For Automotive teams, a dedicated Dealership Management System, or DMS for short, is the foundation of business operations. It stores all of your critical documents, keeps meticulous client records, and processes your reports, but what about another critical element of a successful automotive business? Gathering feedback from your customers.
Gathering customer feedback is one of the most popular tactics in understanding your buyers and their needs. With it, you can tailor your dealership to your customers in a way that builds loyalty and maximizes revenue.
Unfortunately, when it comes to gathering feedback, sometimes your DMS can’t do it all or at least do it all in an organized and efficient manner. Which is why it’s vital to invest in a tool that does. In this article, we look at a platform that can help you better obtain feedback and help generate loyalty to earn short-term and long-term revenue.
Obtaining Feedback With a CEM
If you’re looking to obtain insight into your customer base, adopting a Customer Engagement Management solution or CEM, is a great first start.
A CEM platform makes it simple to obtain insight into the customer experience. Used in a number of verticals, customers can use their mobile devices, desktops or an in-store kiosk to submit feedback. What’s more, they can engage with you through a range of channels like Facebook, Twitter, SMS Texting and more to suit their preferences.
For the automotive industry, using a CEM for customer feedback is vital to elevate the brand experience at every point in the customer journey. From having a better understanding of overall business operations to gauging customer sentiment on product. From knowing the level of service your team is providing to making the most of your Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) relationship. Having real-time feedback from customers can transform an ordinary dealership experience into an exceptional one.
When looking for an ideal CEM system, there’s a lot to consider in order to ensure the feedback you are getting is useful and can improve your business’s bottom line. Relying on our expertise in the Customer Engagement world, here is what you should consider looking for in your CEM solution.
What Your Feedback CEM Should Offer
Real-Time Data
When looking for a platform or method for receiving feedback, look for a CEM solution that can give you feedback in real-time. With real-time insight, you can make changes and identify at-risk customers in-moment to rectify negative experiences. As a dealership, you know the impact a customer with a less than positive experience can have on business success and reputation – so it’s important to dilute an issue before it becomes something too sizable to fix.
In addition, by solving issues in-moment, you keep the customer’s trust intact, show them you care about their experience, and increase the likelihood of customer loyalty in the long-term.
Multi-Location Services
If you’re running multiple dealerships, the CEM you select should allow you to measure from multiple locations and compare service across the board. That means having access to customer ratings for each location on one unified platform.
Having multi-location visibility can help in a number of ways, including; identifying top performing dealerships, testing messages and marketing across locations, understanding team performance, and refining your go-to-market strategies.
Enabling multi-location service ensures that all companies are working in a unified manner and that there is complete transparency across a range of locations.
Messaging Capabilities
As most dealerships know, messaging customers and responding quickly to inquiries is vital. It helps build loyalty, promotes upselling, and builds a consistent flow of communication to ensure a seamless purchase.
Further, with a CEM that allows you to message after submitting feedback, customers will feel more inclined to start a conversation. With an ideal CEM, customers should be able to message teams from the channel and the medium of their choice. What’s more, team members should be able to view their messages in one unified inbox and have specific messages auto-routed to their respective internal departments. This means auto-repair, appointment scheduling, hours of operation, and inventory inquiries are answered by the correct department and answered more efficiently by the appropriate team member.
Lastly, by having a CEM solution that has messaging capabilities, all customer information and sentiment is consolidated in one convenient location so you can communicate more effectively. Having this insight is great for adding context to requests or inquiries, as well as engaging customers in a personalized manner throughout every touch point of the buying or service journey.
Options For Gamification
For dealerships looking to increase sales and improve employee retention, choosing a CEM with gamification capabilities should be a top consideration.
According to a Gartner study, 70% of business transformation efforts fail due to a lack of engagement. This is because business owners struggle to identify what truly engages employees which can be detrimental to optimizing revenues.
With a CEM solution that listens to a customer and provides elements of gamification for team members, feedback is generated in real-time directly from the customers and showcased on a scoreboard or in daily reports. By leveraging the performance metrics they display, the job itself becomes a fun and enjoyable experience where teams can compete with others in a friendly manner to increase the quality of service and revenue.
Conclusion
As an automotive dealership, gauging customer sentiment through feedback is vital. With it, you can consistently improve the experience, understand the needs of your customers and strategically enhance your marketing efforts across multiple locations. In order to optimize your efforts, we suggest considering a CEM solution that offers customer feedback surveys, the ability to share real-time data, offers multi-location services, includes multiple messaging options, and team-motivating gamification capabilities. By utilizing an effective CEM with these key features, you optimize the amount of feedback you receive, promote a customer-centric culture, and can better tailor your business to your unique customer needs.
