When I needed a new key fob for my old BMW—a 2012 model-year 328i with 130,000 miles on it—I was forced to do what I’ve avoided since I bought it. After exhausting all local, “Yeah, this will be no problem” locksmiths that couldn’t do the job, I gave up and grudgingly headed to a BMW dealer near my former home in Northern California.
The place was immaculate, which it should have been given the $800 it cost for the new fob combined with the discovery of a head gasket in need of replacement that brought my little visit to $2,300. But the service and experience were purely white-glove. They were gracious and polite. They answered direct questions directly.
They were so cool that I didn’t even spit out the freshly made cappuccino they provided after I saw the bill.
Short version, it was the kind of customer experience that made me want to come back and buy another BMW, which of course is by design. The easiest sales are to existing customers, so the experience, from sales to service, matters.
Contrast that with the average large boat-show experience for would-be performance-boat buyers, where entry-level starts at $500,000—more than 10 times what my sedan cost when I bought it 13 years ago. Not being a total moron, just a sometimes moron, I realize this isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison. I understand scale. It isn’t necessarily “fair” to compare the two.
Regardless, the big-boat-show customer-experience is inferior. It might have just been fine 30 years ago. No longer. Consumers, especially of the big-ticket kind, expect an intimate and comfortable experience. They expect to be pampered. They are more demanding than ever.
But they’re not wrong to be.
So it doesn’t surprise me that Big Thunder Marine just announced it is hosting its own Lake of the Ozarks Boat Show next month for the second consecutive year, just as Performance Boat Center—also located at the Central Missouri waterway—did with two shows of its own last year and plans to continue that program. Both dealerships have the requisite facilities to pull it off.
More important, they can control the entire customer experience, while saving hundreds of thousands of dollars displaying boats at marquee shows such as Miami and Fort Lauderdale shows. They can make it as fancy, hands-on, hassle-free and personable—key word—as they want.
So why wouldn’t they?—Matt Trulio
