Pub. 1 2019 Issue 2

Many dealerships do spend time training staff, but the main focus is on making the monthly sales numbers so manufacturers and management will stay happy. Employees sometimes come and go quickly, meaning they take any lessons they’ve learned with them when they walk out the door the last time. extremely large dealerships, it may even be nec- essary to assign this important work to more than one person. • Having a designated compliance officer prevents a conflict of interest. What is the conflict of inter - est? Someone who is protecting the dealership is going to focus on making sure problems are re- solved correctly. Someone whose salary is deter- mined by commissions may choose to overlook those problems. • Customers like having a clear process for resolving complaints, so having a compliance officer is also a way to improve the dealership’s reputation. According to a 2016 Total Dealer Compliance survey: • More than 30 % of those who were surveyed said they had submitted a complaint to a dealership but were unhappy with how the complaint was resolved. • More than 50 % of those who complained were convinced the dealerships were not interested in fixing the problem they’d reported. • More than 60 % said that they were less likely to buy a car from any dealership that hadn’t created a complaint resolution process. • Almost 75 % preferred making their complaint by phone instead of over the internet. Having a compliance officer clearly has two benefits: • It either prevents legal problems or solves them while they are still small. • It improves the dealership-customer relationship. Train the dealership’s staff Many dealerships do spend time training staff, but the main focus is on making the monthly sales numbers so manufacturers and management will stay happy. Em- ployees sometimes come and go quickly, meaning they take any lessons they’ve learned with them when they walk out the door the last time. The result of running a dealership this way is a bad one. No dealership can be as profitable as possible if it is only focused on short-term gains. However, there are two ways to improve the situation: 1. Good employees are valuable, and the longer they stay with a dealership, the more valuable they Issue 2 2019 11 CFADA.ORG