Combining digital content with aftermarket product rates and programs will be a game changer for the digital retailing industry

Grapevine, TX – January 22, 2019 - The newest solution from F&I Express, Express Digital Media (EDM), will launch with expanded functionality at NADA in San Francisco, January 25-27, providing dealers a powerful tool designed to increase customer consideration and purchases of aftermarket products. EDM allows digital retailers to display VIN-specific aftermarket products, rates and content integrated through the F&I Express API.

The EDM solution will benefit digital retailers and menu companies seeking to increase sales of aftermarket products by exposing consumers to them earlier in the shopping process. Additionally, the solution will benefit consumers by educating them about the specific aftermarket products that may be available for the vehicle they are interested in purchasing. EDM will also enable F&I Express customers to access pre-approved F&I provider digital content, better educating the consumer shopping on the dealership’s website.

“A key benefit of digitizing the car-buying process is the ability to educate consumers about F&I products in a no-pressure environment and present real-time, dealer-specific rates for F&I products that are worked into the shopper’s monthly payment,” said Pete Batten, GM of Digital Retailing at Cox Automotive. “F&I Express’ EDM solution delivers dynamic, educational content that gives consumers the transparency they are looking for.”

In addition to helping digital retailers and menu companies deliver an enhanced car shopping experience, EDM also offers major benefits for the F&I providers. EDM gives F&I providers a powerful distribution network for their approved digital content, while giving those providers more control over how their aftermarket protection products are presented by digital retailing and menu companies.

“More than 17 million new cars were sold in 2018. We expect the percentage of those cars being purchased via digital retailing to continue to grow,” said Brian Reed, president, F&I Express. “With more vehicles being sold online, there will be an even greater opportunity to boost profits by educating consumers digitally about the benefits of aftermarket protection products. F&I Express EDM solutions has the ability to change the game for dealership profitability.” 

  To learn more or to schedule a demo, please contact SandyF@FandIExpress.com.

About F&I Express 
F&I Express, a Cox Automotive Company has been dedicated to leading the aftermarket industry into the digital age with innovative technology solutions. With solutions that cut costs, educate consumers, improve compliance and increase efficiency for dealers, agents, providers, and lenders, F&I Express offers a process for eRating, eContracting, eRegistering and eCancellations for aftermarket products on one platform. The Express Recoveries solution is an optimized eCancellation solution for lenders, providers and dealers to streamline the cancellation and recoveries process in an efficient and compliant manner. Express Digital Media gives digital retailers the power to educate car shoppers online with accurate and dynamic aftermarket rates and content. For more information about our innovative solutions, please visit fandiexpress.com or follow us on Twitter @fandiexpress.

 About Cox Automotive

Cox Automotive Inc. makes buying, selling, owning and using cars easier for everyone. The global company’s 34,000-plus team members and family of brands, including Autotrader®, Clutch Technologies, Dealer.com®, Dealertrack®, Kelley Blue Book®, Manheim®, NextGear Capital®, VinSolutions®, vAuto® and Xtime®, are passionate about helping millions of car shoppers, 40,000 auto dealer clients across five continents and many others throughout the automotive industry thrive for generations to come. Cox Automotive is a subsidiary of Cox Enterprises Inc., a privately-owned, Atlanta-based company with revenues exceeding $20 billion. www.coxautoinc.com

 Media contact:

Lisa Aloisio

Lisa.Aloisio@coxautoinc.com

m. 404.725.0651

BURLINGTON, VERMONT - January 17, 2019 -  EBlock, the fastest growing online auction in Canada, today announced that they are open for business in the United States. EBlock has grown exponentially in Canada by establishing valuable relationships with a number of dealers who want to save time and money remarketing their wholesale units. The company’s growth has been driven by its unique value proposition that centers around simulating the real auction environment with live lanes, set auction times and run lists that are available pre-auction.

“Most wholesale vehicles in the US sell in 60 seconds; why change this formula? We’ve seen what EBlock has done in a short amount of time in Canada and we are confident that the product will thrive in the US Market,” said Mike DeCecco, a former long-term Dealer.com executive and EBlock’s new Vice President of Sales and Operations in the US.

EBlock is launching its US operations out of the head office in Burlington, VT which has been a hotbed for Automotive technology innovation in the last decade, most recently Dealer.com. Beginning in the Northeast, the company will grow strategically by servicing both buyers and consignors in concentrated markets through feet on the street and inside sales and support.

Leading EBlock’s expansion across North America is a 17-year auction-industry veteran, Jason McClenahan, who joined the team as President and COO with previous experience at ADESA Canada and TradeREV US. “When I joined EBlock in 2017, the auction business was already being disrupted by technology,” he said. “After seeing everything in market, EBlock stood out as the platform that clearly understood what dealers want in an online auction.”

The company is offering lucrative incentives for dealers who come on board early, coupled with a large presence at this year’s NADA convention in San Francisco.

“Our dealers see the hammer drop on over 200 units per hour and they are incredibly pleased with the results they are experiencing using our technology,” said Ryan O’Connor, EBlock’s CEO. “Launching in the US around the NADA convention makes perfect sense for us.”

The company has an aggressive hiring plan slated for 2019 which includes sales and operations personnel. They are looking forward to making connections with dealers and auction professionals who will be attending the NADA show and visiting their booth #7745W.

EBlock, based in Burlington Vermont, is a true online auction where cars are bought and sold in 60 seconds. The company is committed to helping dealers save time and money by buying and selling wholesale inventory in the most efficient ways possible. For more information contact Mike DeCecco, Vice President of Sales and Operations, USA, at Mike@eblock.com.

We discuss the future of AI with Lance Shafer from Lotlinx. What's next for the technology and how can it better help your dealership make decisions?

Combination of Robust Integrations Enable Next-Level Personalization Across Customer Lifecycle

 MISSION, Kansas, January 17, 2019 – With a surplus of information right at their fingertips, car buyers are doing more advance research than ever, and they expect dealers to do their homework as well. Yet, when customers walk into a store, they often know more about the dealership than the dealership knows about them. VinSolutions is working to close this gap by investing in a new artificial intelligence product called VinSolutions Connect Automotive Intelligence.

Connect Automotive Intelligence, which will be available to view at the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) convention later this month in San Francisco, will help dealers better act on customer engagement and data. The tools will analyze customer communications and behaviors to provide dealers with insights on the best opportunities and how to engage them to deliver a more personalized experience.

VinSolutions is currently piloting the product, which includes three new artificial intelligence-enabled tools for Connect CRM: Engagement Strength, Sentiment Analysis and Buying Signals.

1. Engagement Strength: Measures a salesperson’s interactions with an existing prospect or customer. By tracking a salesperson’s customer interaction frequency, the tool highlights engagement trends and helps managers better visualize how a salesperson is performing in the CRM.

1. Sentiment Analysis: Uses artificial intelligence to determine customer sentiment and intent by analyzing text messages and emails. This analysis helps identify revenue opportunities and highlight the customer interactions that will build satisfaction.

1. Buying Signals: Captures and analyzes shoppers’ online behaviors and distills them to predict shopping personas, shopping preferences and the sense of urgency. Rather than leads coming into the CRM without any context of the prior online shopping behavior, this new enhancement leverages known online traffic to increase speed of sale and build trust with the shopper.

“Modern businesses today excel by being more consumer-facing,” said Kevin Frye, eCommerce Director, Jeff Wyler Automotive Family. “For us, personalizing each customer experience is a high priority. Connect Automotive Intelligence will allow us to deliver a more consumer-facing journey with timely, relevant and personalized communications”.

For new technologies like artificial intelligence to be fully leveraged, another important step must be taken — technology integrations. As part of Cox Automotive, Intelligence works with solutions from its sister companies, including Autotrader, Kelley Blue Book, vAuto, Dealer.com, and Xtime, to streamline workflows, reduce duplicate data entry, and ensure dealers get more value from their software investments. These key integrations, which help drive personalization across the entire consumer lifecycle, will also be filtered through these artificial intelligents-enabled enhancements to bring the most opportunity out of the marketplace for dealers.

“Dealers are at a turning point in the industry, where delivering on a personalized and efficient customer experience will be critical to ensuring long-term profitability and lifelong customers,” said Lori Wittman, senior vice president of dealer software solutions at Cox Automotive. “VinSolutions is investing big in Connect Automotive Intelligence to bring together technology and powerful integrations to ensure dealers have the insights they need to create the tailored experience consumers expect today.”

About VinSolutions

As the provider of Connect CRM, a leading dealership customer relationship management system, VinSolutions helps more than 5,000 dealers make every connection count. VinSolutions products integrate dealership systems, processes and tools to deliver a single view of the customer across the business – so dealers can focus on building relationships throughout the sales cycle. Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Mission, Kansas, VinSolutions fosters dealership success by providing a fully customizable suite of solutions, including equity mining, market pricing and desking tools, combined with the continuous, personal support of a designated Performance Manager. VinSolutions is OEM certified by every major manufacturer and is Autosoft, CDK, Reynolds & Reynolds and Dealertrack DMS certified. VinSolutions is a Cox Automotive™ brand.

About Cox Automotive

Cox Automotive Inc. makes buying, selling, owning and using cars easier for everyone. The global company’s 34,000-plus team members and family of brands, including Autotrader®, Clutch Technologies, Dealer.com®, Dealertrack®, Kelley Blue Book®, Manheim®, NextGear Capital®, VinSolutions®, vAuto® and Xtime®, are passionate about helping millions of car shoppers, 40,000 auto dealer clients across five continents and many others throughout the automotive industry thrive for generations to come. Cox Automotive is a subsidiary of Cox Enterprises Inc., a privately-owned, Atlanta-based company with revenues exceeding $20 billion. www.coxautoinc.com

Media Contact:
Lisa Aloisio
Lisa.Aloisio@coxautoinc.com
404.725.0651

BURLINGTON, Vt., January 15, 2019 – Dealer.com, the premier digital marketing solution and partner for auto dealerships, will unveil new capabilities this month at the NADA Show. The new innovations will enable dealers to leverage cutting-edge data and technology to create a more personalized online shopping and buying experience, unlock digital marketing efficiency and cater to emerging consumer needs. 

The new solutions being launched help dealers deliver a more complete and connected digital storefront, with personalized experiences that reach and engage customers at every step of the shopping process while providing improved flexibility, customization, and Managed Services options. The innovations include:

A redesigned Dealer.com website platform delivers personalized shopping and buying experiences tailored to consumer preferences and behaviors.  Upgrades include new mobilefirst homepage and Vehicle Deal Pages (VDPs) designs that use HomeNet Automotive high-resolution and 360-degree imagery to provide more engaging, customizable inventory content. Integrated with Cox Automotive Digital Retailing, next-generation VDPs provide accelerated deals and immersive inventory merchandising.

• New advertising enhancements that drive proven and measurable results by connecting inventory with likely buyers more efficiently across digital channels. Key improvements include integration with vAuto that ensures ads reflect optimally relevant inventory, pricing, and shopper data, and enhanced audience targeting on Facebook that applies Kelley Blue Book and Autotrader data to help target likely in-market buyers. The Dealer.com TotalConnect Advertising package brings dealers a more complete multichannel advertising solution than previously available.

• Expanded and enhanced Managed Services offerings now provide dealers with more custom content services, including custom video capabilities, social reputation management, and custom fixed operations content and creative that allow dealers to enhance their overall digital marketing performance and attract customers across all lines of business.

• Secure and integrated digital retailing fosters deal-making on any device and provides a streamlined online to in-store experience. Dealer.com websites integrate the most advanced digital retailing solution available, powered by Cox Automotive Digital Retailing tools, to drive shoppers down the path to purchase, increasing their engagement and creating stronger leads that accelerate dealer sales. Dealers using Cox Automotive Digital Retailing on their Dealer.com websites have a higher close rate and earn higher gross profits compared to traditional online leads.*1

“With more of the car-buying process taking place online, customers expect a digital shopping experience tailored to their specific needs,” said Mike Rother, senior vice president and general manager for Dealer.com. “The new Dealer.com capabilities help dealerships build a customized digital marketing strategy that puts the right vehicles and right deals in front of the right customers to drive greater engagement, satisfaction and sales.”

Dealers can deliver the personalized, mobile digital shopping experience customers now demand. Ninety percent of consumers say they prefer a unique car-buying journey that allows them to shop and buy in a very personalized way, according to the Cox Automotive Future of Digital Retail Study2, and the majority of all traffic to dealership websites (60 percent) now comes from mobile devices.3

Redesigned Website Platform to Engage Shoppers

• Dealer.com personalized websites are redesigned for the modern shopper. All-new mobile-first site designs differentiate dealerships and immersive VDPs turn browsing activities into buying behaviors. The streamlined design architecture includes homepage templates that focus on imagery, facet search, personalization and clean hero messages to make it easier for customers to find the vehicles and features they want. The updated Vehicle Deal Pages feature enhanced inventory merchandising and available integrations with Cox Automotive’s HomeNet Automotive 4K and SnapLot 360 technology, which enables high-resolution imagery and 360degree spins of vehicle interiors and exteriors. 

New Advertising Solutions to Target In-Market Buyers More Effectively

• Dealer.com Advertising solutions help dealers reach more buyers and drive them to relevant inventory, deepening their engagement with the dealer’s digital storefront. Integrated ad campaigns use advanced data-targeting capabilities to connect likely in-market buyers across paid search, display, social and video channels, influencing consumer demand at every stage of today’s digitally-driven shopping process.  An exclusive integration with vAuto allows dealers to automatically match the right car to the right buyer at the right price within their ad campaigns, generating more clicks and engagement for dealers at lower cost. New data and audience targeting integrations from partners Autotrader and Kelley Blue Book and improvements to the Compass strategy tool have also been implemented.  These solutions, integrated within the Dealer.com TotalConnect Advertising package save time and increase efficiency for shoppers and dealers alike, creating a more intuitive experience for car shoppers, advertising and website alignment for dealers, and increased traffic and leads.

Enhanced Managed Services to Create Custom Content

• Dealer.com is also expanding the offerings through its Managed Services team of digital marketing experts that provide cutting-edge strategy and execution to bring dealers the SEO, content and creative, and social media services needed to differentiate their dealership, drive more sales and book more services appointments. Managed Services has added content and creative capabilities to support fixed ops campaigns and the creation of custom videos to promote specials and incentive campaigns. Videos can now be embedded within landing pages on the client web site and become an asset to strengthen broader marketing efforts, including social media and search engine optimization.

The 2019 NADA Show will be held January 24-27 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA. For more information on NADA 2019 product announcements, visit Dealer.com at the 2019 NADA Convention and Expo, booth # 1721S.

1 Cox Automotive Product Analytics, Accelerate Dealer Close Rate Product Analysis (September 2018)

2 Cox Automotive 2018 Future of Digital Retail Study

3 Dealer.com 2018 DataView Digital Marketing Index

About Dealer.com

Dealer.com provides an integrated platform of Advertising, Website and Managed Services products which allow OEMs, dealer groups, retailers and agencies to leverage advanced digital technology and data to better engage and connect with their customers. The company practices a deep commitment to its culture of innovation, with a focus on health and wellness, making it one of the most desirable places to work, and a valuable partner for automotive retailers. Based in Burlington, Vermont, Dealer.com is a Cox Automotive brand. For more information, visit www.dealer.com.

About Cox Automotive

Cox Automotive Inc. makes buying, selling, owning and using cars easier for everyone. The global company’s 34,000-plus team members and family of brands, including Autotrader®, Clutch Technologies, Dealer.com®, Dealertrack®, Kelley Blue Book®, Manheim®, NextGear Capital®, VinSolutions®, vAuto® and Xtime®, are passionate about helping millions of car shoppers, 40,000 auto dealer clients across five continents and many others throughout the automotive industry thrive for generations to come. Cox Automotive is a subsidiary of Cox Enterprises Inc., a privately-owned, Atlanta based company with revenues exceeding $20 billion. www.coxautoinc.com

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New platform helps dealers, partners improve used vehicle reconditioning efficiency, speed

Oakbrook Terrace, IL. – January 16, 2019 – vAuto announces the acquisition of iReconCars, a used car reconditioning management platform that allows dealers to automate the reconditioning process to control expenses, reduce mistakes and delays, manage third-party partners, and improve customer satisfaction and trust.

iRecon is available to Provision, non-Provision customers, and for third-party reconditioning partner platforms. Founder Mike Boyd will remain with Cox Automotive as the Sr. Director of Business Enablement for iRecon, and co-founder Micah Tindor will serve as the Business Operations Director for iRecon.

“Due to margin compression and market competition, it’s critical to have a reconditioning system partner to control, manage and maximize the reconditioning process in order for dealers to stay relevant and profitable. With iRecon, we automate the reconditioning process by putting the right vendor on the right job at the right time and providing dealers with a ‘real-time’ connection to the consumer based on trust,” said Boyd.

“Reconditioning often slows the time it takes dealers to get used vehicles front-line ready, which can hurt a vehicle’s front-end profit potential” said Randy Kobat, Senior Vice President of Inventory Software Solutions at Cox Automotive. “iRecon helps dealers efficiently manage the reconditioning workflow by providing real-time reconditioning reports and statistics that track every touch point until reconditioning is complete. That’s why we believe in this technology and thank Mike and Micah for their thought leadership to develop a solution that solves a critical need for our clients.”

iRecon is the only reconditioning platform that considers all three parties involved in the reconditioning process—dealers, their vendors and consumers. With iRecon:

Dealers and vendors work together via an easy-to-use dashboard and unique access to identify and address delays, quality issues, and over- and under-worked situations in real time, providing dealers true insight into their reconditioning process and holding costs.

Dealers set an electronic reconditioning plan that provides internal team members and vendors with a timetable and targeted work list for each vehicle in advance.

Vehicle buyers can review iRecon’s MyCarPedigree report to validate the dealer’s reconditioning standards and the work performed to bring a vehicle to its current condition.

“iRecon has had a far-reaching positive impact on a variety of roles within our store,” said John Malishenko, Chief Operating Officer for the Germain Auto Group. “Our used car and service managers can communicate more effectively and adapt the recon process to changing conditions, like volume and capacity, which improves lifecycle times. Sales Managers and their teams benefit from improved visibility regarding a vehicle’s availability and pedigree, which further assists with appointment setting building greater value. Overall, we’ve experienced a 25 percent improvement in lifecycle since beginning with iRecon, and we sell 70 percent of our used vehicles at list.”

iRecon also has significant benefits for reconditioning companies. 

“Before iRecon I wasted so much time walking the lot and asking for the same jobs every week,” said Sam Britain, Owner of Automotive Impressions, a company that provides reconditioning services for dealers. “Now, I absolutely depend on iRecon to add efficiency when working with my dealers.”

In a 2017 study conducted by Cox Automotive, dealers rated reconditioning as one of the top three most important tasks when managing vehicle inventory and indicated that the reconditioning process utilizes significant in-house resources.

“With iRecon, dealers can say goodbye to process inefficiencies and can work faster and smarter to increase margins,” added Kobat.

For more information on iRecon, stop by the vAuto booth #1620S at the 2019 NADA Show, visit or call 844-473-2661.

About vAuto

vAuto® provides innovative technology, tools and business intelligence to thousands of dealerships across the United States and Canada, helping them compete more effectively and increase new/used vehicle sales volumes and profits. Founded in 2005, vAuto revolutionized dealers’ used vehicle operations with the groundbreaking Provision® suite of tools. Leveraging The Velocity Method of Management®, pioneered by vAuto founder, Dale Pollak, Provision helped dealers adopt a more transparent and turn-focused approach to used vehicle acquisition, appraising, pricing and merchandising based on real-time, local market supply-and-demand data. In 2018, vAuto released the Provision ProfitTime metric and methodology to help dealers maximize inventory turn and gross profit based on the investment value or profit potential of each vehicle. The same year, the company expanded its integrations with Cox Automotive’s HomeNet unit and acquired iRecon, an online reconditioning workflow platform. The moves extend vAuto’s efficiency-focused used vehicle management solutions into vehicle merchandising and reconditioning.

vAuto’s solutions also include Conquest, a new vehicle inventory management and pricing system, and Stockwave, which enables dealers to efficiently find and purchase vehicles from leading wholesale sources via a single platform.

Headquartered near Chicago, Illinois, vAuto is a Cox Automotive™ brand.

About Cox Automotive

Cox Automotive Inc. makes buying, selling, owning and using cars easier for everyone. The global company’s 34,000-plus team members and family of brands, including Autotrader®, ClutchTechnologies, Dealer.com®, Dealertrack®, Kelley Blue Book®, Manheim®, NextGear Capital®, VinSolutions®, vAuto® and Xtime®, are passionate about helping millions of car shoppers, 40,000 autodealer clients across five continents and many others throughout the automotive industry thrive for generations to come. Cox Automotive is a subsidiary of Cox Enterprises Inc., a privately-owned, Atlanta-based company with revenues exceeding  $20 billion. coxautoinc.com­­­­

I went through an interesting epiphany when I was first promoted to a Sales Manager.  As a sales rep, I was pretty good.  I knew that I made my own money.  As a sales manager, I soon realized that I was relying on others to make me money.  As a result, training became something on which I focused.

Training is an important part of the sales manager role. Regardless if you dedicate time to train in the dealership, training happens.  Your sales reps are learning.  The goal is to make sure they are learning the right things that will help them succeed.

Let’s take a look at something you need to add to your training calendar.  This can have a drastic impact on the experience you are providing your customers.

In the Customer Experience Research project we conducted at DrivingSales, we performed a global principal component analysis or PCA.  A PCA is a statistical procedure that transforms variables into patterns.  In our global PCA, we wanted to identify the things customers valued most in their interaction with a dealership.  The results?

With over 1 trillion possible combinations, the top two were, “I would like a relationship with a dealer I can trust”, and “I need to like and trust the person I am purchasing from.”

Build a sales staff that can develop trust in themselves and your dealership is extremely important to an improved customer experience.  How do you train your staff on trust?

We analyzed the responses of the research and identified the five elements of trust.  Let’s review each one.

1.  Knowledgeable.  This is the first of two no-brainer ways to build trust.  Your salespeople need to be knowledgeable about the products they are selling.  But it’s more than just spitting out vehicle facts.  Sales reps need to understand the needs of their customers and map vehicle features to benefits that satisfy those needs.  It’s different than a walkaround contest.  How can you train your salespeople on tailoring the vehicle presentation to the needs analysis?

2.  Establish rapport.  This is the second of the no-brainers.  Salespeople have been trained since the dawn of time on the importance of building rapport.  Even in the digital world, this importance has not changed.  Make sure your sales team doesn’t shortcut this important element of trust.  Just because customers are coming in knowing the exact car they want to buy doesn’t mean your reps should skip this step.

3.  Takes the customer seriously.  This was an element that surprised me.  It seems simple on the surface, but our interviews with customers show that dealership salespeople are still not assuming their customers are there to buy.  If they feel like the customer isn’t there to purchase, they tend to skip out on the first two elements (knowledgeable and establish rapport).  We’ve all seen the Google stats on how many dealerships the average customer will visit.  Why are we still struggling with this?

4.  Low Pressure. Customers stated over and over again that they didn’t want or like it when there was pressure from their sales consultant.  How can you train your salespeople to tone down the pressure and turn up the knowledge and transparency they provide?  Take some time to analyze your current process and see how you can make the experience low pressure.

5.  Empowered.  In our research, customers hate it when a salesperson has to ask their manager about every little thing.  Customers felt like their sales consultant didn’t have any authority to diverge outside of the strict process steps.  Some of them actually wondered why they just couldn’t deal with the manager directly if they were the ones with all the answers.  How can you empower your salespeople and train them on how to handle customer questions?

As you train and develop your staff, find some time to train on the five elements of trust.  A good activity would be to audit your sales process and identify any steps or parts of it that detract from trust.  Replace these steps and components with ones that actually build trust with customers.  This will help improve the customer experience of your dealership and as a result improve your sales performance.

You may have an OEM that imposes restrictions and constraints on your marketing. Jay Acunzo discusses how these constraints can actually help us with our marketing. 

How are you remaining creative in a world of OEM restrictions?

Second Phase of Cox Automotive Survey Gives Dealerships Insight into Consumer Preferences and the Need for a Revitalized Service Experience

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. (January 9, 2019) – With consumer expectations quickly rising, dealers are working to get ahead of the curve and build experiences that meet the needs of vehicle owners. Releasing the second phase of its 2018 Service Industry Study, Cox Automotive surveyed approximately 3,550 consumers and 404 franchise dealership employees to gain greater insight into consumer trends and perceptions around the service experience, and help dealerships identify new opportunities to increase retention and enhance profitability.

According to the study, while dealers may be leading their competitors in share of service visits, an estimated 70 percent of consumers who purchased or leased from a dealer did not return for service in the past year. This equates to roughly $266 billion in annual lost revenue across all franchise dealers.1

The good news is more than half of consumers reported they would be willing to travel farther and pay more for an enhanced service experience, helping overcome the top two barriers to dealership service retention. This means dealerships that want to grow share in customer-pay service need to be adopting new offerings and technologies, such as online bill pay, minimal-click scheduling via mobile devices and ride-share or valet service.

“With consumer satisfaction and loyalty dropping across all service providers since 2015, now is the time for dealerships to take a closer look at the experience they are providing their customers and upgrade to adapt to changing expectations. This will be particularly critical to retain millennials, who are the fastest-growing generation of car buyers today, but also the most dissatisfied with the current experience,” said Jim Roche, vice president of marketing and managed services at Xtime, a Cox Automotive brand that drives owner loyalty through its one Service Experience Platform. Roche is also author of “Fast Lane: How to Accelerate Service Loyalty and Unlock its Profit-Making Potential” and the upcoming book “Fast Break: Creating A Customer-Centric Operating Philosophy for Automotive Service.”

“Dealerships have a prime opportunity to increase customer satisfaction, and as a result, loyalty and retention,” Roche said. “Dealerships, though, need to develop a better understanding of consumer needs and expectations for the service experience. The insights from this study will help dealerships identify where the customer experience is currently falling short and what can be done to repair it.”

Ultimately, consumers are motivated by a service experience that is convenient and stress-free, revealing the following five opportunities for dealers to meet the demands of today’s consumer and help differentiate their business from third-party service providers.

1. Enable Ease of Maintenance: According to the study, many consumers want the dealer website to be their primary touchpoint for maintenance — approximately 67 percent want to be able to track service history on the dealer website, while 62 percent want recall updates and service reminders with links back to the website for online scheduling and other tools.  Sixty-two percent of consumers also want to view OEM maintenance recommendations  via the dealer website.

1. Provide Price Transparency: Seventy percent of consumers want to view price ranges for various services on the dealer site, while 55 percent would choose one dealership for service over another if it provided online estimates of costs during the scheduling process.

1. Move Offline to Online: Consumers feel moving steps in the service process online will improve the experience — particularly when it comes to online scheduling. In fact, 56 percent of consumers would choose one dealership for service over another if they could schedule appointments online. Despite this, scheduling is still primarily an offline activity due to continued low awareness. Among those who don’t make appointments online, just 35 percent are aware it’s an option their service provider offers.

1. Close the Distance Gap: With location a top reason for not returning to the dealership of purchase for service, dealers need to be willing to embrace mobility solutions to help overcome this hurdle. According to the study, two in five consumers are interested in service mobility concepts, such as valet service and mobile service providers.

1. Service Valuation Analysis: Consumers increasingly want to know the ROI on their service dollars. Two in five want to understand the relationship between services needed and vehicle value, while one in three are interested in getting a trade-in value during the service experience.

“So many people in our industry will find a reason to look at the customer and say, ‘My job isn’t to see it your way but to get you to see it my way.’ But we need to look at everything through the eyes of the customer,” said Steve Nicholson, director of operations at Temecula (CA) Hyundai. “Other dealers want to try to make as much money as they can from every customer, but in parts and service we have the opposite philosophy of that. Rather than take a lot from a few, we want to gain a little from a lot. We want to see the customer more than once.”

The complete report of Cox Automotive’s 2018 Service Industry Study Phase 2 is available here.  The first phase of the Cox Automotive 2018 Service Industry Study can be found here.

1 Estimate based on revenue calculations from 2017 NADA Dealer Profile Data and the 2018 Cox Automotive Service Industry Study.

About Cox Automotive

Cox Automotive Inc. makes buying, selling, owning and using cars easier for everyone. The global company’s 34,000-plus team members and family of brands, including Autotrader®, Clutch Technologies, Dealer.com®, Dealertrack®, Kelley Blue Book®, Manheim®, NextGear Capital®, VinSolutions®, vAuto® and Xtime®, are passionate about helping millions of car shoppers, 40,000 auto dealer clients across five continents and many others throughout the automotive industry thrive for generations to come. Cox Automotive is a subsidiary of Cox Enterprises Inc., a privately-owned, Atlanta-based company with revenues exceeding $20 billion. www.coxautoinc.com

Media contact:

Lisa Aloisio

Lisa.Aloisio@coxautoinc.com

m. 404.725.0651