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I recently took my car in for service at a local dealership. When I arrived, the Service Writer estimated an hour to completion. Over the next three and a half hours, I had to track him down multiple times to receive progress updates. More than the wait, my biggest frustration was the lack of communication.

When I approached the Writer to check in, he was doing five things at once. The reality is that he just didn’t have time to communicate with me.

LightSpeed Efficient. Transparent. Integrated. The Right CRM = More Sales

A good CRM is crucial. Customers need immediate communication. They want to know what’s happening during service and the purchase process and they have communication preferences, whether that’s email, text or a phone call.  Studies indicate that 90% of texts are opened within three minutes and have an outstanding response rate of 45%.

Every service customer needs at least three to five points of communication before you take their final payment.  If your dealership has 150 open service orders, that’s 450-750 points of communication. Your writers can’t do it all, but your CRM can.

LightSpeed

A good CRM does the work of communicating with the customer.  If the repair status changes, the CRM sends an automated message to help set their expectations. When the repair has started, an automated message informs them and gives checkpoints to the finish line.  The CRM should let you set different communication chains depending on the type of customer or the type of powersport equipment.   

The CRM for sales is just as critical as it is for service. Bringing in new customers, whether through walk-ins, phone leads or internet leads, allows the rest of your organization to thrive.

Walk-ins:  Your CRM should let your salespeople use their smartphones to greet customers, search for the right unit and capture customer information. The salesperson can send pictures and information from their mobile device anywhere, anytime.

Phone leads:  Phone integrations are crucial. When customers call, they should be automatically identified and their purchase history or outstanding activity should be just a click away. It takes about 45 seconds to look up customer information. Phone integrations cut that down to about 5 seconds, giving your staff and customers their time back. If the customer hasn’t been in your dealership before, you can create a new record and automatically populate the number and name from caller ID.

Internet leads:  87% of consumers start their shopping experience online and that number is growing.  It’s crucial to post your online listings quickly, with all options, specs and pictures.  Your website channels should feed consumer inquiries back into your CRM and help you manage and nurture those leads.

                  For sales staff, a good CRM helps create goals, provide critical measurements to attain those goals and display compelling tracking scoreboards. Accountability is one thing the CRM cannot do. It’s up to the dealership to meet with sales staff to review the scoreboards.

                  Customer satisfaction is the most important measurement you can use to predict future revenue growth, and a good CRM will keep your customers coming back.

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References:

Texting = https://www.pcmag.com/news/businesses-take-note-your-customers-prefer-texts#:~:text=Customers%20want%20to%20interact%20with,compared%20to%20email’s%206%20percent.

Consumers shopping online = https://www.retaildive.com/news/87-of-shoppers-now-begin-product-searches-online/530139/

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