Improving car dealership marketing to help break sales records

In 2021, car dealers did a “great job adapting to what consumers wanted during the pandemic and have permanently evolved the car buying journey in a personalized way that results in very high satisfaction,” says said Vanessa Ton, senior manager of research and market intelligence, Cox Automotive. (Cox Automotive, 2021)

Car dealership marketing adjusted quickly to the hurdles of COVID-19 considering chip shortages and supply chain issues. Plus, most buyers were highly satisfied and spent less time researching and shopping online. (Cox Automotive, 2021)

But car dealerships did not achieve the record sales levels set in 2020, and sales expectations hardly ever get lowered. Is there a way to amplify your customers’ car buying experience to surpass previous records using direct-to-customer messaging, feedback, and communication automation?

Using customer feedback to improve car dealer customer service

Start by connecting SmartFlows to your CRM or uploading phone numbers of recent customers and leads. It’s important to include leads because they may be able to provide valuable insight as to why they didn’t make a purchase. This feedback could help the next time they shop with your dealership.

Next, automate a text or even a simple voice survey. SmartFlows records text responses and transcribes voice feedback for your auto dealership team to review. SmartFlows will even analyze the responses for sentiment and categorize the results (positive, neutral, and negative).

In general, a decent survey response rate is about 10% to 30%. You may want to send the survey to previous customers and leads more than once, but don’t be bothersome. Too many messages may come off as annoying or spammy, resulting in unsubscribes or call blocking.

Using customer feedback to improve car dealer customer service

Finally, applying feedback to your auto dealership’s customer experience. Take the new information you have and fine tune the car buying process. With text or voice feedback collected and organized, it’s time to reward those who provided feedback with the assistance of automation.

Automating car dealership survey responses

For positive feedback, you can automatically send a thank-you message or maybe a discount for their next oil change. This can help keep your dealership top of mind. Plus, you can set up this automation when you create the survey workflow – it just takes a few minutes and no developer skills.

For negative feedback, review responses to identify what could be improved. Alternatively, if you’re not planning on following up with these contacts one by one, automatically send a neutral message, for example, “Thanks for your response. We’ll use your feedback to make your car-buying experience better next time.”

Analyzing dealership feedback

Since SmartFlows categorizes survey answers by sentiment, all negative feedback is in one place for your review. Read through and keep track of common themes and pain points. Talk about these notes with your team and brainstorm ways to improve the experience. Maybe pain points include “it’s slow to get answers to simple questions,” or “there’s difficulty scheduling appointments.” Don’t worry, there are easy solutions to these common issues.

Adding communication automation to your car dealership marketing

Connecting SmartFlows to your dealership CRM will unlock a lot of automation opportunities. Your dealership can automate the survey workflow to continuously gather feedback. You may be able to improve on some negative feedback with relative ease using AI and automation.

Faster answers with fewer employees

Free up employees to concentrate on sales with AI and natural language processing. Technology like this will automatically answer incoming calls and route them to the right department without bothering storefront workers.

With a few keystrokes, you can also answer FAQs like your hours of operation and remind callers of upcoming promotions and dealership events.

Painless appointment scheduling

Self-serve appointment scheduling is an easy service to set up with IntelePeer’s tools. SMS appointment scheduling is a way to let customers and potential buyers create appointments easily and on their own time. It’s something consumers have come to expect from many companies.

Why add this feature? It frees staff to do more meaningful work while also giving your customers a better experience. Most car buyers have already invested hours of online research before they come to your store. So, it’s relieving for them to know that there will be someone ready to help when they arrive.

Gathering feedback, improving the car buying experience, and perhaps adding a few other convenient communication features can help you break your sales records. Setting up these automations with industry-leading tools is fast, easy, and doesn’t require a developer to implement or edit.