Playbook, car dealership
The front of a dealership is a display, not a car park
A visitor turning in sees a hundred cars and assumes parking is the least of their problems. Almost all of that tarmac is stock, the dozen spaces that are not are usually behind the building, and the door they want is frequently not the glass one at the front. This matters most at half past eight in the morning, when a queue of cars for the workshop is forming and somebody is circling the display looking for a gap.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for location and parking holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- Nearly all the visible parking on a dealership site belongs to the stock, so a site with a hundred cars on it may have a dozen customer spaces, which is the reverse of what somebody driving in reasonably expects.
- The service entrance is usually not the showroom door. It tends to sit at the side or the rear next to the workshop, and the signage for it is written for people who already know it is there.
- A car being left for work has to go somewhere specific rather than anywhere: a drop off bay, a queue in front of the workshop shutters, or a key box for an early arrival, and one parked in the wrong place blocks the movement of stock for the rest of the morning.
- Some dealerships hold part of their stock at a second location or a compound, so a customer who has driven to the address on the website to see one car may be several miles from where that car is standing.
How it arrives
- where do i park when i bring my car in for a service
- is the service entrance the same as the showroom
- where do i leave the keys if i drop it off early
- is there parking for customers
- do you have another site
- can i leave my car with you overnight
What has to be indexed for this to work
| The site described as two entrances rather than one address | Which door is which, what is written above each, which road each is approached from, and which one a service customer wants. A postcode gets somebody to the site and then leaves them to guess, which is the point at which they ring. |
|---|---|
| Where a car being left for work actually goes | The bay, the queue or the marked area, plus the early drop off arrangement including whether there is a key box and what to write on the envelope. Specific enough to act on in the dark at ten to eight. |
| Customer parking stated as a number and a place | How many spaces there are and where they sit relative to the two entrances. Six spaces behind the workshop is a genuinely useful answer, because it tells somebody arriving at a busy hour to allow for not getting one. |
| Any second site or storage compound, and what is kept there | So a customer travelling to view a specific vehicle is told in advance that the address on the website may not be where it is standing, and asks before they set off rather than after. |
The reply
Service has its own entrance, which is not the showroom door: it is round the side by the workshop, and our directions page describes the turning [1]. Customer parking is a small marked area rather than the main forecourt, since almost everything you can see from the road is stock [2]. If you are dropping off before we open there is a key box arrangement, and the page sets out where it is and what to write on the envelope [3]. Some of our stock is held at a second location, so if you are coming to see one particular car it is worth checking with sales before you travel.
It corrects the showroom assumption in the first clause, because everything after it is useless to somebody standing at the wrong door. Parking is given as a place with an explanation attached, since telling people the forecourt is stock is what stops them parking in it. The second site is mentioned unprompted because a wasted journey is the expensive failure here.
Where it stops
The trigger. The customer asks where a specific car is standing, whether they can leave a vehicle overnight, or wants an arrangement the directions page does not describe.
I cannot see where a car is or agree an arrangement for leaving one. Give me your name, an email and the registration and the team will confirm before you travel.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never tell a customer to leave a car in a space the material does not name as customer parking, since the rest of the site is stock and a car left in it gets moved by somebody with a trade plate.
- Never say a key can be posted or left somewhere unless there is a published arrangement describing exactly where, because a key pushed under a shutter is a genuine loss.
- Never confirm which site a particular vehicle is standing at, which is a stock question rather than a directions question.
- Never answer a parking question with a reassurance, because somebody circling a full forecourt at half past eight is already late for a drop off slot.
Questions
- Is the second site really worth mentioning to everybody?
- Mention it to anybody travelling to see a specific car, which is most of the people asking for directions. A buyer who drives an hour to an address where the car is not standing has a story they will tell, and it costs one sentence to prevent.
- Can it tell somebody whether there will be a space when they arrive?
- No. It has no view of the site and no idea how busy the morning is. It can say how many spaces exist and where, which lets somebody arriving at a peak hour make their own arrangements.
- Should the key box arrangement be public?
- The existence of it and the procedure, yes, because that is what a customer needs at ten to eight. Anything that identifies which box or how it opens does not belong on an indexed page, and the material should stop short of it.
Keep reading
- Everything for a car dealershipStock moves daily and finance adverts are regulated, so this is mostly about what a dealership assistant must never claim to know.
- Handling location and parking in generalWhich entrance, where to park, the step free route, the nearest stop. Genuinely useful information that is almost never written down well.
- Bought online or bought here, and why that decides everythingA car bought without seeing it sits under different rules from one driven off the forecourt, and neither of them is a change of mind policy.
- Money down on one specific car, and what it actually buysA reservation fee takes one registration off sale for a few days. Whether it comes back is on the form and is not settled in a chat window.
- Getting into the showroom, and getting into the carTwo unrelated questions share one word here: getting into the building, and whether a car can be adapted for the person who will drive it.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.