Hi, Guest
08-18-2005, 10:40 PM
I provided a customer retention program to Ford dealers and consulted to the manufacturer for ten years, and it included creating a Maintenance Pricing Guide... so I'm all too familiar with those bundles.
The ruling on your warranty specifies that you must maintain the car in order to be eligible for warranty. It doesn't mean you have to do it at a dealership. However, if there was ever an issue then receipts would be important to your case. Moreover, the dealership or Ford technically has to be able to show that a lack of scheduled maintenance was the cause (or direcetly related) of the particular issue.
So take a good look at the bundles and pick & choose. It is true that not all of the items are completely nessecary. lol I recal that when the platinum plugs came out they ended up adding a service to the 50,000 service interval to inspect spark plugs... since the plugs were good for 100,000+ many wondered why they had to inspect them... cause if they weren't pulled out before 100,000kms there is a good chance you may not get them out lol they sieze in there real goode! So choose wisely.
A vehicle up to 2 years old we classified as Pool 1, Pool 2 is 3-5, and Pool 3 is 5+. The profits are generated in Pool 2/3 only... by having those cars return to the dealership for maintenence gets them in the shop to discover possible repairs required. That's where the profit center is. So therein lies the battle between the manufacturer who is able to produce products that can go 10,000kms +/maint visit and the dealers who would only see the customer half as often, reducing the opportunity for repair dramatically. It's actually a pretty interesting and funked up industry.
I have some neat information kicking around somewhere on the revenue associated with maintenance... for instance, the REVENUE for all the scheduled maintenance for a trcuk over the first two years is less than the PROFITS of the initial sale! Think about that. It was always a struggle to implement the retention program throughout the entire dealership because the sales people weren't interested in much following the sale, yet the service department has to babysit/please the customer for years before the profits are there. A good transition from sales to service is a key component to customer retention.
Maybe some of you guys will remember your purchase experience... if they walked you to the service department, introduced you to the service manager and staff and attempted to book your first maintenance appointment then you had a taste of some things we implemented :) And the term interval relating to 5000, 10000, 15000 etc... yeah, they adopted that terminoligy from a few of our presentations lol We were pretty close to securing a deal that would give us Ford's entire dealer fleet as customers to a customer loyalty measurement and retention service... but instead, some company from the US (Neugen or something) won the bid and they ended up being s**t, doing s**t, and packing up the program... ass clowns lol
ahhh, nice trip down memory lane... those were fun days :)
Carey
The ruling on your warranty specifies that you must maintain the car in order to be eligible for warranty. It doesn't mean you have to do it at a dealership. However, if there was ever an issue then receipts would be important to your case. Moreover, the dealership or Ford technically has to be able to show that a lack of scheduled maintenance was the cause (or direcetly related) of the particular issue.
So take a good look at the bundles and pick & choose. It is true that not all of the items are completely nessecary. lol I recal that when the platinum plugs came out they ended up adding a service to the 50,000 service interval to inspect spark plugs... since the plugs were good for 100,000+ many wondered why they had to inspect them... cause if they weren't pulled out before 100,000kms there is a good chance you may not get them out lol they sieze in there real goode! So choose wisely.
A vehicle up to 2 years old we classified as Pool 1, Pool 2 is 3-5, and Pool 3 is 5+. The profits are generated in Pool 2/3 only... by having those cars return to the dealership for maintenence gets them in the shop to discover possible repairs required. That's where the profit center is. So therein lies the battle between the manufacturer who is able to produce products that can go 10,000kms +/maint visit and the dealers who would only see the customer half as often, reducing the opportunity for repair dramatically. It's actually a pretty interesting and funked up industry.
I have some neat information kicking around somewhere on the revenue associated with maintenance... for instance, the REVENUE for all the scheduled maintenance for a trcuk over the first two years is less than the PROFITS of the initial sale! Think about that. It was always a struggle to implement the retention program throughout the entire dealership because the sales people weren't interested in much following the sale, yet the service department has to babysit/please the customer for years before the profits are there. A good transition from sales to service is a key component to customer retention.
Maybe some of you guys will remember your purchase experience... if they walked you to the service department, introduced you to the service manager and staff and attempted to book your first maintenance appointment then you had a taste of some things we implemented :) And the term interval relating to 5000, 10000, 15000 etc... yeah, they adopted that terminoligy from a few of our presentations lol We were pretty close to securing a deal that would give us Ford's entire dealer fleet as customers to a customer loyalty measurement and retention service... but instead, some company from the US (Neugen or something) won the bid and they ended up being s**t, doing s**t, and packing up the program... ass clowns lol
ahhh, nice trip down memory lane... those were fun days :)
Carey
2004 SVT 3Dr
STKVSTDA
STKVSTDA