Car manufacturers and sellers have perfected a level of customer service and innovation that all retailers should strive for.

Motor cars, the ultimate mass market big-ticket item have been enjoying a real sales boom, providing an exemplary object lesson in retailing to anyone not in a catatonic trance.

The first half of 2015 delivered the best figures the automotive industry has achieved this century and June was the 40th consecutive month of growth in car sales, with this trend set to continue.

These motoring marketeers are clearly benefiting from the growing feel-good factor and easy and innovative credit options, such as the hugely popular personal leasing schemes that give certainty to the cost of car ownership.

Customer service

What stands out to me, however, is the focus and emphasis by the car manufacturers and their retail dealers on the quality of customer service.

Customer satisfaction has become their priority, with external professional policing liberally using mystery shoppers and in-depth surveys; and with the manufacturer effectively incentivising the retailer with monster bonuses that reflect their success in delivering customer satisfaction.

But we have been caring for our customers’ wants and needs too.

“Consumer satisfaction clearly exceeds simply a good point of sale experience and is a great deal more than price alone”

Lord Kirkham

Listening to them and training our staff to be proactive, even to smile warmly, ask open-ended questions and encourage bolt-ons before closing the sale.

Clearly this is nowhere near enough. The motor industry has experienced a seismic change, starting with flexible manufacturing systems that allow the consumer phenomenal choice.

On the Ford Focus alone you can choose over two million variants, comprising different combinations of engines, body styles, trims and colours.

Do we possess the flexibility and supplier support to offer the personalisation to motivate our staff and stimulate our customers into instant action? Or do we simply direct them on what to buy because it is easily manufactured or readily sourced?

Exciting products

Surely there is potential to design and create exciting new products that the customer is not yet aware they cannot live without?

So much in our supermarkets, corner shops, high streets and malls is the same old, same old – unexciting products in jaded formats.

While displays and service might well be good, motivation to buy and to come back again requires something greater – the generation of emotion and excitement.

Consumer satisfaction clearly exceeds simply a good point of sale experience and is a great deal more than price alone: that huge fiction the supermarkets invariably fall back on.

With the world awash with cash, the reassuring stability of a majority Government sympathetic to business, and consumer confidence on the up and up, a rare opportunity exists to be bold, entrepreneurial and make that transformational step change.

We do not have to leave innovation to the motor industry.

Safety first is no longer good enough. Let us satisfy our own customers with something striking, different and 21st century. And then perhaps we can experience the emotion and excitement of a growing bottom line.

  • Lord Kirkham is the founder of DFS