Guest commentary: 3 ways dealers can better serve their EV customers

The rapid change in electric vehicle technology is driving more people to dealerships, for advice, education and peace of mind. When the product is new and different, buyers are more likely to work with trusted local experts and to purchase extended warranty coverage to protect themselves from perceived risk.

The first generation of EV shoppers did all their own research and came in knowing what they wanted to buy and what to expect. This is changing as EVs become mainstream. The expectation today is that dealers can provide the same level of information and accuracy to a nervous buyer as they could about a traditional gasoline car.

At the same time, other technology shifts threaten to move consumers further away from dealerships. As online ordering and home delivery become the norm rather than the exception, dealer teams need to adapt their customer-centric approach to meet the changing expectations of their customers.

As an industry, we're on the knife's edge. Dealers can either embrace a customer-centric approach to EV sales, taking advantage of mainstream buyer desires to work with a dealership to help them make informed choices, or they can back away and lose their close and trusted consumer relationships.

What does it look like to be customer-centric in the age of EVs? It means a lot of things — including a lot of what your dealerships is already doing because, after all, EVs are still vehicles — but you've got to start somewhere on the differences, so here are three tactical suggestions.

It's surprising to start here, since most trade-ins for EVs today are internal combustion vehicles, but that's changing, and you should be ready.

Understanding what you're buying, at wholesale or trade-in, is more important for EV customer satisfaction than most realize. The battery has historically been a black box and most dealers ignore its role in a trade-in vehicle's value. Spotting good batteries and offering a premium for them makes your electric trade-in customers feel great about how they cared for their car.

And avoiding (or properly pricing) worn-down batteries on trades is important to protect your reputation on the retail side when you turn around and sell them.

It's also not a black-and-white issue. There are not just "good batteries" and "bad batteries." A used EV that delivers 90 percent of its original range is still a good used car that'll last for years — as long as the price and range expectations of the next buyer match reality

Sales teams that simply tout the EPA range may be setting up customers for disappointment, because range varies widely in the real world when a car is new and even more so when it ages.

A close adviser to Recurrent (and huge supporter of EVs) related his experience that should be taken as a warning. He excitedly took delivery of his new EV last summer in the Boston area. His family often drives up to the mountains of Vermont for the weekend (about 150 miles each way). He had no problem with the range in the summer and fall, but started to notice as the weather turned colder that his remaining range upon arrival was less and less. By the winter ski season, they couldn't make it one way on a single charge. He ended up returning the vehicle within six months. It didn't meet his lifestyle because the EPA range figure doesn't account for temperature-related variances.

With used EVs, it becomes even more important to set buyer expectations because as batteries age, their max range decreases even in warm weather. But if a buyer knows the actual range they'll get — in summer and winter — they've got the right expectations and they can buy the vehicle that fits their driving needs. We've seen that dealers taking this approach do not create unhappy customers or deal with returns.

The post-sale relationship with an EV customer no longer needs to be limited to oil changes and routine maintenance. An EV requires a different maintenance schedule — typically more in the near term and less in the long term — so this is an incredible opportunity to build a deeper relationship founded on education and trust rather than service reminders.

The most important preventive maintenance for an EV battery happens each day with charging, discharging and storage practices. Mainstream drivers, who learned how to care for their internal-combustion vehicles from their parents and grandparents, have yet to develop an inherent understanding of how to be good owners, and the dealership can step in as an active post-sale educator.

A dealership's goal cannot and should not be to "scare the hell out of a customer about their battery in order to get them into the service department" (this is a direct quote we've heard). It's not warranted, it's not credible and it's destructive to the long-term customer relationship.

As a company that interacts daily with tens of thousands of EV shoppers and owners, we've learned a lot about how to do that. For the dealership, there's an incredible opportunity for positive customer interactions that don't cost anything but keep a strong connection between service events and car trade-ins/upgrades.