Statistics all support retaining current customers as opposed to bringing in new first-time customers. It costs seven times as much to earn a new customer than it does to keep one satisfied, and so on. But for some reason, 72 percent of car owners still service their vehicles at a third-party mechanic. The 2016 Cox Automotive Maintenance and Repair Study spells it out.

I won’t pretend like there’s one magic bullet that will turn that statistic around for a dealership – it runs much deeper than just one factor. But among the issues contributing to the extremely high defection rate would be something you only get one shot at: a first impression.

In the service department, there are naturally a few things set against you from the start:

• There’s no perceived benefit. Unlike sales, where a customer drives away a new car, there’s no tangible difference in the service department for most customers. They drive home in the same car, just with a lighter wallet.
• It’s not the cleanest environment. Whether it’s just road salt and sand, oil drips, or broken floor tiles and greasy handprints, the service drive is nearly impossible to keep up to the same standard as the showroom.
• The customer needs to meet someone new. Ever tried to make a new friend intentionally? It isn’t easy to walk up to someone you don’t know without feeling awkward.

So, when a customer comes to your dealership’s service department for the first time, they’re ultra-sensitive to their experience. Your first impression had better be good.

A Game Plan for a Good First Impression

Customers who have never been to your service department before – even those who bought their car from your store – need to receive a special one-time experience. It doesn’t have to be all pomp and circumstance but there should be a procedure that everyone follows for known new customers.

Here are a few ideas:

• As a customer pulls into the service drive, if the license plate doesn’t come up in the system, treat them as a new customer.
• Walk up to the driver’s door with a smile and a hand extended for a handshake as they exit the car. Introduce yourself and ask how they’d like to be addressed.
• Welcome the customer to your store and complete a walkaround WITH the customer.
• Complete the service work order.
• Provide hospitality like it’s the first time in your home. Offer coffee or water, let them know where the washrooms are, and make sure they understand services you offer like a shuttle van or rental car.

You’re well on your way to an excellent first impression. But you can go even further if it’s a home run you’re after (and you should be).

• Ask the new customer if they’d like a quick tour of your dealership. It’s a fantastic way to continue building the customer relationship.
• In a sales-to-service introduction, offer more than a quick hello. Offer to book the customer’s first service visit. Let them know you’ll be present that day and tell them to seek you out when they pull in. You’ve made a good first impression before the first service visit.

It takes much more than just a good first impression to retain more sales customers. But it’s a start.  

Need a morning java? Grab your smartphone and Google the nearest Starbuck’s. You can pace a mobile order in seconds and pick it up on the fly. Where is the best place for sushi in Miami? Google Maps will give you top-rated restaurants near your current location. Browse their menu online so you don’t hum and haw over the options at your table.

Service industries have done a great job of making it easy to find a solution. It’s something that goes hand in hand with speeding up service and making it more convenient. Wait a second – that’s the same thing automotive dealership customers have been saying they want too!

It’s Not About Selling Online

It’s not a matter of making new or used cars available for purchase online. Most dealerships aren’t anywhere near that point in their business acumen. The overwhelming majority of customers aren’t ready for a fully online purchasing experience anyway. So, you’re not about to set up your Amazon store for new and used cars.

There’s still a mobile solution you’re able to provide aside from an online store. For most dealers, you’re about to discover an area that can be improved exponentially.

The Mobile Experience

I think we can all agree on the popularity of smartphone use. Nearly every shopper through the door, for sales, service, parts, or otherwise, has a smartphone in their hand, purse, or pocket. That’s a tool they use just like you do, finding the simplest and fastest solution for their concerns. Unless there’s a rock-solid personal relationship established, that customer is going to search for the fastest way to get what they need.

Google makes it easy. Looking for an oil change? Type ‘oil change near me’. Searching for new tires? ‘Tire sales near me’. A GMC dealer for the new Terrain? Search ‘GMC dealer near me’.

Tack ‘near me’ onto anything you want to find. It’s the way people find what they need in close proximity to their current location.

That’s the Massive Opportunity You Have

Geo-targeted searches are big business at the moment, especially on mobile. But dealerships aren’t exactly the best performers in these searches. Check it out for yourself:

• Search ‘oil change near me’ on your smartphone and look at the results. You might be sitting in your office at the dealership and your store may not even show up on the first page.
• Search ‘tire store near me’. The same thing is likely.
• Take a look at the results for ‘car dealership near me’. Is your dealership on the first page of results?

It’s most likely going to be those pesky independents and chains again. Midas, PepBoys, and those other mom-and-pop shops know the importance of being searchable. They capitalize on the convenience factor. They currently own smartphone search results.

What they don’t have is the facility that you do. They can’t offer the same high-level products and services and don’t have the technology that your shop does. You have an advantage over the aftermarket, but you need to show up on search results better than they do.

It’s a Content Thing

Your online experience is driven by your web content, and your website needs to be optimized for a mobile experience. There are keywords that you need to be using on your website to get noticed in search results.

Obviously, there are a couple that you’ve already heard about here. Target first the loss-leader customers with this content. Then, target the people who search for problems like ‘Ford F150 Check Engine light’ or ‘Honda Civic engine noise’.

Here’s the reasoning behind it: if a customer searches an immediate problem on their mobile device, you want to be the first solution they find.

Writing new, evergreen online content is key to continually improving in search results. There’s never too many content pages on your website, and each will factor into your mobile searches too. Strive to add at least one new geo-targeted keyword to your website every week in some way.

Now that you have a six-year-old pop song from Carly Rae Jepsen running through your head… this post has nothing to do with dating. It IS, however, completely to do with getting to know your customer. More specifically, learning how your customer wants to communicate.

As a service advisor in years gone by, one of the biggest pain points in the position is reaching a customer whose vehicle is in the shop. For any number of reasons – the technician needs more information, the problem is intermittent or we need help duplicating the concern, there’s an estimate prepared – it can be critical to reach the car owner in a very short time. Like, right now is perfect.

Reaching the customer isn’t always as easy as picking up the phone. It never has been. You have service customers who work factories and can’t answer their cell phone. Office workers and executives could be in big board meetings. Even stay-at-home parents may be tied up changing a diaper or in the backyard with their kids.

What might feel frustratingly simple to you – “just pick up the phone!” – just isn’t as easy as it seems for some customers. And that small thing, an unanswered call, can play a big part in your day. The technician is frustrated that they can’t proceed on a repair. The repair line can be closed out as “Cannot Duplicate Customer’s Concern”. The customer is ticked off that you haven’t done anything on their vehicle. Or, after finally reaching the customer, you get the repair approval but it’s too late to finish the fix today.

The 80/20 Rule

Customer contact falls under the 80/20 Rule. In almost everything, a process works for 80 percent of the time. That’s where you should put the majority of your attention instead of the 20 percent.

In terms of customer contact, keep doing what you’re doing…except for one thing. It’s a small question that will help eliminate SOME of the pain in contacting customers.

In the walkaround that your service department WITH THE CUSTOMER should be doing with every RO write-up, you’re confirming the customer’s information. It’s one of the final steps before printing the repair order. One small change can make all the difference in communicating with segment of your customer base.

“How would you like me to reach you today?”

See where it’s going? It’s not just asking which phone number is best to call. It can open a dialog that allows for clarifying questions. You’ll get answers like this:

“I actually have a meeting between 10 and 12 today and won’t be able to pick up my phone. But if you text me, I can respond right away.”

“My job doesn’t allow me to take calls while I’m on the floor. But if the repair is less than $XXX, just leave me a voice mail with the details and go ahead with it.”

“I’ll be on a flight. If you need my approval, it’s going to need to wait until I land.”

It’s no longer a guessing game of IF you’ll reach the customer. You’ll also find out if people will be available at their home number, their cell phone, by text, or by email.

It might seem like a really minor difference, but it can make a significant impact on your service department. Your technicians will appreciate the faster response, your customers will love the communication in the way they want, and the service advisor will appreciate that they don’t have to try four different numbers before reaching the customer.

Just slip the question in at the end of the walkaround. “How would you like me to reach you today?”

If you didn’t look at your cell phone before climbing out of bed this morning, you’re in the minority. The Pew Research Center reported last month that 95 percent of Americans own a cell phone of some kind. It’s become the go-to source for news, entertainment, and yes, even communication from time to time.

Obviously, the retail automotive industry has been moving towards texting as a method of communicating with customers, albeit much slower than other industries. The benefits are incredible:

• You can send a message to a customer in just seconds.
• You can receive a reply within seconds also.
• Pictures and video clips add real value in messaging.
• Whole sales transactions can occur via a customer’s smartphone.

Without a question, the cell phone is the best thing to happen to the way businesses communicate with their customers since the advent of email. But using it isn’t the be-all end-all for communication. And what you’ll find is that texting isn’t necessarily the best way to communicate with your customers in certain situations. There are limitations.

Too Much Detail

Sending quick messages is so easy with a cell phone. But if it’s like reading a novel, a text message isn’t the right way to get the message across. If there’s a bunch of detail you need to convey, texting isn’t right for the situation.

Instead, consider sending an email. You can write as much as you need, include attachments, and not be ‘that person’ who sends annoying long-form texts.

Texting Isn’t Proper Enough Sometimes

Texting is great for casual, open dialog. It can work really well in business situations. But when the tone turns from casual to either formal or negative, texting is definitely not the best media to use. There’s almost no way to interpret tone, which can make your discussion take a turn for the worse.

When your tone is formal or you’re trying to work through a dispute or concern, take the conversation to another format. Use email and CC a person in authority as a safeguard. Or, better yet, talk over the phone or face to face so there are no mistaken tones.

After-Hours ‘Ba-Dings’ Aren’t Appropriate

Ever sat at home and received text messages from your boss or someone who is invading your personal time? If the shop is closed, there’s a good chance (though not always) that the customer perceives your texts as an interruption. It’s an annoyance that can drive potential customers to another dealership. There have to be boundaries somewhere.

If you MUST talk with a customer after hours, make sure it’s on their terms. Start with ‘Pardon the interruption’ or something similar, and ask if it’s okay to talk now. But an overriding thought you should start with is, “Can this wait until I’m back in the shop?”

There will be some people who may not agree. If that’s the case, feel free to comment on your suggestions for proper texting as it relates to business.

There’s an important message you want to get across to your customers. The car they test drove last month just received hot new incentives that finally put it within their budget. Your dealership has construction happening, and there’s information to reduce the frustration of accessing the service department. Or maybe, you’re sending a repair estimate along with pictures or a detailed explanation.

For more than a decade, email has been a go-to for communicating these types of messages. It’s reliable (as long as you have the right email address) and is a non-intrusive method of communication. But, according to 2018 statistics from Smart Insights, automotive services have an email open rate of just 13.17 percent!

Think of it in these terms: less than one in seven of your emails are read by the recipient.

If you think that sounds atrocious, it’s because it is. You have much better success in getting your message read by sending a text message, but that’s not always proper.

What’s the Problem with Email?

It’s not just one thing that affects our email open rate so much:

• Your dealership uses email to send marketing campaigns. It isn’t necessarily despised by customers, but marketing campaigns are rarely opened. If there’s an important email coming from the same source as that ‘junk mail’, there’s a good chance it’s going to be deleted instead of read.
• Email is no longer the main form of electronic messaging. Customers of all ages – not just millennials – use text messaging, Snapchat, WhatsApp, and other mobile services much more readily. Emails just aren’t checked as frequently.
• Your emails aren’t personalized. Of the email open rate concerns, this is the one that you can change.

Personalize Your Emails

Essentially, you need your emails to look different AND be attractive enough to open. You don’t want your important messages to get lumped in with the marketing campaigns and you don’t want customers to sluff off opening the email until later. A personalized email doesn’t solve all the problems, but it can help.

Send Emails from an Individual Work Account

A salesperson already will do this, as will service advisors. Emails should be personally written with casual, real-world language. Managers often want to send mass emails through their marketing provider, but that’s rarely the best way to communicate effectively.  

Anything that isn’t marketing related should come from an individual’s account, even if it’s to the whole email list your dealership owns.

Write a Catchy Subject Line

If there’s nothing catchy in the subject, there’s no reason for someone to open the email immediately. Write the main purpose for the communication in a clear concise message:

• Your Car’s Repair Estimate from XYZ Motors is Ready
• The Civic EX You Test Drove at XYZ Motors has a $1,000 Rebate
• XYZ Motors is Expanding! Here’s How You Can Still Access Our Store Easily.

Give an explanation. “Your car” and “Your quote” don’t hack it.

Add Your Own Flair

Don’t be starchy and formal. Write how you speak (minus any slang, of course). Conversational language in emails is received much better than formal writing.

There’s no point in telling you that every email you write will be opened. That’s not feasible. However, there’s a very good chance that by personalizing the emails you send, you can achieve a better email open rate than 13 percent.  

If you want to stir up controversy, talking about pay plans is a great way to do it. The most common pay structure used in dealerships for both salespeople and service advisors is commission-based. It’s why these positions have such lucrative earning potential and high turnover rates.

The past few years have been trending another direction. Large dealer groups like AutoNation use a salary plus bonuses pay structure for their salespeople. The rise of no-haggle pricing sees many stores using salary-based product advisors. Yet, the vast majority of car dealerships use the standard commission-based pay plan for the sales floor.

In the service drive, it’s very much the same. Some dealers have opted for a healthy salary plus a bonus (from personal experience) while others pay a mere pittance of a salary plus highly-incentivized commission (also from experience). Only junior service advisors receive a flat salary, but that’s changed out as soon as they become productive.

The question isn’t about which structure is better than the other. I think we can all see pros and cons to both types of pay plans – commission and salary. However, there’s a valid concern about whether a dealership or dealer group should have similar pay plans across all departments.

Here’s an example of what I mean: a salesperson is paid a stair-step commission pay plan that rewards high-grossing sales as well as high volume. It’s not a stretch to assume that, in an effort to close every lead they receive, high-pressure sales tactics come into play once in a while. Customers that purchase visit the dealership’s service department later on, expecting the same high-pressure environment and are met with a customer satisfaction-focused advisor who is paid a salary plus CSI survey bonuses. The experience between departments is a stark comparison, almost like visiting two different stores.

Another contrasting example is this: a dealership has no-haggle pricing and does their best to offer a transparent sales process. The salesperson is strictly paid a salary, or perhaps a substantial salary plus small bonuses, ensuring that customers get the best sales experience without the high-pressure techniques. The customer that has bought in this environment now visits the service department, where a highly incentivized service advisor applies blitzkrieg-style pressure to sell the most at the desk. The customer leaves, wondering where the no-pressure sales experience came from.

One Isn’t Better than the Other

To be absolutely clear, I believe there is room in the industry for both commission-based and salary-based pay plans. The type of clientele, the area, and the inventory can all dictate which style is most effective.

The debate isn’t over whether commission or salary is better. It’s about a uniform approach storewide. The customer shouldn’t be more comfortable visiting one department than the other. The service department and sales floor shouldn’t seem like two different stores. If you use a traditional commission-based pay plan in the sales department, it makes sense to do the same in the service drive. If you use a customer-centric salary system in sales, do the same in the service department.

It isn’t that one structure is better than the other – it’s the cohesive culture and experience you’re giving your customers

Another satisfied car buyer drives away in their new Honda/Chevy/Ford/other make. They’ve just experienced the best car purchase in their life. They have the perfect vehicle with the right features. Their new car is within their budget. Best of all, they didn’t feel pressured nor did they get the feeling the salesperson was hiding anything. It was the ideal, transparent transaction, and their SSI survey reflects it.

Six months later, that same customer returns the lowest survey score ever from their first service visit. “There must be something wrong,” you think. “They love us! They would never trash our dealership on a survey.”

You’d be right. They didn’t trash your dealership.  The customer blasted your service department alone.

From years of auto retail experience, it happens more than you’d imagine (unless you’re in the service department – then you probably know it’s true). This type of two-faced feedback comes about when the sales and service departments aren’t operating on the same wavelength.

It’s About Culture

The service department in most dealerships is geared for an overriding purpose: generate income. With front-end sales gross dwindling, dealers lean on fixed operations to generate the bulk of the income for the store’s operations. The message service advisors and service managers get is to bring home the bacon.

The sales floor used to be the same. In recent years, with buzzwords like ‘transparency’ becoming more prevalent, the sales floor has undergone a reform. The focus on the sales floor isn’t to slam buyers into any car you can – it’s to help them find the right car for their needs, facilitate a no-nonsense test drive, and provide a no-pressure environment for the transaction. That’s the way it should be in today’s marketplace. It’s a culture change.

Discrepancies in Dealership Culture

But the culture hasn’t made its way into the service department in the same way. There’s no such thing as getting ‘just an oil change’. It’s an oil change and a wheel alignment. Or an oil change and a tire rotation. You can’t just fix the primary issue on the work order. You must fix that PLUS the three other add-ons the technician discovered.

The pressure is high in the service department, and it’s no wonder customers hate bringing their car in for service (that applies to dealerships and independents alike).

Culture Shift

Dealers need to align their culture across ALL departments. The customer bringing in a damaged car to the collision center should have the same experience as the one who just walked into the showroom. The new car buyer visiting the service department for the first time should get the same feelings as they did in the showroom.

To state it clearly, the culture must be a customer-centric one. There’s no room for pressure sales anymore; not with so many online avenues to vent and complain in today’s market. The customer-centric culture must be spread across all departments, and that’s to provide the highest level of care possible.

Shift the service culture away from high-pressure sales and towards transparent, manufacturer-aligned service recommendations. Give the customers a reason to trust you, not distrust you.

Look at your dealership today. What message are you conveying to your customers in each department? Is it the same across all of them? If it isn’t, you need to re-align your department cultures.

There is no shortage of bad online reviews, excruciating customer tales, and complaints to deal with about the service department. It’s easy to pass off one or two as keyboard warriors or ‘e-thugs’. But the fact is that front-line service staff aren’t perfect. They never will be.

It’s been drilled home about ‘Service Advisor 101’ – the basic tools service advisors need in their toolkit to do their job. Service Advisor 101 includes customer service skills, performing a vehicle walkaround (WITH) the customer, writing a repair order, selling an estimate, and cashing out the customer. These are the essential tools someone needs to do the job.

However, Service Advisor 101 only includes skills that keep your head above water. To swim powerfully in the automotive industry current, there’s another level of training required. It’s one that, sadly, many advisors never aspire to and are never pushed to pursue.

Service Advisor Training 102 Curriculum

In a nutshell, it’s the constant pursuit of improvement towards excellence. Service advisors should be coached to pursue more than just the status quo. It’s about doing better for yourself and, in turn, providing a higher level of service to the customers you deal with daily.

Ongoing Training

As I mentioned, it’s about doing more than keeping your head above water. The 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang don’t have swimming as an event, but there is speedskating, skiing, and dozens of other sports. Each requires a daily commitment to training hard, honing skills, and developing a winning mindset.

What you’ll notice is that world-class athletes don’t always train within their sport. Hockey players spend hours in the gym, building muscle mass in all the right areas to optimize their on-ice performance. Ski jumpers spend much of their time working on reactionary skills and mental focus so they’ll stay composed on the hill.

The same goes for the best service advisors. They need time away from their desk on a regular basis – monthly, quarterly, or annually – so they can hone their skills from the beer league to major league.

Pursuing Advancement

There aren’t many employees who are content to spend the rest of their career in the same position. It’s hard to accept as a manager or employer, but you need to prepare your staff for the next thing in their journey. If you’re lucky, they want to move up in the chain of command and you have the responsibility to prepare them for it.

Service Advisor Training 102 involves training service advisors in aspects of the industry they don’t see on a normal basis. It’s management-type duties like reading and interpreting the daily DOC report, overseeing a small number of employees, or sitting in on management meetings. You’ll find service advisors involved in this type of atmosphere develop a sense for the business and are better prepared when the opportunity arises to take on a management role.

Addressing Changing Technology

A service advisor with 101 training can write a work order saying, “CHECK AND REPORT BLUETOOTH WILL NOT PAIR AS PER CUSTOMER”. That’s an acceptable way to write the concern on a work order, and it’s probably not going to bring the heat on the advisor.

Service Advisor Training 102 involves getting the team member involved in more technical knowledge. They complete all the OEM training programs online that are available for their position. Infotainment systems, maintenance requirements, mechanical understanding – it all gives an advisor next-level abilities to be the best advisor they can be.

So, instead of writing a work order about Bluetooth not pairing, the advisor says, ”Jane, let’s go to your car. You can show me what you mean… Oh, I see. Jane, that’s an easy mistake to make. If you do this instead, it should pair for you without a problem. Let’s try it…There, all done! By the way, did you know your Bluetooth connection can also stream music from your phone?”

When a service advisor learns the product extremely well, they can provide a higher level of customer service.

There’s no finish line for service advisor training. It’s an ongoing process and progressive training opportunities should not only be available but encouraged!

Branding is a hot button. It’s pushed as the best way to create an individual identity or your dealership. Whether it involves a slogan, a physical image, or a location, branding has benefits, of that there’s no doubt. But branding your dealership can be detrimental if it’s not done well. Here’s an example of what I mean:

A Poorly Positioned Brand

A dealership’s brand is ‘Your Big City Dealer with Small Town Pricing’. That’s not too bad, kind of catchy. It’s a message from a rural dealer just outside a major city. They position themselves as equals but with the capacity to undercut any sales deal you’ll get from the urban dealerships.

However, they’ve created their own metric; a way you can measure your experience at the dealership. And unfortunately, in the automotive industry that’s dominated by commission sales, it’s not a promise you can make to your customers. Shopping between dealers is commonplace, and the ‘Big City Dealer with Small Town Pricing’ has pigeon-holed their branding into a losing proposition.

Any customer that gets a better deal elsewhere has immediately associated your store with a fallacy. Your store hasn’t come through for them according to your brand’s promise. It’s not only poorly positioned – the brand is based on pricing alone – but it’s unrealistic to provide that experience to each customer that comes through the door.

Make Your Brand an Achievable Mission Statement

A mission statement isn’t a destination but rather the road on which you’re traveling. It’s a consistent path that you can always find your way back to. That’s what a brand should be as well, and it should be evergreen. That means that ten years from now, twenty years from now, or even longer, your brand should be as applicable as it is today.

If your branding is about an experience, it must be one you can promise for every single client or visitor that comes through your showroom doors, browses your website, or visits your service department. Here are a few things you CAN’T promise in your brand:

- You can’t promise to always have the best pricing. Someone is always going to try to undercut you and positioning yourself based on a best-price brand only takes gross profit out of your pocket.

- You can’t commit to being the most convenient. Current and potential customers have options, many of which may be more convenient in their personal situations.

-You can’t promise anything definitive like being the ‘ONLY’ anything. You just don’t know when something else comes along, and you’ll have to change your brand again.

Base Your Brand on Something Experiential

Let’s look at that sample again. They’re only one word away from a really good brand message: ‘Your Big City Dealer with Small Town Service’. Everyone understands the ‘small-town service’ image of being friendly and personal. Those are characteristics you can reasonably promise that a customer can experience at your store. However, it means that the small-town service experience has to be the one overriding motivator for everything in your dealership. Whether it’s the sales experience, the service drive experience, or the parts guy at the counter, everyone needs to understand and undertake the brand message as their own.

It comes down to being who you say you are, and if you can deliver it consistently, that’s a message you can hang your hat on.

Your dealership website is often the first point of contact for new customers. It provides high-level information for shoppers and current customers. You’re displaying your inventory, enticing the anonymous lurker to make their first contact with your store. It’s the first impression you make on the clientele you’re targeting.

If you’ve had someone spend hours taking high-quality pictures, you have a system that decodes the VIN for accurate details, and you keep the listings current, you’re on the right track.

You give detailed profiles on your sales, service, parts, and support staff, making a personal connection with the reader. It’s an extremely healthy item for your website.

The mobile experience mimics your website with intuitive, easy-to-navigate menus and simple-to-find information. It’s really coming together.

You have a website that functions well and looks great! But instead of the roar of the crowds in response, you have crickets. Why is it?

The Silent Killer Has Sturck

Did you notice the typo? And what did you think? As soon as your brain detected the spelling error, it was like jamming the gears. Your engagement went from a 10 to nil in a heartbeat. The silent killer STRUCK!

Spelling and grammar are two of the most important things to a reader, even though they may not identify it. It might be an errant keystroke or it could be the writer isn’t strong in the area. Whatever the root of the issue, one misspelled word can negate everything else you’ve built up.

Are you doubting how relevant it is? Think about it in real-world applications in your life:

• When you read Facebook posts, do you pass over the comments with improperly-used punctuation or those with none?
• On a LinkedIn profile, do you give credence to people who misspell words in their posts?
• Do you weight a tweet’s validity based on how well the writer conveys their 140-character message?

I’d be willing to bet that at least one of those items strikes a chord.

A Simple Message: Speling and Grammer Matter

I promise I’ll stop the intentional spelling errors. It hurts me too! But it drives home the point: your dealership website content needs to be spot-on with every detail you present to the reader. Spelling must be correct. Sentence structure and grammar must be accurate. In short, eliminate this basic issue as an obstacle for your customers.

How Do You Do It?

It sounds simple. Accurate spelling and grammar aren’t as easy as you’d like to think, however. If someone at your store writes content for your website, you need to give them the tools to be successful. Grammarly is a fantastic tool that addresses most grammar and sentence structure issues and is phenomenal with spelling. It even offers an alternative so corrections are often just a mouse click. If your content has frequent mistakes, though, perhaps you have the wrong person on the job.

Ideally, your content should be handled by a professional service. Online content creators have the skills necessary to provide a top-notch website experience for your readers…without all the errors. It’s going to seem expensive at first but if it results in a single new customer, it will pay itself off immediately.

Take a look at your website right now. Check every page for spelling and grammar issues. Are you missing an ‘S’ in ‘Accessories’? Is there an ‘A’ in ‘Definate’? Can you find a run-on sentence or a period where there should be a comma? Is the wrong ‘then’ or ‘than’ used?

If you find errors, your customers will also. Don’t let something as simple as spelling get in the way of selling cars!