Car Pros dealership group emphasizes the human element of car sales

The industry disruption that followed the COVID-19 pandemic, which left dealership lots bare and shoppers struggling to find cars, has turned the buying process on its head.

"Customer service everywhere has gotten significantly worse since the pandemic," said Matthew Phillips, CEO of Car Pros, a dealership group operating seven stores in California and Washington.

"Organizations that can get customer service right have a unique opportunity to especially 'wow' customers, because people in general and in the dealerships — their expectations have been lowered," he said.

That's why Phillips — a second-generation car dealer who spent the bulk of his career on the operations side as CFO and in human resources, IT and risk management — is now focused on elevating customer service across the retail group. And he's doing it by training staff to simply listen with empathy to understand what each customer's needs and wants are.

Phillips graduated from the University of Puget Sound with a bachelor's degree in accounting and finance in 1997, then earned an MBA at Cornell SC Johnson College of Business in 2016. He recently earned a master's degree in arts in organizational psychology from Columbia University.

His father, who started Car Pros — initially as a used-car lot — retired in 2018 and Phillips took the helm the following year.

Car Pros operates a Hyundai store in Lacey, Wash., and a Kia store in Tacoma, Wash. It also has a Honda dealership in El Monte, Calif., and four more Kia stores in Southern California. All seven are top performers in their markets. Car Pros Kia Glendale, Car Pros Kia Huntington Beach and Car Pros Kia Moreno Valley were all named to the brand's President's Club this year.

Despite the accolades for sales performance and strong marks in customer satisfaction and retention, Car Pros' executive management set out to enhance customer service for 2023.

"It wasn't as much about fixing something that was broken as it was 'How do we just get better and push ourselves to the next level?' " Phillips said. "We know we care about customers, but sometimes we get so busy trying to give them good service and solve their problem that we lose sight of making that human connection."

The group's companywide initiative, called HEART, stands for hear, empathize, acknowledge, reassure and tell and take action. It basically boils down to listening closely, feeling what the customer is apprehensive about and fostering a less stressful buying environment.

HEART draws on the idea that empathy should be at the forefront for team members as they work to solve problems for customers. The mindset is all about taking the organization to the next level and understanding what customers expect in this post-pandemic environment of economic uncertainty, Phillips said.

He cited the recent wave of car thefts around the country involving recovered Hyundai and Kia vehicles.

"When a customer calls in to get their vehicle repaired after it's been stolen, we can make the appointment and fix their vehicle, but we want to make sure we're relating to them as someone who has just been through a rattling and traumatic event," he said.

The idea of establishing a training program centered around empathy did not spin out of Phillips' postgraduate business education, but from his study of psychology at Columbia.

"We're trying to move from change 'done to' people to change 'done by' people," he said, adding that the concept is a more inclusive vs. top-down approach.

The group displays posters outlining the HEART program throughout each dealership. Every meeting starts with a 15-minute around-the-horn discussion on how the program impacts the professional life of employees.

HEART goes beyond engaging with customers. Many team members report finding success using its tools to interact with their managers and coworkers.

Phillips measures the program's efficacy by studying negative reviews on Yelp, Google and DealerRater.

"It's a way for me to hear from the customers who didn't buy or chose not to do business with us after visiting," he said.

"Through March, our total dealershipwide negative reviews are down about 33 percent," he added. "And that metric shows me that we're having success."

Reviews from customers who did buy often lean more positively, and are easier to come by thanks to the follow-up, factory mechanisms and surveys that are already in place.

"We're not actively trying to get positive online reviews," Phillips said. "But we just want as many data points as we can get to find out where we can do better."

He said the group's stores are really embracing the initiative.

"What's been really exciting is the way it caught fire," Phillips said. "I've never run an initiative before where I've seen the buy-in happen so quickly and organically.

"HEART really resonated," he said, "and I think it's because everyone in our organization truly does care."