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Posted by Justin Parker in autoTEXT, Marketing, TechVideos | 0 comments
As the Spring season blooms, customers are eagerly seeking prompt replacements for their winter tires. With a staggering 72% of Canadians owning winter tires, the demand for tire appointments is rapidly increasing.
This presents an opportunity to optimize your operations and gain an edge over your competitors. By adopting powerful solutions, you can enhance customer and employee satisfaction while ensuring seamless efficiency. Our meticulously crafted and expertly curated tips will help you prepare your Service Department to run like a well-oiled machine. Embrace the full potential of this tire season and maximize your business growth by implementing these best practices and solutions.
It all starts by being proactive. Executing a perfectly timed marketing campaign that gets customers thinking about changing their tires early in the season will help you maximize shop capacity. The earlier you allow customers to schedule their appointments, the more options you will be able to make available to them. This will remove bottlenecks and allow your service department to operate efficiently and at full capacity.
With a streamlined communication solution, you can easily get your customers scheduled for a time that works for them. That way, they won’t have to wait too long to get their car serviced, and minimize friction for your employees along the way.
But what’s the easiest way to get in contact with your customers? According to market insights, emails and calls are increasingly getting ignored. We have to turn to a better communication channel. The most effective way to communicate with modern consumers is through text messages. Let’s take a deeper look at that.
Texting is the preferred communication method for modern consumers. 90% of customers today prefer to receive texts instead of calls. With the average consumer becoming reliant on texting, it only makes sense to communicate with them in their preferred channel. So this busy season, get in touch with your customers through an automotive marketing campaign that they will actually read.
Studies show that 95% of text messages are read in less than three minutes. With such an impactful way of communicating, why stop at simple reminders? Use this as an opportunity to let your customers book and check in for their appointment directly on their phone!
Instead of busying your phone lines with confirmation calls or playing phone tag with your customers, mobile check-ins can make this an efficient process. Customers can confirm their appointment no matter where they are — all from their phone!
Not only does this make the process so much easier for you and your customers, but it can also drastically reduce the number of no-shows you have by giving them timely reminders before their appointment. This allows your customers to easily indicate they need to cancel or reschedule an appointment they can’t make. It also makes it easier for your service department to utilize its schedule to the fullest. You’ll now be able to fit in as many appointments as possible!
Service reminders are also a great opportunity to let your customers know about the option to Service Now Pay Later. They can take time to consider this option from the privacy of their phone instead of waiting until they pick up their vehicle to find out about their purchasing power.
When they confirm their appointment, they will have the opportunity to explore the option of paying in installments for their vehicle servicing or even purchasing new tires. Now they won’t have to choose between driving a safe vehicle or paying for a service in full.
Once your customer checks in, clear and convenient communication shouldn’t stop there. You can also maintain that vital transparency with your customers by delivering professional, trackable estimates directly to their device.
While many customers will just come in for a tire change, your technicians might notice they are in need of brake service, wheel alignment, or have an underlying issue with their vehicle they were unaware of.
While you want to keep your customers safe by keeping their vehicles in the best shape possible, you also want to keep your customer informed the entire time their vehicle is in your care.
For transparency, utilize a solution that allows you to text professional branded estimates directly to your customers. This way they can see an itemized breakdown of the services recommended. Reinforce your estimates with VenueVision’s TechVideos app which allows your technicians to provide a detailed explanation for their recommendations by easily attaching photos and videos to estimates.
This detailed breakdown gives customers the opportunity to approve or defer services. Now you won’t have to waste time waiting for a call-back to get started on servicing a customer’s vehicle. Since your customers will have visibility throughout the entire process, you will increase customer approvals, retention and satisfaction while you drive customer loyalty and boost your overall Repair Order Values.
If you can gain your customers’ trust through transparency, you’ll earn loyal customers. But if you really want to hammer home customer retention, then you might want to consider offering a loyalty rewards program to make you their dealership of choice.
Everyone loves a good rewards program, so it’s no wonder that more than 90% of companies offer them. Why not join the club and give your customers another reason to come back to your dealership?
A loyalty program is a surefire way to incentivize your customers to return so they can redeem their rewards and save on future service.
Once you start to earn loyal customers, you will want to make sure they stay that way. The easiest way to do that is by using an automated reputation management tool that will help you ensure your customers have a great experience every time they come to your dealership.
Sending timely automated service follow-up messages allows your customers to share their experience directly with you. This will help you better understand how they view your business. After their visit, customers can rate their service experience right on their phone. So, if there is something they would have liked to see done differently, you will be notified immediately, allowing you to promptly address the situation.
If they give you a positive review, not only will you be able to take advantage by confirming what works well or by rewarding an employee for providing excellent customer service, but the happy customer will also be encouraged to share their positive experience on review platforms. This will help spread the word about the excellent service your dealership provides.
VenueVision has all the solutions you need to create the most transparent and efficient service department, from the moment your customer checks in through aftercare.
To make your service department run smoothly this tire season or for any season, deploy VenueVision’s software solutions and take the transparency and efficiency of your service department to new heights, all while your average RO Values and ratings soar!
Posted by Nicole Diemert in TechVideos | 0 comments
A customer at a dealership puts their trust in the service department team every time they bring their vehicle in for maintenance or repair. In a lot of cases, it is a blind trust. For years, customers did not often have insight to their repairs or recommendations that the service team was providing outside of the proposed cost.
But times are changing. Customers want transparency — in some cases demand it. Not only in the pricing of the repairs, but transparency into the actual work that needs to be done and why. Dealerships that acknowledge this need will benefit from the trust it generates between customer and service advisor.
If you do not appear transparent with a customer about their repairs, it may look like you have something to hide, which is never how you want your department to appear. It can make your dealership look unprofessional, misleading, or as if you are keeping information from your customer about their vehicle.
With video and mobile technology at the hands of almost everyone, service departments can provide that look under the hood without the customer having to be there. Technology has made it easier than ever for service advisors and technicians to show any issues they find to the customer while explaining to them why a recommended repair is required.
Communication with video will increase the level of transparency in every day dealer-to-customer conversations about needed repairs. The use of video will help customers understand problems and see the reason behind additional service recommendations. It will provide tangible information they can see providing assurance that the issues being identified do exist. This will in turn allow them to make more confident, informed decisions.
Today’s service customer is mobile savvy. They most likely conduct the majority of business and personal communication on their phones. So why not continue that experience for them? Customers will appreciate receiving pictures and videos about their vehicle on their preferred communication channel.
Data shows that the simple practice of using multimedia, especially video, resulted in a 24% increase in ASR conversion rate. Providing options that target your customer’s needs and preferred channels will enhance their overall customer service experience. A positive service experience will in turn generate more positive feedback on Service Experience surveys and higher CSI scores.
The use of video also increases the likelihood of a service recommendation being approved. This will in turn, increase the overall RO totals for a dealership. According to a recent automotive survey, when dealerships send messages with mult-media, their upsell success rates improved by 6% for messages that contained pictures and by an impressive 26% for messages which included video.
Additionally, the survey showed that the overall dollar value per repair order also increased, with 54% of consumers agreeing to pay more for service when pictures or videos are offered.
Most vehicle owners have limited knowledge of their vehicle’s mechanical parts and problems. Any help that a dealership can provide to shed light on these issues is greatly received. The increased transparency of capturing videos to highlight concerns is the most effective way to provide needed information and build the trust. And video communication doesn’t always have to point out areas of concern. A positive walk around video showing your customer that everything is fine under the hood will keep that customer coming back for future service — and build the trust in your team when there are recommended repairs.
A dealership that can educate their customers with picture or video-based communications will only enhance that trust between customer and service department. The video interaction will increase engagement with the customer and elevate their trust in your department and your staff. Your service advisors will receive more approvals for recommended services and increase their overall RO totals. It’s a win-win for both your team and your service customers.
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