Are You Delivering a Positive Customer Experience? The Odds Aren’t in Your Favor!
Delivering a positive customer experience is essential in virtually every business, particularly in highly competitive industries. Though most auto dealerships would list delivering a positive customer experience among their highest priorities, the fact of the matter is most fall short of that goal. Each year more and more consumers are taking to the web when making a car buying decision. In fact, recent research from DMEautomotive revealed that 68% of consumers visited two or fewer dealerships, while 40% visited only one before making a purchase.
What does this tell us? With customer expectations at an all-time high and competition continuing to mount, it’s important to deliver an outstanding experience at each and every consumer touch point.
Online Lead Response
Many dealerships make the costly mistake of failing to respond quickly enough to online leads. When left unanswered, even for a matter of hours, the opportunity can be lost. It’s critical to get a system in place and to help your sales team understand the importance of a timely response.
What about after hours leads? Not only is it critical to respond with immediacy during business hours, it’s just as important to deliver a touch point after hours. This is where a drip email campaign can come into play. Set up an automated response that confirms the lead has been received, provide the hours of operation and assure an immediate response when business hours resume. And then make sure that occurs.
Online Inventory
Keeping a dealership’s online inventory up to date is a tall order. However, with the majority of consumers turning to the web during the car buying experience, it is essential. This is why many leading dealerships are hiring a designated person, with an online marketing background, to keep their website and their inventory up to date.
Beyond simply updating inventory, an experienced marketing professional, or even a recent marketing or journalism grad, can promote and amplify your in-stock vehicles to reach interested consumers. They will effectively become your online vehicle merchandiser. Leveraging platforms like the Auto Audience™ Network can help you target consumers as they navigate through the online car buying experience. Through “perfect contextual advertising”, you can effectively connect with engaged consumers at the ideal point of the purchase funnel.
Follow up!
Finally, following up is one of the most important exercises for a sales person to complete. Though it may seem obvious, many dealerships fall short here. Whether it’s via phone, email or even text, it’s up to your sales team to keep in contact with interested consumers and to give them a reason to visit your lot. After all, the odds are in your favor if you can, in fact, convince that consumer to visit your showroom.
How do you feel your dealership stacks up in terms of delivering a quality customer experience? If you suspect there is room for improvement, now is the time to act. If you think you might need some help but you want to be sure – contact the team at Kain Automotive, David and his team are the best in the business. Remember that the majority of auto sales will begin with online research. It is up to you, and your staff, to target the customer during the research phase and encourage them to test drive with you!
Would you like to learn more about the Auto Audience Network? Schedule a demo today! If you would like more tips and insight designed to help you with your dealership marketing efforts, follow our blog! Here we address the news and developments that are shaping the auto industry today.
