INTERVIEW
‘I really hope that in my lifetime I will see a change in the way people feel about buying a car’ Peugeot UK’s MD tells James Batchelor of her vision for the brand and how it should be sold via the network.
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ulie David wants to make the experience of buying a car more enjoyable. She is Peugeot’s latest UK managing director and brings some strong views and even stronger visions to the French brand. ‘I really hope that in my lifetime I will see a change in the way people feel about buying a car,’ she says. ‘I think it’s so sad that we still have a situation where people fear going into a showroom – they fear the interaction with salespeople. My biggest thing would be if we could achieve a situation where customers enjoy the experience and not feel pressurised.’ David is speaking to me halfway up London’s Shard in one of the tower’s ultra-cool, super-chic restaurants, and she chats in more detail about getting the customer’s experience in line with where the brand is going. After the last lockdown, she and her team carried out a ‘huge’ research piece to better understand the end-to-end customer-buying process for new and used cars. ‘We did it through the eyes of design experience experts to understand how you can make a difference with lots of very small things, and we also looked at it through the eyes of the customer,’ she says. ‘We recruited lots of customers at different points of their journey, and really importantly, we looked at the buying process through the eyes of the retailers. ‘We wanted to know what frustrated the retailers, what were the things that would make a difference to them, and what would help them deliver a great customer experience. ‘We want to bring about this brand promise of allure for Peugeot and how we make it a desirable brand. That’s beyond the product – this is about the experience I have when I own the product. I don’t believe much of the industry has cracked this and we’ve got a great opportunity to do that.’ The process of making the whole buying and owning experience more desirable has already begun, says David. ‘We launched it with the new 308 and we said [to our retailers] we’re going to train you about more than just selling the product – How are we going to sell the car’s features? How are we going to turn that into a story? How are we going to make sure that every single conversation that happens has been designed in a way that makes sure the customer really and truly understands the products’ attributes, and also what it means to own a Peugeot?’ David has been able to bring a fresh pair of eyes to the Peugeot brand – and the 06 | CarDealerMag.co.uk
Honestly, there was passion for the brand, but one of the things I noticed was a lack of confidence in selling electric vehicles. Julie David Peugeot UK managing director
