Dealer Technology night - comments

[wamba2000]

My selling dealer holds a one hour session each month for owners of newly purchased Fords with Sync and MyFord Touch.  It is presented by one of the salespeople that took it upon himself to learn and understand these services.

 

I thought it would be helpful to offer a few observations:

1. There were about 35 people attending, with a variety of ford trucks and cars ( only 2 C-Max owners).  The majority of the audience was over 40, I would guess 40% under 60 and the remainder in the 60+ age group.

2. Most had gotten little if any training from their sales person on how the Nav/Entertainment/Phone/Climate works.  Most just got their phone paired and then were told to read the manual.

3. Sounds like iPhones have the best consistency working with Sync, and it was suggested to connect both by bluetooth and using the iPod cable.  Androids are the wild west- some work well, some not so much.

4. Many complaints about inaccuracies in the positioning of your location with Navigation.  Many displays show the vehicle well off the actual.

5. I asked regarding updates to My Ford Touch/ Sync, since as members have posted, newer builds have the 3.5.1 version, but no update for older models - no good answer on timing other than he would expect within 2-3 months.....patience!

6. Many owners do not know their vehicles' features....the other C-Max owner said he had adaptive cruise control, lane departure warning, and a direct link to Ford support like OnStar----  He must have bought the CMax SEL with the 305A mystery package ---LOL. 

7. It was unfortunate, but one owner managed to ask a bunch of off-the-wall questions pretty much unrelated to the topics and the presenter could not get he guy to shut up....at least 10 people left in frustration cause he could not get through the overview he was doing.

 

For the good points:

- He did give a good presentation on how to use the voice command, navigation, controls, etc.  Hard to do with the diversity of design, but they all basically work the same.

- Pointed out there are three ways of making a selection:  dash based control sreens, touch screens and hand/button controls. 

- Explained how your phone is responsible for certain content and how it works ( streaming vs. a push on one data file)

- Talked about bluetooth content and streaming like Pandora, etc.

 

Last I found out why I could not get the Test to Speech function working - my Galaxy S2 does not support it!  Many Android phones have issue with that feature.  As someone that gets a fair number of texts, I will have to see if any upgraded devices will work.  There does nto seem to be much support material on what phones allow what features to be enabled.

 

Overall, I have to give the guy credit, it was a solid presentation in a group of widely ranging comfort level with technology.  He put himself on the firing line and did well. Best advice: He said "push the buttons and try stuff, it is pretty hard to totally mess stuff up unless you are hitting resets or the like."

 

[Ryan McEachern]

Thanks for that.

 

For what its worth, my blackberry 9900 and Z10 both work flawlessly with SYNC and text to speech.

[Jus-A-CMax]

Nice summary wamba, thanks for sharing  :)

[MacGyver]

The s2 DOES do text to speech. Did you mean sync is not compatible with it?