Zoom, Zoom Gloom from Mazda

As a loyal rotary engine and Mazda RX-7 enthusiast and owner, I was very excited by the release of the new Mazda RX-8 a couple of years ago.

As any enthusisast would do, I purchased the new RX-8 sports car from a local dealership in Santa Monica, CA....fully loaded with about every option available on the car. Frankly, the sales process was extremely straightforward with a minimal amount of confusion and haggling.

I know this is not the normal experience, and the dealership should be given credit for this.

Given that the first rule of customer relationship marketing is "not all customers are equal", I would have thought that the following factors would have been noted by Mazda sales personnel and added to a database:

1.) I am a collector of Mazda RX-7's. (very loyal)
2.) I am relatively young
3.) I am not poor (young executive with good credit)
4.) I just bought the most expensive car they make

However, obviously this type of database is lacking or being poorly utilized. What began as an outstanding experience became a real hassle when it came to the service center portion of the dealership. Few things that happened along the way:

1.) They informed me the "loaner car" was limited in availability. In short you needed to be one of the first couple of customers at the service center at 8 am in the morning.
2.) No appointments were accepted at the service center (I'm too busy to stand in line....that's why I can afford to own three cars)
3.) The service center personnel moved at their own pace and were unbelievably rude
4.) They do not wash/clean the car post-servicing (is this normal?)
5.) They refused to even give me the five minute ride home so I could use my other car

Not to mention there were no questions around "how's your car doing", "are you happy?", "here's a new feature you could add" etc. In other words, it was obvious no one cared.

During my second visit to the service center, I became so frustrated with their indifference in finding me a way home, that I walked over to the sales portion of the dealership, grabbed the guy who sold me the car, and brought him into the service center. On the way he apologized for their treatment of me and informed me that he did not think highly of their service center.

I asked him if his management realized that this might affect his ability to garner repeat customers? He said they were fully aware.

After one of the visit I received a very generic survey from Mazda corp about my service experience. Of course, I gave them a scathing, negative review.

Did anyone call or email me? Did anyone apologize to me?

Nope. Nothing.

My recommendation to Mazda to create a very simple online database. The cost of either building or maintaining such a web application, accessible from every dealer/terminal in world with an Internet connection is minimal. Use this system to generate a "value" rating of each customer, and then treat the customer accordingly.

Putting such a system in place should take no more than three months and require less than 70K/year in system costs....in other words...equal to the amount of revenue generated by the sale of two RX-8's. This amount is also lower cost than a single day of their "zoom-zoom" TV ad campaign.

Once the system is up and running, then begins the process of dealer education. My guess is that Mazda already has some sort of dealer education process in place. This program could piggyback on this program.

I've created and managed a similar process on behalf of a top 20 brand name company....and it is worth the expenditure. (and provides a tremendous foundation for a loyalty plan)

Let's hope someone at Mazda is working on this very concept.