then.

A shout-out to Stellantis 24:39

Steve Shaw: I do have to make a statement, though. I have to give a shout-out to Stellantis themselves, because two years ago, when my Wrangler hit 106,000 miles and the engine blew up, Stellantis gave me six grand toward the cost of a new engine. I had some help from a friend of mine, and they did a VIN query. They looked at my address and saw all of the Chryslers I've owned at this address, and they said, "This is an actual loyal customer." So Stellantis helped out as a loyalty situation. I can't blame it on the manufacturer and say they don't care about their customers. That was probably one of the reasons I continued with Jeep. At 100K on my third Wrangler, they stepped up and helped out.

I usually bag on the manufacturer and talk good about the dealer, but here it's the reverse. I think the auto manufacturer in this case was very good to me, which kept me a loyal Jeep owner and allowed me to go, "Yeah, I'm going to spend a bunch of money with these guys," because at least the manufacturer was standing behind their product. So I appreciate every one of you reps that helped process my claim. And again, that wasn't because of who I was. That was just my situation, and they were good about it.

Dave Rogers: Which is the way it should be. That is the separation. You were the Saturn guy. At Saturn, when you wrote customers up, you didn't write them up in a local DMS. You wrote them up in a global one, the GM system. You could see that Dave Rogers likes Boston cream donuts, because that used to be the commercials. You had one centralized database, so you could see these things and give personalized service. Stores are different now. They have their own DMSs, and there's none of that Saturn nice stuff happening in the background. If I punch your VIN into the Stellantis system, it probably doesn't pop up and say, "This guy's spent $400,000 on Jeeps in his lifetime." But you have to give some kudos to the factory, because they do think of that stuff every once in a while. It goes back to the advisors, though. It really does. It always goes back to the people in the stores. It's always the people you deal with that make the difference.

GM tip: carry the message all the way to the drive 27:08

Steve Shaw: I think you're 100% right, and I can bring it back to training. Neither one of these companies is in my system, and I don't train them. That doesn't mean anything one way or another to me. If I wanted to go all the way to Orlando, there would be one, but I'm not going to drive that far to get a Steve Shaw-trained service advisor. But funny enough, when I went to my local store, a guy who works there has been through my classes out of state, which I thought was pretty funny.

But I think it goes back to training, and to, I hate this word more than anything, culture. Does the dealer care, and does it go all the way down? I know the general manager and dealer partner of the store in Tampa, and I know for a fact that he cares. But it's interesting how sometimes that message just doesn't get driven all the way down to the bottom.

And I think that's where we get into the topic we keep threatening to talk about, leadership and management. Like our friend from Canada, Damon, said: is that message being carried all the way down, and is it frictionless? Was it frictionless for me? Hell no. I had to go through a lot of gyrations to get a pickup and get what was owed to me. So I think it goes back to the handling of our people, and teaching, training, coaching and mentoring them along the way. I'll let you wrap up this episode with your GM tip of the day before we rant and run everybody off.

Dave Rogers: The GM tip of the day is, you touched on it, it is a leadership thing. It is culture. I hate to use all these cliché terms that are out there. I could be a LinkedIn expert now with that comment. But it really is. You're running the store. You have to communicate it. You have to be out in the drive. You have to be talking to your people and expressing exactly how you want it done. This stuff gets filtered. You have a managers' meeting and tell your service manager and your sales manager what you want done, and you don't know what's getting trickled down to the advisors. So you have to do it yourself sometimes. Let them know how you feel. Maybe jump in on an advisor meeting.

It does make a difference if they hear it directly from you, because then they know it's from you. Otherwise it gets watered down like the old game of telephone you played in school. The teacher starts by talking to the first person in a seat, and by the time it gets to the end of the class, it's a completely different story. That happens at work too. It's the one thing you learned in school that you really experience in life, unlike algebra or geometry. So get out there and tell them yourself how you want it done.

Steve Shaw: That's exactly it. Awesome. That's a good time. We can wrap up on that note, and I look forward to catching up with you next week.

Dave Rogers: Thank you.