Last week Estonian business paper Äripäev made a small research. Their journalist made an online registration to test drive a car. Only three car dealers out of seven replied.
Response from those who failed to answer? “We had some technical problems.”
Before reading further I should mention that Amserv Auto mentioned in this post is our client.
Out of seven dealers contacted following replied.
Four who failed to answer were:
Not all card brands or dealers in Estonia were contacted.
KIA said they were upgrading their servers last week. This might have caused feedback to get lost. Silberauto said they were doing updates to their website from wednesday to friday and they forgot to check if all systems worked properly. Inchcape (Mazda) said there were some techical problems last week which caused mails not to be forwarded to dealers.
Aww c’mon. “Because of technical problems” when not answering to online feedback is similar PR talk like “Because of logistical problems" when artist does not sell enough tickets and is moved to smaller arena.
Nissan’s answer felt honest. No excuses about technical problems. Just simple “We were busy having a marketing event and forgot to forward the requests to local dealer.”
Responding to online feedback is something many Estonian companies should learn. Estonia is technologically more advanced than Finland (WiFi everywhere, online voting etc). Still Finland is ahead in the ways businesses handle their online presence. After moving to Tallinn I was frustrated not getting any answers to my emails. After a while I just started using telephone.
There are exceptions too. Zone.ee always has answered the same day. United Motors usually calls back in few hours after sending email.