Bergstrom Automotive exhibits the trade how a dealership group can set up the intangible concept of tradition and thrive.
John Bergstrom, who based the corporate in 1982 with brother Richard, takes customer support extraordinarily critically. He traces it to his Scandinavian mom, who “taught the 5 of us easy methods to behave,” Bergstrom recalled. Family had been greeted for a weekly dinner by the Bergstrom youngsters bearing shined footwear and thanking their friends for visiting.
“It began there,” Bergstrom mentioned.
The brothers’ first enterprise was a bar, and it drew upon the identical rules of claiming hi there and utilizing patrons’ names. “It acquired to be how we lived,” Bergstrom mentioned.
Constructing that emphasis on customer support into the dealership group, primarily based in Neenah, Wis., was natural moderately than a enterprise choice, he mentioned.
“It is a tradition,” Bergstrom mentioned. “We really feel the identical manner in regards to the folks we work with.”
Guests aren’t known as prospects. “They’re all the time a ‘visitor,’ ” Bergstrom mentioned.
Workers obtain month-to-month $100 bonuses if their retailer’s general buyer satisfaction scores attain a sure benchmark. The group makes use of secret consumers to look at and glean classes from dealerships across the Midwest. It has even despatched such consumers farther away, resembling to Phoenix.
After which there are the Bergstrom bogs, which the corporate’s chief has known as “an important a part of our dealerships.”
Day by day, the bogs obtain recent flowers, and they’re anticipated to be as clear as these at a five-star resort.
“We have labored very arduous to construct a model and a tradition that claims we care about folks, and all of it begins with our bogs,” Bergstrom, a former hotelier, informed Automotive Information in 2019.
Bergstrom Automotive holds an annual Race Store Clear Day throughout which John Bergstrom and his basic managers examine each retailer within the group on a single day, searching for facility points resembling insufficient bogs.
“It is a part of the tradition of who we’re,” mentioned Bergstrom, who has been recognized to depart a weed discovered on-site atop a supervisor’s desk to ship a message.
“In the long run, your tradition is what makes your enterprise profitable,” Bergstrom mentioned in 2019. “It is why folks need to do enterprise with you — why they arrive again time and time once more.”
Bergstrom Automotive’s tradition additionally values and is valued by workers. Bergstrom mentioned he has had the identical secretary for 45 years, and he famous a salesman who had spent 40 years with the corporate.
This 12 months, 10 of the group’s 30 dealerships made Automotive Information’ Finest Dealerships To Work For” checklist, and Bergstrom areas have regularly proven up on the checklist in years previous.
John Bergstrom mentioned the group measures itself towards different retailers with regard to the variety of its shops that make the annual checklist of 100 dealerships.
Bergstrom Automotive ranks No. 70 on Automotive Information’ most up-to-date checklist of the highest 150 dealership teams primarily based within the U.S., with retail gross sales of 13,721 new autos in 2021. The corporate made Glassdoor’s 2020 and 2021 Finest Locations to Work lists, and Bergstrom made the location’s 2019 and 2021 lists of CEOs with worker approval scores above 90 p.c. (Glassdoor didn’t publish the checklist in 2020 due to COVID-19’s impression on the job market.) Bergstrom stepped down final 12 months as CEO in favor of his son Tim, however he retains the title of chairman and continues to take part within the enterprise.
“That is what I do,” John Bergstrom mentioned.