Inside Access: Reporter’s Notebook
Ramping Up the Customer Experience
At Ramp Motors in Port Jefferson, NY, more than 70 percent of business comes from return customers and referrals. “It’s all about relationship marketing,” says Barbara Gasparik, Standards of Excellence leader for the car and truck dealership. The company has a database of about 30,000 customers, which it has recently centralized to share information across the organization. Ramp thinks of customer relationships not based on products, but with a customer-centric point-of-view. “In one family, the wife may have a Chevy Malibu, and the husband may own a dump truck for his business,” she says. “There are many ways a customer interacts with us, and we want to understand that.”
The dealership has six locations and 150 employees, so the company installed a Quickbase system from Intuit to manage sales and service by customer, not product. Ramp now manages prospects, dealer information, finance, delivery, and service through the system. Emails automatically get sent internally to relevant employees when a customer interacts with any touchpoint, so the entire organization is on the same page as the customer. “Salespeople know when customers are in for service,” she says. “When leases or loans are coming due, we proactively contact the customer.”
Ramp can also measure customer satisfaction, which is key to long-term success. “Chevrolet gives us very high customer satisfaction goals to hit, but we want to exceed them,” Gasparik says. Data is analyzed, and customers with low scores get special attention, such as personal phone calls, to help the relationship. “Now we’re one big team, which gives us a competitive advantage.”
– Elizabeth Glagowski
Filed under: Quickbase
