Vaihtoautomaa buys and sells around 3,000 cars a year, and roughly a fifth of them are imports. We asked Chief Operating Officer Niklas Nyström what daily car retail looks like when the cars' backgrounds are checked. The answers are word for word.
Vaihtoautomaa in numbers
- Around 3,000 car sales a year
- Roughly 20 percent of the cars are imports
- Four stores: Vantaa, Lahti, Lempäälä and Jyväskylä
- A fully Finnish used-car retail chain: vaihtoautomaa.com
- Interviewed: Chief Operating Officer Niklas Nyström
Niklas Nyström, word for word
Who are you and what is Vaihtoautomaa?
My name is Niklas Nyström and I am the Chief Operating Officer at Vaihtoautomaa. Vaihtoautomaa is a fully Finnish used-car retail chain, and we currently have four stores in Finland: in Vantaa, Lahti, Lempäälä and Jyväskylä.
What does a COO at a car dealership actually do?
I've always joked that I do everything except sell cars. But if I had to pick one theme, I try to smooth the road for our sales managers and salespeople, so that making a deal is as fluent and easy as possible. Removing the bumps and stones along the way.
What kind of company is Vaihtoautomaa?
Vaihtoautomaa is wow. Colourful, professional and constantly renewing. But above all, we are very pink.
What does more responsible car retail mean to you?
Responsible car retail today means the same thing as transparency and selling with data. One of the most important things is that we know what the cars are and what kind of history they have. And that we can trust we have sufficient information about the cars, so they can be sold onwards fairly.
Why do you want to increase transparency in the industry?
It is a matter of primary importance that dealers, car retailers, customers, buyers and sellers all know what they are buying and selling. That the car's history is fairly and openly known to all parties. Only that way can you promise that the car is what the sales listing says it is.
What do you need to know about a car?
We want to know what the car's equipment was when it left the factory. Then the service history, absolutely critical information: how it has been serviced, where, whether it was done on time and what was done. And above all the damage history. If there is something small there, it bothers nobody, but if there is something big, it matters a great deal.
How do you check a car's information, including imports?
There has been an interesting development here. Earlier, car salespeople worked as detectives on top of their sales job, googling what could be found about a car's history. Fortunately, today there are really good services, for example Good2Know, through which we get a car's history and service information reliably and broadly. Lately it has clearly been our number one tool.
What did the same work look like before, and what is it now?
Earlier, a car's information had to be checked from several different sources and the depths of the internet. The information was not always terribly reliable and it was very fragmented. Today the most significant advantage is that we get all the information reliably from one counter.
Tell us about a concrete situation where the information changed a buying decision.
Situations where Good2Know has changed our buying decision happen almost daily. There is always some car somewhere in the world on its way to Finland. When its information is checked, things come up that are not necessarily favourable to us. At that point we have to politely decline the deal.
How often does a check change the decision?
My feel is that with about half of the cars, once they have been checked, something comes up in the information that changes the price estimate or the overall assessment one way or the other. It is not always in the negative direction. Sometimes there are positive surprises too.
How does Good2Know fit your daily work?
Good2Know fits our daily work really well, especially now that it has been rolled out across the organisation at speed. The salespeople are happy and the customers are happy. The information is high quality.
Why is this a big step for the whole used-car market?
Transparency is absolutely a win for both the seller and the buyer across the whole market.
If a customer remembers one thing about you, what should it be?
One of Vaihtoautomaa's slogans is: we care. We care about people, and we deal in cars we care about.