de Nysschen Poises Cadillac Dealers For Revolutionary Change

Haven't we heard statements to this effect before? Get ready for "the NEW Cadillac"? The rebirth? The reinvention? Yada yada. Isn't that what we're seeing today with the Origami designs, with their flat surfaces, sharp and straight paper-like sheet-metal creases?

Nysschen WILL SHUT IT DOWN....

De Nysschen is addressing something that is a very serious problem. For years dealers complained about product but they have great cars to sell now with at strong pipeline. This isn't about Cadillac its about the dealers and their pathetic customer service and customer experience. The bozo that doesn't want to do roadside assistance for example, that should be a requirement for having a franchise. Mercedes Roadside is exceptional vs Cadillac having 2nd party contractors when they do offer the svc. Having a luxury car isn't about how much money I can spend on a vehicle its what the experience means in addition to my purchase. The new CT-6 is a fantastic car I'm really considering it in the fall time frame but am concerned about more crappy service once they have my $$. There are many naysayers here that complain about Johan but this is really an important step that needs to ripple thru their entire network, one standard regardless of location or how many cars they sell... a consistently excellent customer experience.

PREACH!

People are looking at the CT6 and going "meh". Cadillac has two issues. The first is customer experience / service / relations that has to be addressed, but--ironically--their second problem is product. They have great products that in no way create that "OMG I gotta have that" kind of response. The CT6 is a great car but it does not stand apart from the CTS as something truly wonderful.

Art and Science was a bold move.

De Nysschen has said styling will be changed through evolution rather than revolution because revolution means that everything else in the dealer is suddenly outdated.

I think revolution is EXACTLY what Cadillac MUST do. The new Escalade should usher in a new styling language that has NOTHING to do with Art and Science and then in quick succession then need an SUV between the XT5 and the Escalade. Name it please.

A two SUV styling revolution would be the way to g because it is the SUVs that carry Cadillac, not their forgettable looking sedans.

So in February I turn in my leased ATS and call a different dealer on a Monday because I cannot stand the svc at the one I got the car from. I call on Mon, then again on Tue, then again on Wed, to set up an appt w/the appropriate person to turn in the car. Finally at 2:00pm on Thursday I write an email to the owner of the store and told him about his crappy service. The guy who's job it was to receive lease turn ins has not returned my call. Why do I need to call HIM, 3 times only to not get a return call? So the owner called me and left a VM as did one of his minions. I missed both calls and they never tried back. So last week I thought I'll take my wifes GLK to the Cad dealer and have them put the Nitrogen in the tires. I'll see how they respond. So I call them and make an appt and ask the person to have a tech call me, I have 3 questions. So no one follows up or returns my call and I take the car elsewhere for service. I sent another email to the owner again, with my previous email below and have yet to hear a peep. I let him know that giving them X-thousands of dollars for a new car only to receive crappy svc after the sale was a dead end in the luxury biz and that his store needed to seek Tier 1 status on the upcoming Project Pinnacle. We'll see but though I like the CT-6 I absolutely do not want a headache when it needs svc and this seems like writing on the wall... so why go there? http://gmauthority.com/blog/2016/06/cadillac-project-pinnacle-dealer-plan-gets-finishing-touches

@xjug1987a The dealer was an idiot. We typically initiate contact on leases that are ending about two months in advance BECAUSE we want to get the customer to lease again. That window allows us to find the exact car a customer wants.

Typically, I'm the guy that fields the complaints if a salesman or someone has displeased the customer. To the customer I am calm, soothing, and I bust my balls to create a solution that makes the customer happy. The staff knows (1) I do not want to be blindsided by an issue and (2) if you do something that angers a customer, then your balls get crushed.

One of the dealer interests I "inherited" had salesmen standing out front like vultures waiting to pounce on carrion flesh. Some of them would even smoke cigarettes while they waited for customers.

These days they know (1) not to stand out front, (2) to dress well, (3) no smoking, (4) no smell of smoke on clothes, and (5) no bad breath.

Another thing that send me into a rage was the dry rape of "I know I can make you a deal today" or worse "We have great deals that are a special today."

If we have a special deal--largely a function of factory incentives to the public and or to dealers--yes there may be a time limit, but I do not want that said.

We also did something radical that has worked tremendously. We know what our bottom-line price is for a car and we put that discretely onto the salesman's screen. If the customer offers a number higher, the salesman agrees to the price right there and then.

The real negotiation is over the trade in, because quite frankly we don't want most of what drives in and on financing.

But even so, we have worked hard to reduce the buy time. One dealer typically made a customer wait 2-3 hours when literally there is no reason for that.

If you know your finances, we can have you in and out in 45 minutes to an hour quite often. if we're busy it takes longer because of inputting things into the contract in finance, but AGAIN that was fixable. You train people to do the inputting and move personnel to suit the demand of the traffic of sales.

Matt, I could go on and on about the 2 Caddy dealers here in my very large city in Ga. I had the car in for a recall and I got it back filthy! They had to take the dash off and there were finger prints all over the dash, inside windshield, the floors were dirty, and the exterior was filthy and the steering wheel leather was all shiny from the greasy mechanics paws. It never felt the same. So I buy (lease) a $49K ATS 3.6 Premium and this is how they treat my car? I was astounded! They don't always wash the car prior to return but when I got my Mercedes back it was always washed and vacuumed. MB always has a loaner whereas Cadillac didn't always have one and I often had to schedule the appt around when they'd have a loaner for me. One just built a new showroom w/white marble counters in the svc area but you still have to stand there in line just like a "pretty Chevy" dealer. MB you sit in nice little offices and on a winters morning that is nice. The other has 3 desks we stand in front of, in line. I feel like a kid standing there while my teacher clicks out a bad report on their computer. The caliber of people at both dealers really just isn't very high, IMO. One seems to hire their kids to work the svc desks and my sales person at the other, smokes. I took back a leased car there for my late father. I'd called the dealer earlier in the week and I told them I'd be there first thing on Sat am and was told no problem by 3 people. So I get there and the Sales Manager of the store tells me they don't do lease turn ins on Saturday. I got in his face and said if I was turning in a lease and getting a new car would you take it and of course it was yes. If that was my store I'd have fired him on the spot, I was a freaking customer! It’s as if the store exists to employ them vs to provide me with a service or experience. I like the new CT-6, a lot but don't want to deal with these turkeys after the sale, there is no need for the frustration. I mentioned in my 2 emails to the one owner that I have friends at GM in the C-Suite but they simply don't care I suppose. I'll certainly not purchase a car from either ever again...

@Xjug1987a There simply is no excuse for ANY dealer not to provide excellent customer care for any customer and yes there should be premium perks for premium car ownership.

We're experimenting with flatbed service where we pick up your car at your convenience, service it, wash and vacuum it, and return it to you. If there is a charge that can be handled by the driver and an app or the customer can pay electronically in other ways too.

Granted, you don't get the flatbed service if you're a Spark owner, but we do wash and vacuum ALL cars that come through the service areas at our stores. Hell, we wash and vacuum cars we evaluate for trade in whether or not the customer buys. As an aside, we have state-of-the-art water reclamation systems that filters and reuses soapy water separate from rinse water so we are being mindful of the drought in Californication. The gray water is ultimately used to water our landscaping.

We also flatbed for our retired customers at their request.

I'm not a fan of the desk standing thing either. That's how most of our stores do it, though we do have quite comfortable waiting areas and the capacity to seat customers and go to them if necessary. I will raise this issue at our next meeting to be mindful not only about the quality of service but the speed.

At one store, we are playing around with greeters who welcome you, ask if you have an appointment, and if you do they enter your name into a customer waiting queue, and walk you to the waiting area. Because the customer is in the system, the service writer can grab an iPad, ask the customer if there are additional issues, get the car into the active service queue.

Our courtesy drivers--where loaners are out of the question--also use software that can plot a map to deliver a car load of customers efficiently back home.

I hate bad coffee, fake cream, and styrofoam cups. This is why we make great coffee, provide 1/2 and 1/2 or milk, and dealer branded mugs. Water is complimentary.

The people behind the cashier's desk oversee morning coffee because they simply aren't going to be doing any money changing at 7:00am.

Because the customer's car is also tagged to the salesperson who originally concluded the sale, we expect our sales people to pass through and greet their customers IF they are on the clock. Our star sales people place a phone call to the customer after service has been concluded.

All customers should be treated with great care and respect because that's how you get them to come back.

Making money requires work, but pissing it away is stunningly easy.

In too many places Cadillac is cross branded with Chevrolet or Buick/GMC rather than in stand-alone dealers.

GM needs to start with stand-alone dealers for Cadillac, then make Corvette a sports car brand sold through Cadillac dealers.

Buying Jeep from FCA and folding Jeep into the Cadillac/Corvette franchises would be icing on the cake.

A Cadillac retail space should be an event or an experience rather than a dealer lot you go to to buy a car.

I've always been mystified as to why the design or dealers puts the showroom well behind the stock of car parked out front.

Why not have a showroom that begins at the curb with large expanses of glass to show off vehicles as enticement?

Gobs of cars out front says "Hey buy from us we got a lotta crap to sell.

Behind my idea for a premium dealer, I'd have a courtyard with more models displayed with perhaps a barista or occasionally live music and hors-d'oeuvres to encourage people to spend time there.

People with money expect to be treated well and Cadillac's current dealership model isn't what they want.

Rusnak in Pasadena and Fletcher Jones in Newport Beach are two good models as to how to treat monied customers the way they want to be treated.

Totally agree with MD. If Cadillac really wants to compete with MB & BMW, the customer experience part of the process needs to be addressed. Crunching dealer numbers is one thing. But upping the image of the Cadillac brand through the eyes of the customer is key. Cadillac has the goods to compete with the Germans; now start acting the part with a better showroom and service experience.

While I agree that the customer experience needs to be addressed - in my life - the worst experiences I have received were IN MERCEDES dealerships. In fact - I actually left four of them with the money to buy a car in my pocket but it took going to the fifth dealer to be treated well enough to actually purchase. In my area - the Cadillac dealerships are new - huge - with great customer service - loaner cars - expansive waiting lounges - and are well ahead of the Mercedes dealers on the same stretch of Highway. However - I still would have preferred a home town locally owned dealership - which - while most were not as fancy -you actually talked to someone who "owned" the place. At my brother's Lincoln Mercury dealership - HE was the service manager. I still don't believe a customer will ever be as comfortable at a mega-dealership - they simply cannot offer the personal touch. It is a shame that the locally owned dealerships are going away.

@TomM so much depends on the owner.

The local Mercedes dealer was purchased in the late 1960s by the same family that owns it today and the family is known to put a huge effort behind customer satisfaction.

They acquired the Subaru franchise when Subaru was about to leave the market due to a dealer/owner that had so completely pissed off Subaru owners that sales were DEAD. The family restored Subaru in the market. It's been theirs now for at least 20 years.

In this market, Cadillac is a "Tier 5" dealer and we'd like it to recast it as a "Tier 1/2" store ultimately.

Cadillac needs VOLUME and a sports car or a big coupe is exactly what NOT to do.

The Escalade is a fantastic product, but it needs more distancing from Chevy despite its success.

Cadillac needs an SUV one size smaller than the Escalade and one size larger than the dumbly named XT5.

The on-again-off-again-on-again small RWD platform could net a great CLA competitor for Cadillac and be amortized by a Chevy "Chevelle" or "Nova" variant as GM's "GT86" to slot under the Camaro.

I'd say pull a Lexus and create a stunningly gorgeous prototype and then produce it intact looking like lexus did with the LC.

Do that with a "bespoke" Cadillac Traverse and it would make Cadillac an event.

Then repeat the stunning-show-car-becomes-street-car enthusiasm.

Buick should have produced the Avenir and Avista intact.

Completely agree with xjug, wcbrown & Matt and as usual your dealer concept is spot on. Do you think the Cadillac café, or whatever they're calling it in NYC is a prelude to rolling that out? I do think Cadillac should get their own version of the Vette Matt, but really focused on luxury with of course the V-Sport and V levels, just as the GT-R should be an Infiniti. The XLR was not a bad car there was just no commitment to it. They should have done a next gen and made it beautiful and exceptionally luxurious inside, a REAL SL competitor. Cad has toyed with this in the Allante and XLR but the commitment was always lacking and each, died. The current Vette is state of the art and a gorgeous modern touring convertible like http://airows.com/automotive/1965-ferrari-275-gts would be something the market doesn't have. The current SL is just plain ugly (2017 gets better) and hideously expensive. Cadillac, now is a good time to commit to a "gorgeous" new GT convertible or do you have a mid-engine's monster up your sleeve? Still this idea is a no brainer...

@W124E320 We are searching for real estate....