Automotive Business Magazine – Q3 2026 – Digital edition - Flipbook - Page 24
Q&A
LSH
What does that change
management look like on a
practical level?
I'll do change management sessions and
training with my managers every single
year, and a refresher when we come to
a big change, because I want to give the
management team confidence.
That means talking through what
change looks like, reminding them of the
processes of change and practicing it.
We then plot out the people who are
going to be resistant, and who we know
is going to be absolutely engaged. How
do we divide and conquer, to bring the
rest of the people on that journey?
As part of the mapping of a project,
we always look at everybody's ‘what's
in it for me?’ (WIFM). We ask that at
every level – customers, service advisers,
technicians. Once you've got that, you
can then showcase how this will support
their WIFM.
This should really be part of a tender
process – you should have already felt
around this stuff before you change your
providers anyway. For example, we’ve
had good engagement with Autoflows,
because we talked about what's needed.
Sales departments wanted more visitors,
more customers. Marketing wanted more
agile ways of providing communication
with customers. Agents wanted to be
able to access data and get results.
A lot of businesses will have that
thought process as the last thing. They’ll
say, ‘we've decided this is for the best of
the business, now we want to talk to our
people’. At which point they’re going to
get a lot of pushback.
So you’ve thought about
stakeholders during tech
selection, how does the
continued process of checking
in work?
It’s the one-to-ones. It's speaking to
the team and knowing that they will
tell us first-hand if it's working or not.
It’s also about how we make it clear
we're receptive to that information.
Sometimes it can be an outside influence
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AUTOMOTIVE BUSINESS
Q3 2026
Q2
You’ve got to
constantly look at
whether your processes
are still working, and
how you evolve and
move forward”
on why something’s not working. For
example, if you've got the same products
everywhere but you're not getting the
results at one place, why is that? Is their
customer service not as good? Is their
data capture not as good? Is it down to
the demographic of consumers living in
that area?
You've got to constantly look at whether
your processes are still working, and how
you evolve and move forward. If you’re
working with a system that you can’t
evolve, then it’s time for a change.
It’s really important to have touchpoints with the agents, with the team
and with customers as well. You can't
assume you always know the right thing
to do, or that it's static.
AI can be scary for people,
how do you handle that?
You need to reassure them that it's not
a replacement. Whatever the system
is, it's the people surrounding it that
will always give it that edge. It's also
about understanding their worries and
concerns and addressing them, because
they'll sit there and fester otherwise.
If you can get to the point where
they're talking about challenges they've
faced, what's in it for them, and whether
you can address that through AI, then
that fear maybe chips away a little bit,
because they realise that this is a tool,
not a replacement.
There are some systems and providers
that will say, ‘we can give you everything
that you want via AI’, but I think there’s
a naivety to that. However, there's also
naivety to suggest that AI doesn't have a
place in your business, and that it won't
replace elements of what people do.
