Mazda Academy helps boost the customer experience
Mazda dealers are already seeing the benefits of Mazda UK’s innovative approach to dealer training through the Mazda Academy in a move that has helped reinforce Mazda’s ‘franchise of choice’ credentials.
All 156 dealers took part in an analysis of their staff training needs launched by the Academy earlier this year with input from more than 1,350 customer-facing staff including sales, service and parts personnel. This allowed the Academy to identify what was needed and develop a series of optional and recommended training modules.
“We now have six to eight learning models per job role tailored to individual requirements because the network informed us what they really wanted their training to do,” said Mazda Academy director Bram van den Berg.
This analysis also provided dealer principals and owners with an important insight into the strengths and needs of their own staff, he explained.
“The results highlight a lot of the areas where we believe that certain staff need a better understanding of the business,” said Phillip Diacono, General Manager, TW White & Sons Orpington.
Ashley Robinson, Sales Manager, Bristol Street Motors Redditch agreed: “The new Training Needs Analysis is a great way of identifying which areas of training can be focused on which in turn will increase sales as well as the customer experience.”
The analysis was completed in late autumn and over the last two months more than 500 sales staff have benefitted from the finely-tuned training where 40 learning modules are available. And they have done it without having to leave their dealerships.
The Mazda Academy has embraced the latest communications technology and all training is done through webinars. This has met with the universal approval from the network.
“The whole webinars idea keeps customer facing staff in the dealership which means we have consistent resource levels,” said Diacano. “More importantly, when these sessions are actively participated in the resulting actions can be immediately applied in the dealership.”
Van den Berg explains that selective webinars run quarter by quarter for, sometimes twice a week, up to four times a day and with a maximum of 15 participants for each one. “This allows the question and answer session to be interactive and it also allows us to incorporate feedback from one session into the next.
“We’ve had a great take-up on the webinars with more than 300 people participating – that’s one-in-four and a great start. If people miss a webinar because its fully booked then we can record it and make that available. Every month we review what the requirements are for the next quarter to ensure that we provide learning which is the most applicable to market circumstances and dealer requirements.”
The Mazda Academy is now embarking on its next development which is to link the training with the Customer Experience Programme, otherwise known as mystery shopping: “This has always been seen as very negative so the Academy wants to turn it round by allowing the dealers to review their own results and decide what they want to do. We can then put the right learning module in that dealer’s development plan so we have tailored learning for the network.”
This move has also been welcomed by the dealer network. “It is very important to keep on top of your game to help deliver that outstanding customer experience,” said Robinson.
“The future will bring even more tailored training for the network and we will always look at applying the latest technology”, Van den Berg concludes.
