Andrew Pilkington, director and regional operations manager at Genesis Motor UK, hasn't had the easiest of starts at the upmarket arm of Hyundai and Kia, launching an entirely new brand in the midst of a pandemic. But he's convinced that Genesis is on the right path and will buck the trend of other similar car brands like Infiniti.
Nissan’s Infiniti was a luxury brand that tried and failed. How is Genesis different?
Timing is important. Infiniti launched a number of years ago and its business model was the same as everybody else. My understanding is that they wanted to grow very quickly and, as a consequence, a lot of volume was put into the marketplace, but the demand wasn’t there.
We are doing things very differently. We have the financial support behind us. I think we’re in a different position to win as an organisation [compared with Nissan] in terms of the product portfolio as well.
Our new chief executive wants to make Genesis a success around the world. We’re going to do that by having products that work for the marketplace. We have three EVs coming to market. And secondly, we have the Genesis difference (see below). It’s about being totally customer-centric.
We’re building the brand in a very consolidated way by creating key points of differentiation. We have the statistics to show it’s working so far, and we believe it’s only a matter of time. The other aspect is the direct-to-consumer approach, which is really important. It’s relevant today and increasingly relevant for tomorrow.
It’s day one of Genesis - what do you do?
As a new entrant to the market with a non-traditional business model, the first task was trying to understand the direction of Genesis. Genesis is in all the continents - UK and Europe were the last. In other markets, it is a traditional dealer model. But the concept here was that we would adopt the agency model or a hybrid of that. But then we decided it wasn’t appropriate; it was not progressive enough; there was a better option. And that is what we implemented. We take responsibility for a customer from ‘cradle to grave’.
Genesis says it differentiates itself with its customer experience. How?
We have created the Genesis difference. Every customer gets a Genesis personal assistant, who is not a salesperson. They don’t get commission. That person is responsible for helping the customer through the journey from arranging test drives and assisting with the online ordering process to delivering the car to you and helping if there is an issue with the car during ownership.
The trust is built up. These people typically come from a background of hospitality and therefore their natural approach is to want to help the customer.
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