Watching Your Car Get Serviced Via Smartphone An Integral Part Of Lincoln Strategy
Lincoln’s free-falling sales will apparently be remedied by allowing customers to watch their cars get serviced via smart phone, if you can stomach the party line coming from Ford marketing boss Jim Farley. Also outlined were Lincoln’s idea of “luxury” and powertrain details for the upcoming MKZ
“It’s as if some luxury brands have become big-box retailers, efficient and soulless, forgetting the hallmarks that made them special in the first place and leaving their clients feeling like a number and not a name,”
Poor customer service and haughty sales people have never stopped aspirational strivers from buying luxury goods – sales staff at Saks or Neiman Marcus have a lot of attitude considering that they make minimum wage, but that won’t stop credit card jockeys from snapping up the latest branded crap sewn by Indonesian child labor. On the other hand, good sales people know that their wealthy clients often come in dressed like paupers because they couldn’t care less about “projecting an image of success” like so many status insecure upper-middle types.
The most peculiar passage in the entire article detailed a cockamaime plan where “… service bays at Lincoln dealerships will have cameras so customers can use their smartphones to watch the work being performed on their cars.” Based on anecdotal evidence gleaned through a couple decades of life experience, the sort of affluent, professional trend-setter types Lincoln is hoping to attract either don’t have the time or inclination to watch a grease-splattered Lincoln tech change the oil or bleed the brakes on their leased MKZ. This will surely be a costly initiative, and the money could have been spent in a million more productive ways aside from a stupid gimmick like this. If you are one of those types who wants to watch your car get a brake job via your iPhone, please let me know in the comments. For more laughable ideas, see the first paragraph of the Automotive News article where Lincoln’s negligible market-share is glossed over as a virtue of it being a “boutique brand”
More by Derek Kreindler
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The few times I have had to bring one of our MKZ's in for warranty work they hand me the keys to a nearly Lincoln loaner. Once I got an MKZ with less than 10 miles on it and once I got a Mustang Convertible with less than 10 miles on it and they apologized repeatedly because it was not a Lincoln. So, when I get work done on the Lincoln I have no interst in watching it get done or having it done quickly. I bring it in on Friday afternoon on purpose ...
"On the other hand, good sales people know that their wealthy clients often come in dressed like paupers because they couldn’t care less about “projecting an image of success” like so many status insecure upper-middle types." An amazingly astute observation. I give a cheer for at least one Gen-Yer's ability to see through the bullsh*t.