Hot Hatches | Adam McKenzie

I’m a bit of a rev head; I love good looking and fast cars. Last weekend out of pure curiosity I booked myself into test drive some new “hot hatches” as the manufacturers have coined them. I thought I would share a few really interesting discoveries about service innovation.

My first stop was at Audi to put the new 2016 RS3 through its paces. The R salesman Andrew was extremely friendly and allowed me to take an extensive test drive – with him as a passenger – clearly I looked like too much of a hoon for him to let me go by myself. He diligently explained all of the amazing features of the car and was keen to find out about the type of driving I normally do so that he could adapt his pitch to suit my needs.

Second was Mercedes to step into the well acclaimed A45 AMG. Again I was greeted with an offer of tea, coffee, or something stronger, then eventually sat down with the AMG salesman Josef. He ran me through the test drive procedure all on his phone – Mercedes have developed this app that records all of the necessary information and allows you to sign a waiver on the phone. Everything that was discussed, including the signed waiver is automatically emailed to you, genius.

I discovered that if you work for a large employer – generally anything over 50 employees many car dealerships will sometimes negotiate free servicing on the purchase of a new vehicle. This can save you anywhere in the vicinity of $3,000 – $5,000 potentially based on the car you are buying.

Little things like efficiency have allowed Mercedes to price their hot hatch which performance wise is almost identical to the Audi around $20,000 cheaper. Keeping the economy of the car under 7 Litres per 100Km, they have been able to avoid the luxury car tax, which makes up almost $10,000 of the Audi RS3’s cost. Tweaking really small areas of your service or product can create a huge difference for the end user or customer.

Since I haven’t been new car shopping in ages, I was amazed to see the effort that has gone into improving their service processes, so that they wow you from the moment you walk in the door. Their salesmen are well trained to ensure they connect with you and talk about things that are relevant to your needs. It shows that service isn’t dead and for those businesses that are willing to invest the time and money into making their process and awesome experience for the client, good times are ahead.