No Sunday Funday! Why manufacturers are shying away from improving the Sunday sales experience? For most of us, the best day of the week happens to be on a Sunday. Take a day out, spend time with friends and family, recover from Saturday parties, or even just to relax and do nothing in preparation of the extra work in store for Mondays.
When it comes to test driving cars and window shopping through all probable contenders within our budget - Yes, you guessed it - I prefer to do it on Sundays. Less traffic inside city limits, better test drive experiences than being caught up at signals one after the other, no work schedules to distract and easier to take family along for the big decisions too.
What really gets my goat is that none of the automobile manufacturers seem interested in selling you a car on this particular day of the week. Closed showrooms, negative replies for TD requests, understaffed showrooms, A/C switched off, printed materials locked away in compartments - these are common in various showroom irrespective of the brand if you visit them on a Sunday.
I did that last Sunday as well, and got the below responses from various showrooms. Not mentioning the dealer names and locations as that is irrelevant and I do not want the manufacturers to pin point only one single dealer in case they wish to bring in some change (hopefully positive). 1. Maruti Suzuki (Vitara Brezza)- 'Sir, the TD car went for an event (at some apartment complex) and is currently unavailable for a test drive'.
2. Honda (BRV, Jazz) - 'Sir, we'll call you back during weekdays and confirm the TD schedule'
3. Toyota (Innova Crysta) - 'Sir, we only have one staff today. Please wait (for 30 mins) in our crowded, non -AC (switched off on Sunday) showroom so that we can take you (Three customers waiting) for a test drive one after the other!' (This showroom is the best on weekdays though!)
4. Suzuki NEXA (Baleno, SCross) - 'Sir, no test drives available on Sundays. Can i call you back during weekdays?'
5. TATA (Tiago) - 'Sir, Sundays we do provide test drives, but we close TDs early and only showroom is open now with minimal staff. Will arrange for a test drive tomorrow or whenever convenient for you'
And all this, inside Bangalore City limits! Can't imagine the state in most of the smaller cities and towns. I would be surprised if the showrooms are open there, forget test drive cars being readily available. Gone are the days when the only film (and cartoons) available on Doordarshan used to play on Sundays and people used to stick to their houses to watch the shows. So why our automobile companies are shying away from improving the sales experience on Sundays?
Some of the reasons that I could think of - 1. Less sales- Currently our manufacturers might not be doing enough numbers so as to justify having enough sales people to be available on Sundays. But I think it has got to do with the fact that people are used to showrooms being closed on Sundays ever since they remember. I believe more and more people will flock to the showrooms on Sundays provided the manufacturers take adequate interest in promoting such days with test drive programs, booking offers etc. 2. Weekend special drives- Dealers use weekends to target a wider audience, mostly by displaying the cars at shopping malls and apartments. And I agree that this gets them good visibility as compared to parking the car in the showroom on a Sunday. But my opinion is that both should go hand in hand.
For example- I have quoted my Toyota experience above. On normal weekdays, the sales and service experience in that particular showroom is in itself good enough to make people buy their cars, but on a Sunday it was just the polar opposite experience. With the a/c switched off, the showroom was hot. Moreover multiple customers were already in line for the test drives, and the one lady staff present was struggling to manage all these tasks and also publicly swearing at the (inefficient) drivers who were taking the customers for test drives. If I were to visit the showroom for the first time to purchase a 26L Innova, I would have looked elsewhere. 3. Unavailability of experienced staff - No one wants to work on a Sunday. Trust me, I've been working on weekends ever since I started my career and it has never given me any happiness. But that said, someone has to do it. If not me, another person will.
Manufacturers and their dealers would need to come up with alternatives and incentives to overcome this scenerio. Rotational shifts, weekend allowances etc are a few thoughts that come to my mind. Of course, all this till the sales volumes pick up as compared to regular working days. 4. Maintenance activities- Coming from an IT support perspective, I'm pretty sure that the support softwares used by dealerships could be having maintenance schedules and outages over the weekend, especially on Sundays. They also would need to carry out other showroom maintenance tasks like minor alterations, a/c system maintenance etc on weekends as well. So opening the showroom on Sundays might pose a bigger challenge, but none that other industries haven't overcome already in their quest for more sales and a better customer experience. 5. Increased focus on delivering services directly to home- Customers (especially from the premium segment) expect the cars to be made available at their home, rather than having to drive down to the showrooms. Which also affords them more convenience to take up these tasks on a weekday as well. Net result would be less interest in having a working showroom on weekends. However, I see this trend is mainly limited to high value less volume transactions like premium car sales. The sub-20L segment still witnesses a major chunk of sales from showroom footfalls.
Ten years ago, most of the shops in a small town used to be closed on Sundays. The practice is limited to only few sectors like the automobile industry for now.
Hopefully someone with a good working experience of running a dealership could comment on the actual issues being faced by the industry. And hoping other members have a similar thought process as mine- and would like to visit showrooms on Sundays as well.
I already have my plan set for the next weekend- Go early to the TATA showroom, and ditch the Maruti dealer mentioned earlier for another one nearby who seems to have a test drive car ready for weekends as well. And forget about the other two 'no Sunday' brands for now.
Last edited by CrAzY dRiVeR : 12th May 2016 at 10:57.
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