Women in Automotive: Paving the Way for Change

Mar 21, 2019

How are women business owners and managers driving change in retail automotive and other customer service businesses, and what can dealers and other small-business owners learn from them?

Let’s get right to the point
Working in the trenches of the automotive retail industry on a regular basis, I have found that within the dealership women tend to be naturally more customer-service centric. They are quicker to engage and even tend to be more approachable. The bottom line is that most women are prone to be more empathetic where others may need to work very hard at it, and that quality is extremely important to have within the dealership.

Engagement
A great component of engaging employees and customers in the automotive retail world is empathy and having the ability to walk in the customer’s shoes, being able to drive the operation from the way the customer experiences the dealership and organization.

Don’t get me wrong
Decisions that drive extreme customer loyalty and retention in good times and in the not so good can be found in all great dealers, leaders and managers. However, what we see in female leaders who excel at driving great customer experiences is a keen ability to coach on that important word, empathy.

That empathy is tied in with a holistic approach to life and business.

Women are born multi-taskers
When customers have problems, women often have a broader empathetic understanding, and quickly look for ways to fix not only the initial problem but also other areas surrounding the issue.

Automotive retail is one industry where a woman”s approach to customer service is and will continue to make waves. With so many things going to into the digital world these days, a different shopping experience is emerging and developing. This experience as well as changes in technology, is being driven by women in leadership positions.

While women have always enjoyed gathering and sharing information about products and services, technology is now enabling that curation and conversation, propelling women who know how to harness it.

According to one Gallup survey and report, below are a few more takeaways regarding women’s success in leadership positions:

Women have higher engagement levels likely result in more engaged, higher-performing teams.
They tend to be better leaders than their male counterparts.
Women leaders and mangers tend to be more engaged (41%) than men (35%).
Employees who work for a female manager are 1.26 times more likely than those who work for a male boss to strongly agree that, “There is someone at work who encourages my development.”
Those who work for a woman are 1.29 times more likely than those who don’t to strongly agree with the following: “In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress.”

With so many more statistics available, Gallup and others conclude that organizations should consider putting more of an emphasis on recruiting and promoting more female employees and managers.