Making Spanish-speakers feel at home

When AutoNation put Tania Eubanks in charge of a Ford dealership in Houston four years ago, only one salesperson spoke Spanish.

That didn't make sense to Eubanks in a city where Hispanics are the largest and fastest-growing ethnic group, accounting for 44 percent of its 2 million residents in the 2010 census.

"We weren't catering to those customers. We weren't prepared for them," Eubanks said. "If I wanted to make a big impact right away, our main focus was the Hispanic market."

Today, about three quarters of the employees at AutoNation Ford Gulf Freeway are bilingual or speak only Spanish. More than half of the 130-member staff is Hispanic, and nearly all of the store's managers speak Spanish. Eubanks brought in staffers from other AutoNation stores and from the outside; an ad on a Spanish radio station soliciting bilingual salespeople got great results, she said.

Eubanks, a native of Ecuador who learned English after immigrating to Texas as a teenager, said she wants Spanish-speaking customers to feel comfortable at every step of a purchase, as well as when they come back for service.

"In every department we have somebody who speaks Spanish," she said. "We were literally covering every single angle of it, because if the salesperson speaks Spanish but the finance person doesn't, you lose all the great things that you did at the beginning." 

The strategy has produced clear results. Sales have more than doubled, while profits quadrupled, she said. Business has increased throughout the operation, turning the store into AutoNation's top dealership for finance and insurance revenue per vehicle and one of the region's top sellers of certified used vehicles, Eubanks said. 

The dealership, which ranked around 170th among Ford retailers in terms of sales when Eubanks became general manager in 2012, was 20th last year. It was the sixth most-profitable Ford dealership in the country, she said, and it won Ford's Triple Crown award, which recognizes stores that concurrently rank among the best in sales, service and customer satisfaction, for three years in a row. (Only 21 of more than 3,000 Ford Motor Co. dealerships won the Triple Crown in 2015.) 

AutoNation, which Eubanks said was initially skeptical of her heavy investment in courting Hispanics, now is using the dealership as a model it hopes to replicate elsewhere. 

Besides breaking down language barriers, the dealership has taken steps to build its presence in the area's Hispanic community by sponsoring and participating in cultural events. It belongs to the local Latin American chamber, Camara de Empresarios Latinos de Houston, and advertises heavily on Hispanic TV and radio. 

The store's e-commerce and business development manager, Moses Ballesteros, often takes vehicles, banners and credit applications to concerts and golf tournaments to start building relationships there instead of waiting for shoppers to walk in the door. 

"We do a lot more than just having a full bilingual crew," Ballesteros said. "We go to them. We try to expose ourselves, share the culture to show that they are welcome and try to create more shared experiences." 

Ballesteros said it's not just about having staffers who can speak Spanish with Hispanic customers. He credits Eubanks, an Automotive News 40 Under 40 honoree in 2014, with putting talented people in the right jobs to make the dealership succeed.

"It doesn't happen overnight," he said. "It's a lot of coaching and training involved." 

Early on, Eubanks said she had to counter some common perceptions about Hispanic car buyers -- that they have bad credit, don't pay their bills or won't have the necessary paperwork. 

Now that Hispanics account for such a large portion of the store's customer base, she said loyalty rates are extremely high and that satisfied buyers send family and friends there in large numbers. 

"One of the great things about Latinos," said Eubanks, who started selling cars at age 22 in El Paso, Texas, and is now 40, "is that if you treat them right they're the kind of people who will share their experience with other people. 

"You're attracting everybody else that they surround themselves with."