SHOPSMART AUTOS – CUSTOMER INFORMATION – December 28, 2020
How To Improve Your Customer Experience In an era where your dealership’s engagement with prospects and customers increasingly takes place online, how much thought have you given to the customer experience that takes place in your “virtual dealership?” Whether it’s during the COVID-19 shutdown or afterward, consumers are going online to research, shop for and buy cars, as well as to interact with dealers for needs like scheduling service appointments. This means dealership customer service will take place increasingly online, creating new challenges and opportunities for dealers as they work to grow consistent customer experience across their entire enterprise. In this post, we’ll share tips for assessing and improving your virtual dealership customer experience, including:- Ensuring that your online dealership tools are as integrated as possible with your other operations
- Expanding the scope and capabilities of your virtual sales operations
- Connecting fixed ops to your virtual platform
Integrate Your Online and Offline Dealership
We’ve recently discussed the growing importance of your dealership’s Business Development Center (BDC) in virtual sales, but it’s important to recognize its impact on the overall virtual customer experience. The BDC is a critical interaction point between the virtual car dealership and traditional dealership operations – meaning it needs to be connected to not just the showroom sales staff but also marketing, F&I, service and other critical customer touchpoints. The value of integration doesn’t end with cross-department communication. Car dealerships need to ensure the insights collected in each of their data management systems, including their CMS and DMS, are able to be compiled and analyzed in a single environment to allow for data-driven outreach and marketing. For example, if you have a customer looking at new 2020 models on your website, does your marketing system get that information? One other important integration point between the virtual and traditional world is the way in which your dealership teams communicate with prospects and customers. More than ever, it’s critical to ensure your dealership culture values sensitivity to customers’ preferred communications methods – email, text, phone or otherwise – and that your engagement with them is consistent in respecting their wishes and preferences.
Improving the Virtual Car Sales Process
Customers who have spent months doing their shopping online through Amazon and consuming media through Netflix, Apple and other services that leverage predictive analytics to offer personalized customer recommendations have been trained to expect a virtual dealership customer experience that is centered on their own wants and needs. They want to be recognized, they want to receive personalized information and they want you to suggest what’s best for them.
Make it a champion day
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