What drives a person to fall in love with their car? Or, perhaps more importantly, what makes new car buyers hate their latest acquisition?

Following a growing concern from car dealerships, the US-based National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) was urged to explore ways to develop higher levels of customer loyalty. Both dealers and car manufacturers expressed the need for the same solution: a systematic follow-up survey that would take place within 24 hours of the transaction to rapidly identify and address dissatisfied customers.

To implement the new system, NADA called on Synovate to create a survey system to address auto dealers’ concerns. The solution? NADA-24 – the first dealer-driven overnight research tool to help resolve customer problems.

“Our partnership with automobile dealers and NADA was a natural fit,” says Robert Philpott, CEO of Synovate Americas. “We have conducted automotive research for more than 25 years. However, the creation of NADA-24 is truly an exciting advancement.”

NADA-24 uses a newly created system in which customers are interviewed by telephone the day after their visit to the dealer. Each interview takes place in under two minutes, and dealers then receive responses to three key questions about the dealer experience. A recording of each customer’s comments can then be listened to via any computer.

“Manufacturers really don’t give us good information on what our core customers are saying,” says Wes Lutz, Extreme Dodge, chairmanof the dealer group that helped to form NADA-24. “Getting unfiltered customer comments is so powerful to the dealer.”

The 24-hour reversion of data gives dealers the knowledge and ability to respond quickly. And if a customer reports severe dissatisfaction the system goes one step further – an alert message is sent back to the dealership during the interview, detailing the problem and offering follow-up instructions to the dealership.

“NADA-24 is the first programme of this type that is truly designed by dealers for dealers,” says Bob Williams, president of NADA-Link, the NADA/Synovate joint venture that operates NADA-24. “I’ve worked with dealers for 32 years and I’ve seen many programmes come and go. This, however, is the only one ever designed and run by the dealers themselves.”

In addition to immediate customer feedback, related data about the dealership itself is available for problem identification and resolution. And it didn’t take dealers long to see the benefits of the new service. In the first six months, NADA-24 had handled more than 30,000 calls

“This is not just a follow-up system,” says Williams. “I see it both as a survival guide and a revenue enhancer for the dealer. It helps increase sales and fixed operations grosses, and that’s what dealers really need today.”