discover dealership success with 24/7 availability

Dealership Success: Creating 24/7 Availability

admin | Customer Service | , , ,

How many times have you found yourself perusing recommended products from Amazon well into the late-night hours? Or calling a business long after closing to leave a message so you won’t have to wait on hold the next day. Better yet, have you opted for a website chat to get information or troubleshoot a problem instead of calling or going to an actual brick-and-mortar store? The internet has vastly changed how we interact with businesses. After all, you can buy a car without ever talking to another human! So, in this digital age of “I know what I want, and I want it now,” how can dealerships be open for business when everyone has gone home for the day? Here are three ways you can improve communication and customer experience while driving dealership success.

Start with the CRM

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems existed long before the actual software was created. They usually required a well-organized salesperson and binders upon binders of customer details. Fortunately, today most dealerships utilize a CRM system that organizes customer data, tracks interactions, and even automates communication processes.

By segmenting leads based on their preferences and behavior, dealerships can tailor their marketing efforts and follow-up strategies accordingly. Automated email campaigns, personalized messages, and targeted promotions can keep leads (and even past customers) engaged and move them closer to a sale—even when the dealership is closed. Overall, investing in a comprehensive CRM system helps dealerships build lasting relationships with customers and maximize their sales opportunities around the clock.

Leverage Technology

Car dealerships can maximize prospective and current client interactions through various methods, even when closed. First, investing in an engaging online presence is a must. Dealerships should maintain active social media profiles, regularly posting engaging content, showcasing their inventory, and responding promptly to inquiries. Additionally, having a user-friendly website with comprehensive information about available vehicles, financing options, and contact details can keep potential customers engaged outside of business hours. Implementing live chat support or chatbots on the website can further facilitate immediate assistance and capture leads even when the dealership is closed.

Second, consider implementing emerging technology solutions like virtual reality or augmented reality on your website or mobile application. Both can offer a more immersive experience for customers browsing vehicles remotely. Additionally, by offering virtual showroom tours or interactive demonstrations of specific car features, dealerships can simulate the in-person experience and generate excitement among potential buyers. Integrating these technologies enables customers to explore vehicles (and your dealership) at their convenience, making it easier to maintain interest and drive conversions outside of regular business hours.

Prioritize Customer Interactions

Unsure where to upgrade your after-hours availability? Don’t worry. While a CRM, website live chat, and virtual showroom tool offer great ways to improve the customer experience without turning the lights on, you can determine (and prioritize) what will work best for your dealership. So, before signing a contract with a new software or outsourced service, take a step back and consider how your customers prefer to interact with you. From the website to email, floor ups to the service bay—and everything in between—your people are interacting with current and prospective clients all day long. But which channels convert best?

Consider vehicle purchases in the past 30, 60, or even 90 days. What are the lead sources for most of these sales? If the majority start out as internet leads, consider offering an after-hours live chat service on your website. Similarly, if a good portion calls into the dealership first, an answering service could be another way to capture more potential customers for those calls that come in after closing or on Sundays.

Remember, your customers are people—just like you! They read product reviews, watch videos on products they are interested in, and choose whether to email, call, or chat based on whatever sense of urgency they may be feeling. The best way to make sure you’re available when they need you is to provide options. They’ll pick whichever option they like best. But if the only option they have is to wait until 9:00 a.m. on Monday, you may never get a chance to talk with them again.

This article originally appeared in the May/June 2024 issue of Fixed Ops Magazine.

About the Author:

Andrea Oelschlager is an Account Executive for Customer Traac®, an automotive call center and BDC that helps dealerships across the country improve performance and profitability. With over 25 years of experience with Customer Traac, her background includes just about every role within the sales team, from manager to assistant. Her vast industry and solution knowledge and skills help her match dealerships with the services they need to reach business goals.

automotive BDC employees

3 Characteristics to Look for in an Automotive Service BDC

admin | Automotive BDC | ,

Partnering with a third-party automotive BDC is the right choice for dealerships who want to improve their operations and enhance their overall customer experience. In fact, we discuss the specific benefits of outsourcing your service BDC in our article titled, “Why Should a Dealership Outsource Its Service BDC?”

In this article, we’ll discuss three key characteristics to look for in an automotive BDC when choosing your third-party partner.

  1. Wide Range of Services Offered: When partnering with a third-party BDC, be sure to partner with a company that offers a wide range of automotive marketing services. After all, dealership BDCs must be able to perform a wide variety of tasks, such as automotive marketing, appointment scheduling, customer service, outbound sales campaigns, and more. And it would be expensive and time consuming to hire a different company for each service. So, find a business development center that can handle everything.
  1. Excellent Communication: Good communication is crucial for the success of any company, especially in the automotive industry. So, be sure to find a BDC that a) has agents who are expert communicators with customers and b) has leadership that is able to effectively communicate with your dealership. When you meet with prospective BDC partners, be sure to take notes on how they communicate with you, so you can make sure you choose a partner that fits your business’s communication style.
  1. In-Depth Agent Training Program:  As you already know, providing exceptional customer service is one of the keys to running a successful dealership. Because of this, you better be sure that the BDC you hire is able to provide the best customer support possible. And one of the best ways to ensure this is the case is to examine the agent training programs of each prospective BDC partner. Make sure that whoever you hire to run your BDC operations has a proper training regimen that fits your dealership’s business style, so you can ensure that the agents at this BDC will be as prepared as possible to interact with your customers.

Outsource Your Service BDC with Customer Traac

If you would like to improve your dealership’s operations by outsourcing your service BDC, or if you would like to speak with an expert in the field to learn more, please reach out to us to see how we can help. At Customer Traac, we work with you to understand your specific goals and needs, so we can provide a personalized service that optimizes your dealership’s marketing and communication efforts. We offer a full range of automotive marketing services, including a full-charge contact center, appointment scheduling, outbound calling campaigns, and a full-service automotive BDC. Our agents go through extensive training to make sure they provide the best customer service and help your business grow.

We partner with dealerships across the United States. Please call us at 763-553-2989 or fill out our contact form to learn more.

omnichannel marketing tablet

How to Improve Your Dealership Marketing Strategies

admin | Automotive Marketing | , ,

Take a look at these five tips for improving your automotive marketing strategy and how Customer Traac may be able to help your dealership grow.

Spend More Time Identifying Your Goals and Needs

Too often, marketers jump right to the strategy without taking enough time to figure out exactly what the problem is and what the goals of the initiative are. This is the best way to ensure your strategy fails; after all, how can you succeed with your marketing strategy if you aren’t even sure what you are trying to accomplish?

Albert Einstein put it best when he said, “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.” In fact, the first tip marketing students learn in business school is that while devising a strategy, spend at least 80 percent of your time identifying the problem and fully understanding what you are trying to accomplish.

So, while devising a marketing strategy for your dealership, be sure to take as much time as possible to fully understand your business problem, business needs, and specific goals.

Take More Time to Understand Your Target Audience

Similarly, while creating your marketing strategy, it is crucial to ensure you understand all aspects of your target audience so you can develop as targeted a message and strategy as possible. This means going beyond the typical demographics of traditional marketing, such as age, gender, income, etc.

In fact, in the digital age where marketing is done primarily online, it is important to understand the digital behaviors of your audience. For example, what are members of your target audience searching for on Google? What are they interacting with on social media? The answers to these questions will allow you to create a targeted digital advertising and marketing strategy that reaches your potential customers where they interact online.

Focus on Automotive Digital Marketing

It’s 2021 and your target audience lives online, which means your marketing efforts must be focused on the digital sphere. This is crucial to keep in mind because not only are your future customers interacting online, but they are also searching for their cars online. So, if you want to keep up, you must build an effective digital marketing strategy.

Building an effective digital marketing strategy involves a diverse range of marketing tactics that aim to capture consumers’ attention online. This involves focusing on search engine optimization (SEO), social media, Google Ads, and much more.

Your Strategy Should Revolve Around Your Customers

As a manager or owner of a dealership, you know that customer service and providing an exceptional customer experience are crucial for a dealership’s success. So, be sure to devise your marketing strategy based on providing the right experience for your customers. While planning your marketing, always ask yourself, “How will this impact our customers? How will our customers react to this?”

Outsource Your Automotive BDC to Enhance Your Marketing and Customer Experience

One of the best ways to ensure a successful dealership marketing strategy is to outsource your automotive marketing efforts to a trusted third party. Outside automotive BDCs can provide expert and objective consulting, while also possessing the resources to create and implement full-scale marketing campaigns. Plus, they can save your dealership lots of time and money, as you will not have to hire and train a team of marketing professionals and spend the time to oversee the campaign.

If you would like to improve your dealership’s marketing by outsourcing your BDC, or if you would like to speak with an expert in the field to learn more, please reach out to us to see how we can help. At Customer Traac, we work with you to understand your specific goals and needs, so we can provide a personalized service that optimizes your dealership’s marketing and communication efforts. We offer a full range of automotive marketing services, including a full-charge contact center, appointment scheduling, outbound calling campaigns, and a full-service automotive BDC. Our agents go through extensive training to make sure they provide the best customer service and help your business grow.

We partner with dealerships across the United States. Please call us at 763-553-2989 or fill out our contact form to learn more.

email marketing

Tips For Automotive Email Marketing

admin | Automotive Marketing | ,

Gaining a competitive edge in marketing can make or break a dealership, so it is important to master the art of automotive marketing. While there are many aspects of automotive marketing worth studying, for this article, we will focus on email marketing.

Specifically, we will go over some tips for ensuring you run your email marketing as efficiently as possible. We will then discuss why outsourcing your email marketing efforts may be best for maximizing your ROI.

Tips for Effective Automotive Email Marketing

While mastering the art of automotive email marketing takes time and sufficient resources, we recommend taking into account the following to ensure you start your dealership off on the right track:

  • Understand Your Specific Marketing Goals: Before you begin your campaign, be sure to understand exactly what you are trying to achieve by using email marketing. While this may seem obvious, too many dealerships don’t take the time to set specific goals for their campaigns, which results in low ROI and lots of unnecessary spending. We recommend making sure your goals are specific, measurable, and achievable. In other words, a goal of “increasing service appointments” is too broad. Instead, create goals more along the lines of the following: “Increase service leads for oil changes by 10 percent among customers who purchased from my dealership within the last five years.”
  • Become Experts on Your Target Audience: One of the core values of marketing is effective communication. And you must be able to communicate with your customers in a way that works for them. So, before you start your campaign, be sure to learn everything there is to know about your target audience. Learn who they are, how they like to receive their emails, when they like to receive them, whether they read their emails on mobile or desktop devices, and anything else you can find out that may influence how you market your products and services.
  • Don’t Send Too Many Emails: One of the worst things that can happen during an email marketing campaign is having your recipients list your emails as “spam.” And one of the best ways to get customers to label your emails as “spam” is to send too many emails. In other words, don’t annoy your customers with a bombardment of messages. The amount of emails you should send depends on what you’re trying to do and who your target audience is. To illustrate, if you’re trying to reach customers who are already active with your dealership, you can probably send them 1-2 emails per month. However, if you’re trying to engage new customers, you may want to limit your communication to one email every 1-2 months. Anything more than that may be taken as annoying and could prompt your customers to unsubscribe or label you as “spam.”

Outsource Your Automotive Email Marketing to Increase ROI

While abiding by the tips listed above will help you enhance your marketing, we recommend outsourcing your email marketing efforts to fully optimize your campaigns and increase your ROI. The following are just some of the benefits your dealership will receive by outsourcing your email marketing campaigns to a third-party automotive BDC:

  • Save Money: One of the biggest advantages of outsourcing your email marketing campaigns is the money you will save. If you manage your own campaigns, you must cover all of the costs associated with this operation, including:
    • Finding and hiring marketing experts
    • Conducting exhaustive company and marketing training
    • Salary, benefits, and other overhead costs for employees

On the other hand, if you outsource your email marketing, you only pay one cost. And while this exact cost depends on many factors, it is never as high as the combination of the costs listed above.

  • Save Time: In addition to saving money, outsourcing your marketing efforts saves you valuable time. Finding and hiring employees, training them, and overseeing the extensive operations of a full-scale email marketing campaign takes lots of time that could be better spent on selling cars or servicing customers at the dealership. We recommend working with a trained third-party BDC, so you can focus your time and energy on growing your business.
  • Work with Email Marketing Experts: We’re guessing that you specialize in selling and servicing cars, not automotive email marketing. So why waste your time and money hiring and training new employees when you can work with professionals who are experts in automotive email marketing? Moreover, working with an outside BDC allows you to run a campaign with experts who can view your goals and needs from a neutral standpoint, which will help eliminate internal biases that can negatively affect marketing efforts.

Enhance Your Dealership by Partnering with Customer Traac

If you would like to improve your dealership’s email marketing, or if you would like to speak with an expert in the field to learn more, please reach out to us to see how we can help. At Customer Traac, we work with you to understand your specific goals and needs, so we can provide a personalized service that optimizes your dealership’s marketing and communication efforts. We offer a full range of automotive marketing services, including a full-charge contact center, appointment scheduling, outbound calling campaigns, and a full-service automotive BDC. Our agents go through extensive training to make sure they provide the best customer service and help your business grow.

We partner with dealerships across the United States. Please call us at 763-553-2989 or fill out our contact form to learn more.

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