Ford has found¹ that millions of male and female motorists (another massively extrapolated survey mind you) are taking unnecessary risks by scrimping on essential car maintenance in an attempt to reduce their overall motoring costs. Nearly one in five motorists interviewed had no breakdown cover and 15 per cent say they have skipped or postponed routine car servicing to save money.

This situation is worse among younger drivers including students living on a meagre grant. One in three 18 to 24 year old drivers are making do without roadside assistance, with drivers in London most likely (22 per cent) to take this risk.

Mike Weatherston, Group Marketing Manager at Hendy Ford, said: “Whilst trying to avoid the cost, many of these drivers could regret skipping basic maintenance and roadside cover.”

How true Mike. My concern is that this lack of regular maintenance and servicing could be the cause of an unnecessary accident which injures someone (what price economy then). Few motorists realise that if a car is seen to be unroadworthy, the insurer can withdraw cover as well.

I’d also add two further considerations to this important debate.

1 Many women drivers dread going to garages or dealerships because they don’t consider them to be female friendly places.

2 Many motorist, male and female alike, think that the industry MOT is a safety check for the year when it’s only a snapshot on the day.

Yes they should know these things but if they don’t because the industry doesn’t welcome them (as in 1) or explain this well enough (as in 2), whose fault is that?

The answer is that there is a massive communications gap and opportunity for the industry to get these messages across to the general public not just petrolheads, so that all motorists, including women drivers, have absolutely no doubt in their mind that

• regular car maintenance keeps them, their family, other motorists and potentially pedestrians safe
• annual car servicing doesn’t have to be expensive (depends on the mileage)
• female friendly garages are best (see FOXY Choice)
• members of FOXY Lady Drivers Club can claim free car fitness checks from participating female friendly garages and dealerships.

Surely it’s time for the industry to do something about all this, not just produce more me-too research, year in, year out?

One positive way forward would be for a leading insurer to offer cheap car insurance for women drivers (in this instance) who can prove they have maintained their car regularly by having it checked by a professional foxy approved and female friendly UK garage. I mention this because FOXY could organise this for them of course and our Car Fitness Checks are free. Cars would be safer, motorists would visit appointed garages more often and the best garages are likely to get her work and referrals.

FOXY Steph

Find out about other female friendly UK garages

Find out about motoring advice, a club helpdesk and special offers for foxy lady drivers

¹ = 2,245 UK adults, interviewed by YouGov for Ford Motor Company Limited, between 14-16 April 2010

Surely this is Ford’s opportunity to move back into the Number One position – it’s a known brand, these are good deals and anyone selling a Toyota might be tempted to change brands as things stand…

The following prices are for new car orders confirmed by March 31, bought via a participating Ford dealer,  registered by June 30 and subject to taking out a Ford Options deal (which may be worth taking even if you don’t need the finance).  Other sales offers in 2010 still stand, subject to terms and conditions and similarly guaranteed to the end of June.

The underlying message from Ford is clear – tell us what you want and we’ll be flexible. More flexible in March because the scrappage scheme* has been extended until the 31st but still flexible until the end of June.

NEW FORD PRICES (guidelines at least)

*The scrappage discount of £2,000 also applies to these prices other than the Ka where the additional scrappage discount is reduced to £700.

If you are looking for a female friendly Ford car dealership in Bracknell, Farnborough, Guildford or Wokingham visit FOXY Choice subscriber Inchcape Ford.

If you are looking for a female friendly Ford car dealership in Southampton visit FOXY Choice subscriber Hendy group.

If you are looking for a female friendly Ford car dealership in Cambridge visit FOXY Choice subscriber Marshall Ford.

If you are looking for a female friendly Ford car dealership in Scottish Border towns Peebles and Galashiels visit David Harrison.

Hyundai’s stylish cars, low CO2, low costs and depreciation and 33,000 new customers as testimony to all this during the scrappage scheme (which is rapidly coming to an end by the way)…

But never fear, Hyundai is continuing their own kind of scrappage scheme, offering £2000 in part exchange against seven to ten year old cars in Britain.

And all because they know that foxy lady drivers do not want to have to haggle for a good price when we go out to buy a new car. It’s to do with trust and Hyundai is busy building this relationship.

And they haven’t forgotten their recent customers either.

All the 33,000 customers will get a Hyundai voucher to give to family or friends to save money on a new Hyundai and if they themselves want to upgrade to a 10 registration they can do this for £499 for an i10, £599 for an i20 or £749 for an i30.

Once more, this is what women like to do; assuming feedback is favourable, they are natural networkers and happy to share their good fortune with others.

Women drivers in the Bristol area especially can also look forward to a visit to female friendly Hyundai dealership Berkeley Vale; they have signed the FOXY Promise to ‘never overcharge, patronise or sell customers anything they don’t need or want’ so that is an added bonus for women drivers looking for reassurance when they go to buy a new car.

FOXY Steph

Find out more about a specialist motoring life assistance association for women drivers including information and advice about buying a new car in 2010…

Marshall Motor Group is one of the big industry players in Europe and represents some 22 motor manufacturers through 48 retail outlets.

Cambridge car dealerships Marshall Ford, Marshall Nissan, Marshall Peugeot and Marshall Land Rover have all signed the female friendly FOXY Promise to ‘never overcharge, patronise or sell women services they do not need or want’.

This means we can help them promote theirselves as female friendly to local women drivers (online and offline) because they have met the FOXY Challenge in terms of quality workmanship, value, cleanliness and welcome standards.

As you would expect with a knight of the realm at the helm…

FOXY Steph

“What I know is that if you do work that you love, and the work fulfills you, the rest will come.” Oprah Winfrey

To be genuinely female friendly in my book any garage, dealer or dealership has to be one of the very best there are and be able to prove this to discerning foxy ladies in their area.

It’s all too easy to say ‘we are female friendly’ or ‘we are a good garage’.

What’s to stop bad and unfriendly garages, dealers and dealerships from using this as a marketing ruse? And some do, believe me without understanding what women want (which is not colouring a male product pink…).

Well I thought long and hard about this before I set up FOXY Lady Drivers Club and again before launching the female friendly FOXY Choice garage website last year because whoever sets out these standards must be totally independent and not influenced by an owner or sponsor that has a vested interest in spinning the marketing message in their direction. Which must be tempting.

You could say, for example, that Forte Oils has a vested interest in signing up any garage that will sell a lot of their oil and fill in gaps in their UK network. But they have a brand image to preserve so presumably they are weeding out any chancers as they go…

Similarly you could also say that the Motor Codes service and repair scheme, sponsored as it is by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders who represent the new car manufacturers, have a vested interest in promoting franchised dealerships over independent garages, which this scheme does in the ratio of some 80:20 still, despite knowing that dealerships carrying out garage services will charge motorists up to 30% more than they’d pay otherwise in a quality independent garage. But you could also say it was a brave attempt, they have tried (albeit long after the dealerships got their towels down first) and this ratio might be improving slightly by now…

But the real way to judge a quality or female friendly business is surely by giving the customer (in this context the female motorist) the information they need to make the right buying choice for them. I find that women drivers want to be reassured by ‘feeling’ the quality and customer service in advance, be this in terms of doing their homework online concerning business facilities, services, amenities, awards, values and other female satisfaction levels.

The only problem with testimonials, I find, is that they can so easily be written by anyone or those with a vested interest again, and to order. I know this happens because we follow up the many recommendations we get and very often the surnames are the same as the business owners so it isn’t rocket science to spot this!

The best way for the moment is surely through self-certification where the business promises quality performance which is much higher than just ‘work completed as agreed’, ‘invoices that match quoted prices’ or ‘we use a job checklist’ <yawn>.  These should all be minimum standards in the motor trade and if one thing has shocked me as an industry outsider it was the low standards in this area when our personal safety is at risk, should a mechanic be one screw short in his personal tool kit for example.

What FOXY does instead is to ask garage and dealership subscribers to sign the female friendly FOXY Promise© to ‘never knowingly overcharge, patronise or sell women services they don’t need or want’. They then get marketing materials from FOXY Choice to prove this.

We also share female feedback within the Club, act as a backstop if anyone needs our female ‘welly’ to get things sorted out and ultimately we are prepared to eject any ‘couldn’t care less’ or worse behaviour from our network of female friendly garages and dealerships across the UK.

The next stage will be to prove that a business is female friendly, much in the same way as the OFT Code of Practice (stage one ‘I promise’, stage two ‘I can prove’) and this is what the femalefriendlyapproved.com website will do in 2010 including consultancy advice, female friendly training, a managed and approved status scheme and ongoing monitoring of standards including mystery shopping and a home for stressed out and confused women drivers – all looking for independent and trustworthy advice and tips about where the best value and female friendly businesses are to be found.

FOXY Steph

Take Mazda Europe for example who expect to appoint more than 100 new dealers to its European network this year. That’s some motoring!

And when you know that cars like the MX-5 are so popular with women and see the emphasis they are placing on quality and recognising best practice, this is encouraging news for female friendly service levels for women drivers in future.

Take Mazda Romford, for example, where Amarjit Shokar has just won the Motor Trader Dealer Principal of the Year Award and is described as “the inspirational figurehead”.

Amarjit says that his philosophy is that the company “belongs to every individual that works at the business and that everyone benefits from its rewards.”

Jeremy Thomson, MD of Mazda UK used this award to show how [sic] ‘Mazda is now the franchise of choice for entrepreneurial dealers.’

Needless to say there are new models Mazda2 supermini and Mazda3 to tempt dealers too.

These are all signs of female friendly service levels and car dealerships like Mazda Romford deserve to be promoted by FOXY Choice and then introduced to members of FOXY Lady Drivers Club.

Well done Amarjit and Mazda UK.

FOXY Steph

“Find the good, it’s all around you. Find it, showcase it and you’ll start believing in it.” Jesse Owens, Gold Medal Olympic Track Athlete.

PS   I’d also like to mention Accountant Julie Oliver who is Group Finance Director at the Mitchell Group, Cheshire Oaks, Chester. This is a multi-franchised dealership selling Lexus, Mazda and Skoda cars. Once again quality will shine and the good new car dealerships deserve to be recognised as female friendly, head and shoulders above the rest in a very competitive market-place. Well done Julie.

I hope you are doing well – many independent garages are I find, and perhaps that is because their aftersales prices are often (but not always) cheaper than dealers, combined with the fact that it has been cool to defer buying new cars for a while.  Pre-scrappage I agree but probably true during the rest of 2009, even if there might be a mini car sales bonanza come the summer.

Or are the independent garages marketing themselves more effectively than many dealers or franchised car dealerships?

FOXY certainly has more independent garages promoting themselves as female friendly than new car dealerships but there again new car dealerships have been more affected by the recession because of the down in new car sales. That and the fact that Ford, Peugeot and Mazda, at least, expect their  dealerships to subscribe to the Motor Industry Service and Repair Code even though these dealerships must surely exceed these minimum standards and may well face more complaints as a result in areas where cost conscious motorists have no independent garage choice to meet their needs.

Perhaps it is because most manufacturers are new car sales oriented and few seem to appreciate that the aftersales function is the backdoor into finding new customers that aren’t on their database yet? And maximising workshop income of course.

We find that many Dealer Principals have told Sales and Aftersales Managers to cut all costs including marketing. Others are definitely adopting a ‘let’s wait and see’ approach and of course it’s always easier to do nothing… but is that wise when others are beavering away behind the scenes…?

Fortunately some dealerships (and definitely internet car dealers) are taking a much more bullish stance and using any down time as a sales opportunity to position themselves in a different light, come the good times.

I also see companies quietly buying up struggling competitors and cherry-picking the best local employees that may have been laid off by their competitors – qualified technicians in particular.

These businesses know the good times will pay back this investment in spades and make up for the temporary cashflow shortfall.

They also know and are reacting to the knowledge that customers, including women drivers, are expecting and seeing deals wherever they go. This makes them more likely to shop around than ever, using the interweb, to sample other value-for-money products and services.

This makes a recession a fantastically fertile time to win new customers if you get out there with the right sales message. And if you are not there you send out the wrong message to customers…

I have just read an excellent article written by an American PR company saying things after my own heart in this context, recommending that businesses banish sayings like “but we’ve always done it this way” and replace them with “how can we do different things” and “how can we add more value to the customer experience”.

Gentlemen dealers, you are looking at a UK gift horse marketing solution in the heading of this blog.

You should be marketing to more women drivers. We are the ones that either buy or influence most of the big ticket purchases.  We want to know what makes you better than the rest and that you really do care about us in an industry that, quite frankly, is seen to fall woefully short in so many female customer service areas.

Whereas if you work with a female brand like FOXY you’ll learn to understand women drivers better AND your male customers won’t think that you have had a barand personality change or gone frilly overnight!

For example (shameless sales plug follows…) if you can sign the female friendly FOXY Promise we can start to market you as female friendly, online and in your local community. You get your own female friendly website presence (which you can measure) as well as a Female Friendly Marketing Pack and the opportunity to promote yourself to members of FOXY Lady Drivers Club.

With prices from £60 for a basic (not measurable) entry to £180 plus VAT for a 12 months unique and fully inclusive package what are you waiting for? What’s not to go for it!

FOXY Steph

“Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well”
Josh Billings

See which local garages, dealers and new car dealerships are listed as female friendly already…