Construction is underway for improving our showroom! Don Cookson from WABI TV5 came out to talk to Mark Politte about everything going on.
TRANSCRIPT
[DON COOKSON] Here at Stanley Subaru in Ellsworth, it’s always been about providing the best possible experience for their customers, and they recognized the need for some changes here at their home base. It’s recognizing the need for those changes that led to this major reconstruction that’s going on here in Ellsworth. We’re joined right now by the owner of Stanley Subaru, Mark Politte. Mark, beautiful place, but my gosh, you’re in chaos!
[MARK POLITTE] Don, you’ll see it. We are changing every day. It’s a very exciting time for us, but we’re working hard to fill the need, to deliver on the promise we make our guests. We have enjoyed growth for many years, and we’ve gotten to the point where we couldn’t service the number of guests we were putting in the marketplace. This community has supported us for almost 17 years. It was time to take big steps. Don, we opened in 1999, and this community has embraced us, and we have enjoyed very steady growth since, but we make every guest a promise to be available to them and to deliver to them a level of service that we expect as consumers. We got to the point where that growth caused pain, and we couldn’t deliver on that promise. So, we had guests waiting two weeks to come in for an oil change. That’s not who we are, that’s not who we want to be. It was time to take big steps, and it changes every day right now.
[DON] You’re really changing the experience for your guests.
[MARK] People don’t see a dealership as a sales department or a service department – we’re Stanley Subaru. So, yes, Don, we are knocking down walls between the departments. When a guest arrives here, and they’re seated in the guest lounge, they’re visible and accessible to every department. Whether they came to see us for the parts department or the service department or the sales department, they’ll have the access and the ease to each of those from one location. We want to service that guest no matter what they came for. Don, we are more than doubling our service capacity. This is our old footprint here, and this is all of the new bays that are being added along with parts storage to support those and increasing the drive through so that the number of customers coming at any given time can be handled with these increases. We are going to be available to our guests with no appointment necessary for their scheduled services. That means that you don’t have to call to set up an appointment. You don’t have to go online to set up an appointment. For your basic services, you drive in, and we’re going to be able to handle that in an hour or less.
[DON] Mark, you’ve done a great job making sure you’re maintaining a customer’s ability to continue to receive service.
[MARK] Don, we built this building across the street before we moved anyone from our main building. We had to be able to deliver our services to people in the interim and stay open. So, we’ve built temporary service in this building which will ultimately be specifically for detailing and make that new car experience available to everybody.
[DON] You’ve got to be excited about this brand new facility.
[MARK] We can’t wait, Don. You know, it changes every day. There’s new things happening; we’re very excited. We have every expectation to be in here before the flowers come up. Late winter, early spring, this will be home, and all of the dust will have settled.
