Improving customers experience is a must

It's not wrong to say that everyone has heard how important it is to give customers the best user-experience.

Companies like Amazon are investing millions to get their site loading speed better by milliseconds. All in the idea of giving customers a better experience and therefore decreasing the time the customer spends going through the buying process. .

Buying a car, aside from buying a home, is one of the biggest expenses someone will make in their lifetime. As a result, people are looking for dealerships and salespeople who help to make this process as painless as possible. And in some cases they are even willing to pay more for a better experience.

1. Understand Current Customer Journeys

Before you start tearing your customer buying process apart to replace it with a new and “hip” system, take some time to understand the current process in every step of the way.

To make customers' buying experience better, you must start with the whole customer service process. You need to know how a typical car buyer interacts with your business, where does the journey end and why.

• You can start finding answers to the questions:
• What buying channels are available for customers?
• Which of them is most popular?
• What communication channels are provided for customers?
• Which of them is most popular?
• In what point of the buying process do most customers “opt-out”?
• Which task can you automate in your dealership? How much time does it win?

When you have a complete overview of your current buying process weaknesses and strengths, only then can you start implementing changes for improvement.

2. Save Customers Time

Have you measured how long the customer waits while their information is retrieved or entered into your system? Or how much time does a customer waste while waiting for the information to get from one employee to the next one / one department to another?

Today's customers don't want to waste their time and improving your system accordingly gives you an advantage over your competitors. You have to find a way to make the entire car buying experience as short and efficient as possible.
Avoid losing leads or not dealing with them on-time. Find the processes that you can automate, find the processes that are not needed and remove them. Take advantage of technology.

Show to your customers that you value their time and they don't have to waste their time.

And why not share this with your customers as well. Showing them that you truly don't want to waste their valuable time can increase trust and bettering potential for returning customers.

3. Take Advantage of Technology

Update CRM rules and configuration

Are your dealership CRM rules and configurations up to date with current market demands? Are they reflecting the way you want your customers taken care of at your dealership? Are they helping to save your team's time or are they wasting time doing processes that are not needed to be done? Is it possible to automate some of these processes?

It's common for dealerships to set up their CRM system rules and let them stay the same throughout years. Take your dealership leaders from sales, service and customer service departments and go through the rules together to ensure that they reflect best practices and reality of the market needs.

Dealership CRM is one of the most important parts of your dealership sales, in creating customer experience and improving chances of customer retention.

Or find automotive focused CRM

If you have not yet implemented a proper CRM system or your current CRM cant be configured with all needed options and processes, it's time to look for an automotive focused CRM system for your dealership.

Mainstream CRM-s are popular because they are done with the idea one-for-all, but these solutions come with certain problems. Automotive focused CRM gives all the needed configurations and integration possibilities, without breaking the bank. Most automotive CRM systems are cloud-based solutions which means that developers keep them up-to-date with market needs and demands.

Having proper tools will help you and your team to increase efficiency and productivity and offer customers a better buying experience.

4. Use the customer’s preferred communication channel

As each customer is unique, it is important to provide the appropriate communication channel for everyone.

We all have our own preferred communication channels. Some of us prefer email, some text messages, some chats and some old-school people still rather call than use anything else.

And it's quite common to find ourselves in the situation where a customer emails us and the first thing we try is to call them. Or then they call and we rather send them long and boring emails and expect their response. It's easy to overlook this issue, but all the people are unique and they need a unique approach. Ignoring customers' needs and preferences are common factors to lose the sale and customer.

And they will surely find another dealership, who takes notice of this and acts accordingly.

So rather be safe and reply by email to the customer who emailed, call back to the customer who called, chat with the customer who started the chat etc. You can always ask the customer which other communication channels they prefer, but don't assume anything.

5. Personalize and follow-up

In the largely digital world today personalization is not that common anymore. For most companies personalization means using a person 's name in marketing emails.

Its so far from that. Yes, contacting a person by their name is the first step, but it shouldn't be the only one. Everyone knows that name is added to the email automatically, so its not giving any value.

Personalization is something more. For example, allowing a customer to set an appointment time, receive real-time updates on their vehicle during the purchase process and personalized videos made by salespeople to demonstrate vehicle features etc.

Personalizing doesn’t stop after the sale. It continues with follow up: updates and reminders regarding servicing, accessory options, and tips on maintenance or news about related models.

But most dealers are not interested in contacting customers after the time of purchase, so one great way to stand out and give customers better experience about their purchase is to follow-up with them a few weeks or months after the time of purchase. Show them that you are interested in how they feel about their purchase.

Not only can this increase customer retention possibility, but also gives you an incredible chance to get customer feedback and review.

Conclusion

Giving customers the best buying experience is important and there is always something to improve. It is critical that your dealership is using all the available tools to offer value to your customers.

As car buying shifts more and more online, customer experience is more and more important. It is proven that customers will choose dealerships who provide a simple, fast and welcoming buying experience. So providing exceptional customer buying experience is the best way to attract and retain customers.

Personalize

Make your customer feel special before and after purchase, follow up and increase customer retention.

Take Advantage of Technology

Make the most of your dealership CRM and if not possible start using automotive focused CRM system.

Save Customers Time

Show to your customers that you value their time and you will make sure that every process moves as fast as possible.

1. Analyze

2. Time

3. Technology

4. Communicate

5. Personalize

Conclusion