Building a strong relationship with a customer is the ultimate tactic for generating loyalty and maximizing your revenue – especially in the automotive realm where purchasing a car isn’t a one and done experience.
In the automotive industry, having a solid connection with customers can be pivotal in keeping up to date with their purchase, up-selling, providing transparency, and encouraging new purchases. However, maintaining that line of communication can sometimes be difficult. With a plethora of customers flowing in and out of your business, new customer preferences emerging, and multiple touch points to hone in on, building a real connection with the customer can prove to be difficult.
Thankfully, with the emergence of new technologies like Customer Engagement Management (CEM) solutions, managing customer relationships and strengthening the relationships you have with them is made easier.
In order to demonstrate the power of utilizing a CEM in a modern dealership, we’re breaking down the key benefits worth considering, if you haven’t already implemented a solution.
Resolve Issues In Real-Time
The fundamental problem with obtaining traditional feedback is that the dealership often doesn’t receive it until after the customer has left, which means management loses out on valuable opportunities to recover them and encourage ongoing customer loyalty. If a customer has an issue with their car or has a simple inquiry about a feature, it’s important to be there for them, and quickly.. If not, they could turn to another dealership or worse, complain about your absence online or with the parent brand of the vehicle they purchased.
With a proper CEM solution in place, inbound customer feedback or messages can be dealt with in-the-moment by the right team member or department. Having the ability to receive real-time insight into the customer experience means you know exactly how they feel and have the ability to reach out and correct the situation immediately. What’s more, with an ideal CEM solution customer inquiries can be forwarded to the correct department in real-time so questions can be answered more efficiently and effectively.
Connect With Customers On Their Terms
The years of dealerships dictating how to connect with their customers is long gone. Today, in order to win loyalty, it’s all about the customers preferences and what is convenient for them.
With an ideal CEM solution in place, you can start to leverage an omni-channel approach to connecting with prospects and customers, allowing them to reach out to a dealership on their preferred medium. Whether it be on Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, or by texting, a customer can send a message and get a response immediately as the dealership team can receive and respond from a unified messaging solution. Having that sense of availability on the channel a customer prefers will make it much more convenient for them to chose your dealership over another.
With that in said, it’s also important to consider a CEM platform that can offer multiple channels as opposed to one or two. Having a wide range of communication methods provides your customer with option and flexibility, something recent studies show as being one of the main reasons customers choose one brand over another.
Be Available At Every Part of the Customer Journey
With a CEM solution, you don’t just connect with the customer when they purchase a vehicle, you engage with them before they enter your establishment and well after they’ve left. A CEM platform, when deployed properly, gives you the opportunity to be available at every part of the customer journey – so they never feel like they can’t connect with you.
For example, if a customer is researching your company via Facebook, you can have the live messenger feature pop up to showcase a promotion or check in and see if they need any assistance. After they have left your dealership you can use the same platform to send them an email, a follow-up SMS text, respond back to the original Facebook Message, or whatever channel they prefer, as a means to keep engaging them.
Once you’ve built a solid connection with the customer, a CEM is a great way to continuously keep up to date with them and ensure they choose your dealership and stay loyal. If a new model comes in that has some of the features they had been eyeing, send them a Facebook message. If their car repair or servicing finished earlier than expected, text them and let them know. With a CEM platform, it’s simple and effective on multiple channels to engage with your existing and prospective customers across multiple channels.
Streamlined Operations
Being in the automotive industry means you have to be on your feet and willing to deliver to the customer when they want. With a CEM in place, everything becomes more efficient from an operations standpoint. Instead of the customer messaging their sales rep and then the sales rep talking to management who talks to someone in the “parts” department, messages get tagged and the correct department can see it immediately.
This eliminates the need of a middleman and makes things run much more smoothly in the backend so the customer can get a more accurate and timely response on the front end.
For dealerships looking to up their customer engagement, a CEM should be a top consideration. With an ideal CEM, you not only connect more easily to customers but you’re able to reach them through multiple touch points, in real-time, and on their ideal channel. Qualities that can make your dealership stand out in a sea of competitors.
