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Reputation Management: Taxation with Representation
Welcome back to Reputation Management! Here we reveal the underbelly of ordinary automotive retailers—places like car dealers and service shops—with fictional service tales inspired by real customer reviews. How do we make these stories seem like they could really happen? Because of my years of experience with a Fortune 500 automotive retailer as a—you guessed it—reputation manager. —Sajeev
Dear reader, I die a little inside every time I hear one oft-repeated dealer refrain: “We make car-buying easy!”
“Easy” means the customer is paying too much. Dealing with third-party referral sources (like Cars.com, CarGurus, AutoTrader, etc.) can starve you of hundreds or even thousands of dollars in savings. You have to interact with dealerships directly, weigh your options, and not be in a rush to buy. Now that elevated, out-of-whack pandemic-era vehicle pricing is history, let me boil best practices down to two steps:
- Get pre-approved for financing before setting foot in the dealership. Dealerships will often beat the interest rates offered on these loans, but there’s no motivation for them to do so unless you’re pre-approved.
- Look up dealerships on Google Maps. Craft a politely worded email explaining your needs. Copy/paste said email to each dealership’s Internet Sales department. If you are flexible on the vehicle’s attributes (i.e. you aren’t seeking a specific color) one dealership is likely to respond, answer questions to your satisfaction, and rise to the top of your list.
All of the above applies to a purchase, but leases are a whole different beast. Negotiating a lease deal feels smooth only after blindly signing every document placed before you in the Finance office. When customers complain and post bad leasing reviews online, it generally centers around the fees that dealers levy at the end of the term; significant damage (stains, dents, scratches) or wear (brake pad thickness, tire tread depth) will not be absorbed by the manufacturer on your behalf.
Dealers are also adept at leveraging lease buyouts or returns as an opportunity to add bogus fees, and they usually (but not always) get away with it.
Because leasing is such a minefield, complaints are expected. But it’s usually not about the taxes associated with a leased vehicle. Check out this real review:
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Buy and sell classics with confidence
So, what was happening behind the scenes? Let’s imagine the world of the Reputation Manager…
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I told Lauren, my skilled reputation management assistant, to choose her words wisely when speaking to Charles, the general manager of this Toyota dealership. Yes, we needed to know why this lease went sideways, but we also needed to keep Charles feeling good. Because if Charles sneezed that we weren’t helping him out, everyone in CarCountry’s Massachusetts region would catch a Reputation Management cold.
Years ago, I was at a Massachusetts regional meeting to talk about reputation when Charles dominated the conversation, peppering me with questions and concerns. I applied a combination of empathetic listening and syrupy Southern charm to ensure everyone at the meeting knew this Texan wasn’t some soulless pencil-pushing accountant. Charles took advantage of my angle by insisting on personalized replies to every negative review hurled at his highly profitable Toyota dealership. No problem for me. That’s the job. And anyway, most general managers tire of such a self-inflicted burden after a few weeks. Checking up on a Reputation Manager who gets the job done is boring when there’s nobody to chew out.
But, then, Charles turned out to be cut from a different cloth. Even as general managers go, he had a tenacity I’d never seen before. I admired that about him, at least most of the time, but his email back to Lauren had me questioning the terms of our deal:
“Lauren, do not edit the following response at all. This customer needs to learn that ignorance isn’t an excuse for berating my employees and trashing our reputation:
Dear (REDACTED),
As we discussed many times over the phone and in person in my office, I regret to inform you that we cannot change the terms of a lease with Toyota Financial. Nor can I work any magic around the fact you are trading in a Chevrolet Malibu so damaged that there’s no way it’s worth the price you got from a Carmax email.
No amount of yelling in my face will change that, nor will it improve your poor credit rating and the lease payments that increase because of it. I find it interesting that you mentioned taxes, as we told you we cannot remove an excise tax required by the state. I wish you the best of luck, (REDACTED), because you’re gonna need it if you think any other dealership can lease you a Corolla for a better price.
Straight to the point then, Chuck.
Lauren looked closer at the address line of the email. CC’d on the message was Charles’ boss, Don, a soft-spoken, steely-eyed, intimidating dude from Brockton. Every CarCountry dealership in Massachusetts was his domain.
Time to put on the kid gloves. I had no intention of getting on the bad side of either of these two gents. But before I could craft a more diplomatic approach, Don hit “reply all” with this bomb from on high:
“Yes Charles, this is great. Lauren, publish this as-is!”
Oh, dear. I am highly allergic to PR disasters, especially when they involve a sterling car brand like Toyota with a hugely valuable reputation. Don should have known better, too. Investors are always looking to spot a crack in such a business, or for that matter, any business that’s publicly traded on the NYSE. CarCountry isn’t a mom-and-pop dealership that can tell customers to go pound sand after fleecing them for a few hundred bucks. Too bad we didn’t work for Buckaroo Bob’s Mitsubishi-Mazda-Kia dealership, I guess.
But before I could find a workaround to weasel out of this impending nightmare, I heard Lauren burst out laughing. I stuck my head into her cubicle to see a woman who had totally lost it, laughing to the point of tears. On her screen I saw an email, this one from Don directly to Lauren:
“For the love of God, please do NOT publish Charles’ reply! – Don”
Needless to say, we listened to the big boss. And breathed a sigh of relief.
Going behind a store manager’s back isn’t a great idea in the corporate world, but CarCountry was a place with characters facing unique challenges at the local, state, and national levels. Sometimes, you had to play the politics and personalities. I am just glad Lauren worked two feet away, so I could enjoy the absurd moment almost as much as she did.
I recalled how many times Don and Charles spoke positively about and supported our department. Charles shocked everyone by giving me a big hug at the next CarCountry general meeting. (Don isn’t a hugger, but a firm handshake works for me.)
The warmth from dealership brass shocked my boss at CarCountry, who asked me how I softened up that entire region. Easy, because I’d promised Charles—in a public venue, with other dealership managers within earshot—that I’d “listen to everyone’s needs as customers of my department, before balancing them with our abilities and bandwidth.” I kept my promise. With a general manager of his stature’s blessing, the rest lined up at CarCountry’s doorstep.
It’s true that the CarCountry corporate office earns a generalized fee from the dealers working under their thumb. But even tough guys from Massachusetts understand the value of taxation with representation.
The Reputation Manager will return…
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Sometimes the right response isn’t the one that feels right, and the cathartic release of pounding send on a response like that has to be checked
Having had to do some “reputation management” of my own in an entirely different industry in my corporate days, this episode rang especially true-to-form. I understand very little about the automotive dealership world, but shmoozing both up and down the ladder is something that most any middle-management type (like I was) can relate to!
You definitely get it. And that’s why I am constantly shmoozing readers like you to stick around and read my stuff!
No worries, mate – I’m in for a penny, in for a pound (but of course, pennies might be disappearing soon, so I might need to come up with another expression of loyalty). In short, you don’t need to manage your reputation with most of us on this site – you and your colleagues are thumbs up with us!
I give you 5 stars as well, my friend.
How you deal with customers and manage rep can vary much depending where you are and the product.
With cars and large ticket items it is tough. My area of parts and lower priced products gives us more leverage to broker deals or help solve issues. We also have an owner that wants people taken care of so it really helps to have that support.
Even then you still have the customer that is dishonest or just not reasonable.
There is an art to this business and a skill that not everyone has.
We also sell globally so you also have to learn how to connect with the Farmer in Iowa, the dude from the Bronx, the demanding customer in Dubai and the bloke from Australia.
Knowing people and understanding cultures are key. Connecting with people is not a skill you can learn at any university. It is a part of you and often the way you were brought up.
I have never worked at a car dealer but I can imagine it is not easy.
It isn’t easy, but you have worked with cars and you have extensive customer service experience, so you would excel and likely make good money at it!
I could work for a good dealer but I would have issues with a dishonest one. I have no tolerance for sone of the behavior I have experienced with some dealers.
I’m doing well today. I am in a QA group that oversees the points of contact with our customers.
We look for issuers, write and change policies etc.
It has been great as we have always been a customer focused company. Even the owners is very employe focused. So few places like that left.
I kind of ended up here in a round about way and been here more than 3 decades. Could not be happier.
I have to trust who I work for and I have that from the owners right down to my manager.
Plus I have been able to do many things, meet my automotive hero’s and attend some of the best auto events and got paid for it. Even appeared a TV commercial. lol!
At the beginning of your story, about contacting dealerships of your chosen make within a radius of where you live, requesting bids: I first did that in 1985, long before the internet, by visiting every dealer in our area, and handing the sales person a printed sheet describing the vehicle and RPOs that we wanted, and that we were accepting bids. It would have to be ordered, and we were willing to wait for the build. Lowest bidder wins the sale–no trade-in–and floorplanning required. The shock on the sales person’s face–at every dealership–was priceless.
The internet made this tactic much easier; I could just send an email to each dealer.
Bottom line to impress on the dealership: they need to sell it worse than you need to buy it…
Hats off to you, because doing that in 1985 took a lot of energy.
Having worked at car dealerships and having seen the best and worst of dealer with customer interaction I fully understand the balance needed on this. Sometimes you want to pound the dishonest customer or dealer into the ground but sometimes that is the wrong strategy. However I would not participate in schemes like pushing “throttle body” cleaning onto brand new freshly installed throttle bodies. Yeah I had a Chevy dealer that would push that stuff on unsuspecting customers of their service department. Needless to say I left that one pretty quickly.