In regards to customer service, some phrases have become redundant and out right stupid to say to customers. From working retail to chatting for your dealership, I’ve gathered some phrases that need to be revamped so that your customer service can remain top notch!

Some customer service phrases that needs work:

“How can I help you today?”

What’s wrong with that one you say? It’s not personal enough, everyone and their mother’s say this.  Instead say something like, “How can I make your day better?”

“I don’t know.”

Customer’s don’t expect you to know EVERYTHING, but when it comes to a product inquiry they expect their salesperson to be knowledgeable. If you don’t know the answer try saying, “That’s a good question. Let me find out for you.”

“I can’t do that.”

This phrase should be banned from customer service. Empower your employees or train them to take an issue to the supervisor or a manager. Use a phrase such as “I can check with my manager for you.”

“No problem.”

This implies there was a problem to begin with by helping the customer. This has become the lazy way of saying thank you. Try saying, “You’re welcome [customer name], please come back again,” or “You’re welcome! I look forward to seeing you next time [customer name]!”

“That’s not my department.”

While that may be true, is not something the customer wants to hear. You should know all areas of your dealership and who works in them. Instead say, “I’ll be happy to get you to the person in that department who can assist you better.”
 

Simple words do make a difference! Hopefully these tips will refresh your customer service and if you have any other overused phrases you’d like to be refreshed, comment below!

Now that the pre-planning stage of your web video is complete, it’s time to develop the production of your videos. If you’re not up to the job technically or don’t have a video professional on staff, it’s a good idea to outsource to a reputable production company. 

Here are some points to remember when creating your video:

 

• Use a script, and ensure that it's clear, short, and concise. A good Web video creates energy and buzz, so don't bore your viewers with droning speeches.

• Consider how the script can be used alongside your graphics and any other audio you use so that the whole fits together in a way that allows you to hear and see a rhythm pattern and progression. This is what will hold your audience's attention.

• Keep the background simple, and don't allow clutter. Let short phrases and accompanying graphics do the talking. Think of it as an interactive slide deck. 
   

When production is all said and done, there are 3 metrics to measure the success of your video:
 

• Engagement: How long do viewers spend watching your video? Do they watch the whole thing? When do they drop off?

• Play Rate: How many people actually click play

  • Test different thumbnail images to see which one gets viewers to hit play the most

• The number of plays over time: If you’re looking at total views of a video instead of number of plays over time, you’re measuring the success of your video in a poor way. Think about it, if you get a lot of hits in one day and then your play rate plummets, that video didn’t stick with shoppers. However, if your video has a steady number of play rates each day then, your video is really speaking to your shoppers!

Hopefully these tips will help you become successful in creating a web video that is sure to accumulate countless numbers of plays over time. If anyone has any tips they would like to add, feel free to comment below! 

If I have the option of reading an article to gather information on a product or watching a video, I would quickly choose the latter. It is usually much more entertaining to watch a video than read paragraphs of information when I am looking to learn something new. This is because the human brain is programmed to take in large amounts of information presented in a combination of images, movement, and sound much more quickly than information presented as images, text, or audio alone.

Web video has a significant influence on consumer purchases, according to AYTM Market Research (Brafton, 2012), and video results appear in roughly 70% of the top 100 listings in search results, according to Searchmetrics (MarketingWeek, 2011).

For your dealership video content hosted on the Internet is vital if you want to attract more web shoppers and stay ahead of the competition. Here are some tips to get you started with your initial video plans:

• Give potential customers value, or they will soon lose interest and move on. With Web video, your goal is to connect with the viewer in a way that gives them personal pleasure so that they continue viewing.

• Engagement is key. Stay away from sales gimmicks, and present your information in a manner that gives your audience what they want or answers their questions. The content should be entertaining, not stuffy and corporate, and it should certainly not contain lengthy explanations about vehicle specs or a current promotion.

• Determine your call to action. If your CTA is to drive traffic to your site then consider if your content helps the audience understand why they want take to that action.

Optimize for search. With a massive amount of online video content available to your shoppers, it is essential  for you to use sound meta-data to help your video climb the ranks.

In my next blog, I’ll lay out some production tips for you to follow from my days in the TV/Radio Production school at the University of Central Florida.

We’ve all come across it, a negative review. It’s almost like a scarlet letter. You know it’s around but you really don’t want to address it. That’s probably the worse thing you could do, so the question remains--how do you respond to a negative review?


 

1. Find out their story
   1. Take the time to get to the bottom of the customer’s complaint or issue
2. Reply Promptly under the original review
   1. By doing this, you can also help minimize damage from other potential customers being swayed by the reviewer’s experience. Future customers will see that you care about your customers and actively work to improve your business.
3. Be sincere and not defensive
   1. Sometimes, “I’m sorry,” can go a long way, as well as thanking the customer for sharing and taking the time to share their concerns.
4. Have the Owner or Manager reply to the review
   1. Identify yourself and your position, include specifics of their complaints and any ways you’re going to fix the issue. Also give a good email address and/or phone number that customer can reach you directly.
5. What if the customer’s review is inaccurate?
   1. Carefully and factually respond to the customer with your dealership’s side of the story. However, don’t be defensive. You could only make the situation worse by defending your dealership’s actions too strongly.
6. What do I do with this information after everything is said and done?
   1. Determine if this issue is brought up often or if it is just a one time occurrence (which means you must be tracking customer complaints/issues).  If your business consistently receives feedback that your front desk staff is unfriendly, then you should take prompt action to fix the situation. However, if 99 percent of your reviews comment on your friendly staff and one customer who had a negative experience complains about it, then it may be an isolated issue.

Dealer Take Away
By noticing patterns and addressing the concerns to improve your guest’s experience, you will be on the right path to bringing new customers to your door and having previous customers return.

We’re hearing lots of talk about resolutions to keep in the new year. Promises to eat better, quit smoking, save more money, and tour the world are being made all around the nation right now. Have you resolved to make 2013 the year to dominate digital at your dealership? ActivEngage can help you with that. In our latest eBook, The Six New Year’s Resolutions Your Dealership Must Keep, we’ve assembled 6 proven tactics that will raise the bar for dealership websites and make 2013 your most profitable year ever.

In these pages, you’ll commit:

- To adding the tools of behavioral prediction and neuroscience to your sales process

- To triggering powerful purchase motivators that put your shoppers in the buying mode

- To moving towards a personal connection with your web visitors through individualized follow-ups

Don’t let another year go by without adopting these strategies at your store. Don’t hesitate -download your free copy of The Six New Year’s Resolutions Your Dealership Must Keep today!

As marketers we believe that most consumers feel personally connected to their favorite brands even amid a scandal or PR disaster (ex Chick-Fil-A’s scandal last year), but now there is new research to prove this.

Angela Y. Lee, a professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management, Monika Lisjak, a doctoral candidate at the Kellogg School, and Wendi L. Gardner, an associate professor of psychology at Northwestern University, examined the relationships people have with brands in a series of experiments.

"If you believe that a brand is part of you, and you read something negative about it, how are you going to react?" asked Lee. "Are you going to stop using it? Or do you use it even more? A brand is very intangible — in a way, the brand goes even beyond the product itself or the actual object. So from a psychological perspective, it's interesting to consider the dynamic relationship between a consumer and the brands that they consume.”

The study found that consumers are willing to sacrifice time, money, energy, and reputation to maintain attachment to their favorite brand. They basically see themselves as an extension of the brand and the stronger the attachment the more willing they are to sacrifice in order to maintain connected to that brand.

So how can you develop an authentic brand for your dealership?

1. Determine your vision and purpose
2. Determine your target market
3. Determine who your competition is
4. Remember the 3 C’s for branding: Clarity, Consistency, and Constancy
   1. Make sure your brand’s message is clear, consistent on all fronts, and making sure this message becomes ubiquitous with your brand.
5. Ask your customers to describe your brand in one word
   1. Ask this after they purchase a vehicle or after a service on their vehicle is complete
6. Understand your value
   1. What can you offer your customers?
7. Define your position strategy

At the 2013 New Media Expo in Las Vegas, Scott Monty shared Ford’s storytelling lessons. From Ford’s ups and downs Monty has solid advice, so I will get straight into them:

• Let fans tell your story. Ford initially created a website called “The Ford Story” to help communicate with the public during the auto bailout crisis and to help share the story of the brand. Gradually the site became more and more focused on customer stories until it was rebranded from The Ford Story to FordSocial in 2011. “If you have a good product, let go of your fear and let others tell your story,” he said. And if you don’t have the kind of product that compels fans to talk about you, then maybe you need to address that issue before you turn your focus to social media, he suggested.
• Rethink how you share news. When Ford decided to launch a revised Ford Explorer in 2011, the company decided not to go the traditional route of unveiling the model at a trade show. Instead, Ford launched the model in several U.S. cities and online with the help of its fans, allowing the brand to “own the day,” free of competing auto launches. Influential fans were engaged months before the big day and given special access, resulting in an avalanche of coverage. “When you treat amateurs like pros, they tend to act like pros,” Monty said.
• Share content everywhere you can. Ford created a Web series, “Escape My Life,” to help promote its Escape line, but it didn’t confine the content to YouTube. The company put the videos on Hulu and produced tie-in content on other platforms to help the series reach a wider audience. “Embrace the platforms your audience is using, not the ones you’re comfortable with,” he said.
• Be willing to experiment and learn from mistakes. Ford doesn’t have a perfect social media track record. Monty noted that Ford’s recent major campaign, “Random Acts of Fusion,” failed to generate mass awareness, despite having star power from the likes of Ryan Seacrest and Joel McHale. Monty says the experience reminded him of the importance of keeping campaigns simple and giving fans a venue for being part of something larger than themselves.

Hopefully you can implement some of these strategies at your dealership. If you have any other storytelling advice please feel free to share them in the comment section below!

My mother often tells me that you can trust no one, “You can’t even trust your right hand, because that one can chop your left hand off.” Thanks for the gruesome metaphoric advice, Mom. However, when it comes to advertising, it rings pretty true. Market research firm Lab42 just released a study that revealed that 76% of its respondents think advertisements contain exaggerated claims, and a mere 3% think ads are "very accurate."

According to Lab42's survey of 500 respondents, while 38% wish for more accuracy in advertising, only 17% would like to see more laws in the United States that regulate advertising. In the U.S., advertising is seen as free speech, but that's not the case in other countries such as the UK, where ads are routinely banned for being misleading or exaggerated.
A few years ago, Seth Godin wrote a book titled All Marketers Are Liars. His point? Marketers are storytellers, and over the years their stories have become unbelievable, very predictable, and no longer relevant.

How many times have you heard the vapid pitches "we care about you," "personal service," "ours is better," "lowest prices," or "100% guaranteed?" How many times have marketers claimed that their brand is "sportier," "sexier," "pure," "natural," "great tasting," or "good for you?"

Marketers used to use hype and exaggeration to get noticed and people would simply accept it. Not anymore. Today, if you want consumers to pay attention, you had better be truthful. And if you want them to fondly remember your brand, you'd better be emotional.
How do you become more truthful in your branding?

1. Take a step back and analyze your brand from an outsiders perspective

2. Take a look at your competitor

How are you the same? How are you different?
3. Identify your driving force

Which attributes do you need to do well just to be considered?

4. Get intimate with your customer

What interests them, makes them happy, and can improve their quality of life?

What do you think of these steps? Do you have any advice on telling a truthful brand story, if so, comment below!

Is your website tablet friendly? Well, it should be, A new forecast from eMarketer predicts the number of U.S. tablet users will more than double this year from 33.7 million to nearly 70 million. It seems like the desktop is going the way of the floppy disk and in order to stay within current trends, I've gathered some tips for you to make your dealership’s website tablet friendly.

1. Increase the size and margin for buttons and calls-to-action. The average width of the index finger for most adults translates to about 45-57 pixels. Why make your visitor work harder to find and tap the “Get Quote” button?

2. Ensure links and calls-to-action look tap-able without hover states. Hover states do not exist on a tablet. Style your text links to use a clear, contrasting color. And don’t be afraid to use underlines for the default link state.

3. Increase font sizes for legibility. Bumping up your font sizes by a couple pixels can make a difference. A little goes a long way.

4. Increase padding around navigation menu items. Padding is also known as the spacing around a specific item on your site. Padding keeps any text from bumping up directly next to menu items and thus the call-to-action will stick out more. Try increasing padding by 5-10 pixels to start—or more, if your design allows.

5. Increase margins on pages and content blocks. This improvement supports overall legibility and reduces visual complexity. Increased “white space” can result in the impression that your website’s content is easier to consume, as compared to a website with crowded content.

6. Increase form field size and spacing. Make it easier for your visitors to tap and enter information into form fields. Improvements to your forms may make the greatest impact to your conversion rate.

If you want to see examples of these tips in action, go here. The author does an amazing job of illustrating each and every step. I promise it’s easy! If you have additional tips you would like to share, feel free to do so in the comment section below!

If you are like me, you may not feel as refreshed as you should be in the new year. I know I’m not.  Holidays are exhausting from shopping for the perfect gift to visiting your family - it can all be a drag on your energy levels. I’m sure you’re feeling the same way and no doubt you also need to be recharged for 2013, so here are a couple of tips to “get back on the horse” as they say,  courtesy of Amex’s Open Forum:

1. Get your priorities in line. Time management is a year-round challenge for business owners. That’s why it’s more important than ever to know your priorities.

TIP: Set a stopwatch for 20 minutes and write down everything that needs to be done during the month. Then, give yourself another 10 minutes to assess which of those tasks are the most important to yourself, your dealership and your family. Keep that list in mind as you start each day—and make sure all your activities are centered around those core priorities.

2. Ditch the New Year’s resolutions. A FranklinCovey survey found that 80 percent of people who make New Year’s resolutions will break them. And a third never make it to the end of January. If you’re one of the many people who have left a string of resolutions behind, it’s time for a new approach.

TIP: Rather than creating your resolutions for 2013, this time to reflect on your dealership and market. What were some of the best things that your dealership accomplished this year? What were some of the biggest mistakes? Don’t rush to begin planning the new year until you’ve celebrated your wins and acknowledged your mistakes.

3. Evaluate your year as a business leader. In addition to reflecting on your business, this is a good time to reflect on yourself. Be as objective as possible, write down your strongest characteristics as a leader—and your weakest. Then, think about how each of these characteristics impacted your dealership, team members and partners during the year. This type of objective self-assessment can help you pinpoint areas to improve in 2013.

4. Show the love.
Think about the most important people you've worked with throughout the year. Then, let them know just how much you appreciate them.

5. Unplug and recharge your batteries.
Downtime is the only real way to hit the reset button, both personally and professionally. And it will open the door to fresh perspectives and new inspiration.

TIP: Whenever I’m not feeling inspired, I grab someone and play ping-pong with them for 15 minutes. It recharges me and makes me feel awake! Grab someone and DO something to recharge your brain!

If that doesn’t recharge you for 2013, I don’t know what will! If you have any additional tips on recharging yourself, feel free to comment  below!