Many dealerships have quickly embraced digital retailing during the pandemic, speeding up its adoption and adaptation within auto retail. But digital retailing by itself is not the solution, according to Dominic Sigouin, President and CEO of Quebec-based Noahvik Consultants.
In an interview with Canadian auto dealer, Sigouin said digital retailing is a tool and that the solution is the people — your customers and employees. And while there is a lot of noise around digital retailing, especially now, he said the vast majority of the solutions were there 10 years ago.
“Ten years ago we could do digital retailing. Everything was there, the technology was there, but it was the adoption by the people — by the owner of the dealership, and the industry (that lagged),” said Sigouin. “Because we were supported by OEMs, because we are dealers, because we are a franchise, we did not rely that much on digital retailing.”
For Sigouin, digital retailing is the experience offered by the dealership to its customers. It is the customer experience, the customer journey. It is all the touch-points they will have with the dealership’s brand, with its employees, and with things like chat, the company website, and all the tools and services that the dealership provider has offered.
Sigouin describes himself as an expert in human relationships. He has worked in the automotive industry for 20 years and has held several roles in auto retail, including in sales, F&I, as a manager, and as a vice president. Now he works with dealerships to help them improve their business.
“Everything has to play a role, to work together,” said Sigouin. “It needs to be: you have a brand, you have a mission or vision, an ideal customer experience that you want all your customers to have, and you will build your system — you will build your process with those digital retailing tools for your customers to experience by your staff.”
Sigouin said it should be like reverse-engineering. Instead of dealers adding digital retailing tools (i.e. to things like their website), and expecting it to do the job on its own (i.e. the standalone for customer experience/journey), they need to blend in the other ingredients — the human factor, and the process they have created.
Digital retailing, on its own and without those other ingredients, is not the full solution needed to improve business to the extent it could while remaining meaningful to the customer.
