Preparing for disaster isn’t just about putting together a kit with everything you need ahead of time (though we highly recommend it), it also means making sure your employees are trained and that you have put processes in place in order to react and recover from a catastrophe.

Train Your People

Just like your people are essential to the success of your everyday business, they’re also essential to the survival of your business following a disaster. Prior to a disaster, you should organize and train your employees to fulfill the following roles:

Emergency Responders

Your emergency responders are those who are trained to react in a chaotic situation. These are the people in your dealership who can make decisions quickly and you can trust in stressful situations. Work with them to establish roles and processes and then rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.

Communications Team

Your communications team is responsible for — you guessed it —communication. These are the individuals who will keep contact information on hand for dealership employees, authorities and more. They’ll be responsible for sharing information with your employees and customers during and after a crisis.

Operations Team

Your operations team is responsible for making sure you have processes in place to protect your dealership, respond during a crisis and work towards recovery. 

Put Processes in Place

When disaster strikes, you want to rely on predetermined processes to navigate you through the chaos. Before an event happens, put processes in place to mitigate damage; talk about securing your equipment, disposing of hazardous materials and storing and backing up your data. Work with your teams to clarify roles and processes in the midst of disaster and rehearse regularly. For recovery, make sure you have a plan to assess property damages and work towards getting the business back up and running.

A disaster can be traumatic, but it doesn’t have to mean the end for your dealership. When it comes to withstanding disaster, the key is to plan, prepare and practice.

Bluetooth is a great invention. I love being able to make hands-free phone calls when I’m in my car. But more often than not, I leave a digital trail behind when I forget to delete my phone from the car’s Bluetooth.

You might be getting more than just a car when you accept a trade-in. What about the digital trail the previous owner left behind? When you take in a trade or buy a vehicle at auction, you likely have an efficient, effective process to get it through reconditioning or make ready and get it out on your lot, but are you skipping a digital step?

Don’t forget to Clean Behind your Bluetooth

Bluetooth is a convenient addition to many vehicles that customers love. They can sync their phone settings, contacts, access, and even texts can be synced to their vehicle to make hands-free use simple and safe. But when someone trades in their vehicle, they often don’t think about wiping their data from the car, and if your dealership forgets too, that data is passed along to the new car owner.

Does Your Dealership “Leave No Trace?”

Do the employees in your shop like listening to music? Is there usually music playing in make ready? If your employees plug their phones into cars in your shop, to charge the battery or listen to music, they might be leaving a digital trail. If they’re not paying attention, they could be syncing their data to the car, or worse, passing a virus or malware infection from their device into the car. In the age of the connected car, these are things to think about. Put policies and processes in place in your dealership educate your team and protect your data and your customers’ data.

Solution: Add a Digital Cleaning

You wouldn’t want to live without Bluetooth – but there’s a simple solution to make sure your customers, and your dealership, are protected: add a digital cleaning to your make ready process. Simply add wiping the Bluetooth as another item to check-off after vacuuming the carpet and checking the tire pressure. Your technicians may have to educate themselves on how to clear the data on various makes and models (here’s an example), but knowing that your dealership and your customers are protected will provide you peace of mind.

During the convention, security researchers with Avast Software set up fake Wi-Fi networks to try and hack unsuspecting attendees. During their experiment, more than 1,200 people connected and 70 percent of those exposed their identities while on the networks. Luckily, defending yourself or your dealership against these similar attacks isn’t difficult; you just have to be aware.

Almost every dealership now offers free Wi-Fi in their Service departments, so ask yourself: is your network set up to protect the identities of your customers?

Protect your customers

Offering free Wi-Fi while your customers are waiting for their car to be serviced goes a long way in making your customers happy However, their happiness won’t last long if the free Wi-Fi leads to a stolen identity. Make sure your network has the proper precautions in place to help protect their information and warn them if they’re going to provide sensitive information on a public network.

Protect your employees

Your employees have access to a lot of sensitive dealership information. When they’re on the go, many may stop by a Starbucks or log in to the free Wi-Fi at the airport. Make sure your employees are aware of the threats posed by fake networks and caution them about what information they should access while connected to a public network.

Protect yourself

While your networks may be protected, are you monitoring to make sure someone else hasn’t set up a “free” hotspot near your dealership that may fool an unsuspecting customer into logging onto an illegitimate network? Make sure your IT manager is monitoring for spoofed networks in order to protect your customers, employees and your dealership.

As hackers get smarter and smarter, it’s important to stay on guard and educate your team about potential threats. How are you protecting your dealership?