Automotive News - October 21, 2013 - Supplement - S29

OCTOBER 21, 2013 ❙ 29

RIZZA CARS, CHICAGO

Driven by Gen Y, old-school Rizza
roars into the app-filled digital age
Printed in Automotive News May 20, 2013
Lindsay Chappell
lchappell@crain.com

n an age when auto dealers are plunging
into digital tools for marketing, store
management and customer retention,
Chicago's Rizza Cars has become a star
practitioner.
The six-store retailer with Ford, Lincoln,
Acura, Buick, Cadillac, GMC, Kia and
Porsche brands is a case study of a traditional dealership group transforming in a new
era of operating technologies.
At Joe Rizza Ford Orland Park, the group
instituted ServiceEdge, an ADP Dealer Services app that aims to speed service work
and improve in-store communication.
Here's how it works: Service advisers photograph any problems on incoming vehicles.
The technicians who will work on the vehicles receive the digital images on iPads, review the photos and use the iPads to order
from the store's parts department, which
makes needed parts ready as the vehicles arrive in the service bay.
That's typical of the tools Rizza Cars uses to
increase efficiency and appeal to consumers
who expect digital commerce, says Dan
McMillan, CEO of the Orland Park Ford store
and CFO of the dealership group, which sells
about 450 new vehicles a month.
"The technology is just exploding," McMillan says. "You go to a seminar and think,
man, this is the answer. And then something
even better comes along.
"The common trend in all of it is consumer
empowerment. The consumer has more information than he did in the past and we
have to be ready.
"Be it good or bad, it's technology where
we have to go," he says. "We don't have a
choice."
Nine months ago, Rizza Cars launched a
mobile app for customer smartphones developed by the vendor Dealerbug. The app
enables customers to peruse Rizza Cars' inventory, download owner manuals and
watch videos that the group uploads to
YouTube and other social media sites.
"It's the Y generation that's driving this,"
McMillan says.

Rizza Cars CFO Dan McMillan: "The common trend in all of it is consumer empowerment. The
consumer has more information than he did in the past and we have to be ready."
"This is how they want to do business."
McMillan hired Linda Tew as an Internet
manager in 1999. At the time, the operation
had only an AOL account and three nonfunctional Web sites. Today, Tew and her
team of more than a dozen employees handle all of Rizza Cars' online activity.
"At least 20 percent of my time is devoted
just to reputation management," Tew says.
"Your reviews on DealerRater, Google and
Yelp are more important than the manufacturers' CSI scores.
"Your customers don't really see your CSI
scores. J.D. Power can talk about CSI all they
want, but what consumers care about now is
what they read online and how many fivestar ratings you have."
Rizza's Orland Park Ford store was recently
part of Ford's pilot to use third-party reputation management vendor Digital Air Strike.
Rizza Cars has now expanded Digital Air
Strike to all of its franchises.
Mindful of the importance of positive reviews on social sites, Rizza Cars has begun
inviting customers - while still in the store

- to post reviews using dealership iPads.
The salespeople don't push the requests if
customers don't want to post reviews in the
store, Tew says. But it is easier to get positive
reviews when customers are completing
their purchases than it is to follow up days or
weeks later after the memory of the experience has faded, she says.
A recent conversation with McMillan
found him fresh out of a video session to create spots to be uploaded to YouTube for the
Porsche Cayman. Back at his desk, he pulled
out a new iPhone he had just purchased for
the boss, Rizza Cars' owner Joe Rizza, and
prepared to install the store's personalized
dealer app onto it.
"The technology train has left the station,
and retailing is never going to go back to the
way it used to be," McMillan says.
"We all knew we had to change. You can't
ignore Facebook and Twitter today," he says.
"That's where your customers are. And that's
one thing that hasn't changed in this business - you've got to be wherever people
are." c

Automotive News - October 21, 2013 - Supplement

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