Joe average family is getting ready for a big car trip. To decide where to eat while on the road, the family checks Yelp. To pick a hotel, they search listings on Trip Advisor. And to get their car ready for the journey, they once again go online, this time to seek out the best place for service work.

This experience is becoming typical as more people turn to the Internet when choosing a vehicle service provider. Not only are service ratings and reviews here now, their influence is staggering.

New, just released DriverSide research reveals staggering information:

- Almost nine in ten (89%) car owners would consider using online ratings and reviews when figuring out where to take their car for service.

- Additionally, 92% of this group admits that reviews are likely to influence their ultimate decision.

Vehicle service department reviews can easily be found on sites like Angie's List, Super Pages, Yelp, Edmunds.com, and a host of others, which are often picked up by Google, Bing, and Yahoo! That means that potential customers only have to enter a search like, "Lexus, oil change, Oakland, CA," and the ratings are front and center in the search results.

 

As this real search result reveals, it is essential that a business have positive, numerous reviews. Notice how the first service provider has five reviews and a 2-star average, while the second provider has 14 reviews and a 5-star average. The sole dealership listed has only two reviews.

Who do you think is going to get the first shot at the prospective customer? Conversely, it's easy to see how poor reviews, or a limited number of total reviews, will kill the first provider's chances and most likely those of the dealership in this example too.

It's also easy to see how poor reviews or a limited number of total reviews will kill the first provider's chances and most likely those of the dealership in this example too.

But...

If you work at a dealership, you may be thinking, "That's great for the aftermarket guys, but my service business is driven by warranty work." While that may be true, you also know how important it is to get non-warranty work, and that gets harder all the time. Every other dealer is gunning for your service customers, and the quick-tune guys are getting downright aggressive going after them.

Good News

It might feel like you're swimming upstream, but here's the good news. Our new research also indicates that it's not always about who has the lowest price.

- An overwhelming majority (91%) of car owners would prefer a service provider with a competitive price and mostly positive ratings over a provider that has a low price but mostly negative reviews.

Despite tough economic times, price takes a back seat to positive online reviews when it's time to entrust a vehicle to a service provider. That means that positive service ratings and reviews can not only build traffic, but that they can help build your gross average as well. With great reviews, you don't need to cut prices to attract customers!

Remember, today's service marketing is all about the 3Rs: Relevancy, Reputation and Results. With a great reputation and an abundance of positive reviews, you'll find you don't need to waste money on old school, generic service flyers and postcard mailers. Ratings from third party review sites can be leveraged in prospect and customer marketing communications and reinforced on your own website.

To learn more about the 3Rs of service marketing, as well as how to grow your service customer base, be sure to check out DriverSide's white paper,"Service Marketing: New Solutions for New Challenges," which you can access here.

http://www.driverside.com/new/pages/docs/DSPolkWhitePaper_091207.pdf

You read the newsletters, go to the conferences and are thoroughly convinced that social media is the answer to slow sales, low grosses and chronic bad breath. You’ve drank the Kool-Aid and have created a Facebook page for your dealership. You’re even cranking out tweets a couple of times a day. 

So, just how is that social media strategy working for you?

If your answer is anything other than “KICKING BUTT,” then chances are you might need a little social media strategy tune-up. Here are four common areas where dealerships get tripped up in executing their strategy. 

1.    Focusing on the Wrong Thing 

Let’s set the hype aside for just a minute and think about how people shop for cars today. Know of anyone who says, “I think I’m going to buy a new car. I better go to Facebook and see which dealership has the best deals.” What customers do today is research, which includes doing homework specifically about each dealership. A recent study* found that one-half of Internet users research online before making any kind of purchase – on the Web, in a store or through any other method.

The study goes on to note that existing customer reviews had a strong influence on purchases by 71% of respondents, while only 25% said the same about Facebook fan pages. What is really interesting is that the same study polled a variety of retailers to learn what tools they were planning on deploying for their social strategy, and the number one response (91%) was a Facebook fan page. 

Don’t get me wrong. I think Facebook has a place in your strategy, but it should be primarily centered on connecting with your existing customers, not primarily focused on acquiring new ones. Put the focus on growing your reviews instead.

2.    Focusing Only on Sales Reviews

Ratings and reviews play a significant role in driving new sales; that’s not new news. If you’re like most dealerships today, you are doing all you can to increase sales department reviews – but don’t forget about service department reviews. They are critically important for two reasons: first, your service department has the opportunity to obtain a significantly higher number of reviews, and more importantly, the reviews actually help drive new car sales. You read that correctly. Service reviews impact car sales. 

New data by DriverSide/Kelton Research reveals that over six in ten (61%) Americans would opt for a specific dealership to buy a new car from if they read positive service department reviews about that store – assuming price and location criteria had already been met. Think about that the next time the guy down the street has you beat by a few hundred bucks. Could your positive service department reviews compared to their lack of service department reviews make the difference? You bet they would.  Grow your service reviews. 

3.    A Sales-Centric Website   

What’s the biggest problem with most dealers’ social media strategy? It’s their website. Most everything we do with social media is created to get people to visit our site, right? The problem is most dealer websites are 80% focused on sales. That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense when you consider that fixed operations drive 80% of the profits for most dealerships. 

Sure you might have a “service page” with a service scheduler or even a generic coupon or two, but what percentage of overall content on your website is focused on topics of interest for owners versus prospects? If your site is sales-focused, what reason are you giving your existing owners to visit it?  

Owner-focused website content will improve customer retention.

4. Conquest versus Owner Focus 

Want your social media strategy to really take off? Think relationships. That’s the core of a successful strategy. It starts with leveraging your existing customer base.

An ongoing service and maintenance reminder and customer communication program, like DriverSide, is the easiest way to automatically stay connected with your existing customers. Don’t make the mistake of sending impersonalized non-service specific communication either. Remember it’s about building and then maintaining a relationship, and to do that you need to send relevant, timely information – not generic “one-size-fits-all” spam. 

Remind them when their car needs its 50K service, tell them what is included in that service and give them a discount coupon as an incentive. And don’t stop there. Provide articles relevant to owners of vehicles with 50,000 miles – like how to save money on new tires or how to cut car insurance costs. 

Do this via your newsletter and your automated service reminders with tie-ins to your social pages and watch your social media results grow.

Strong existing customer relationships will attract new prospects almost on their own. How? Your customer base will communicate their satisfaction with your dealership to their network socially to the benefit of both your service and sales departments. 

 

*Source: The e-tailing group & PowerReviews, 2010.

It is said that while the sales department sells a customer the first car, the service department sells them the next two. Unfortunately, the inverse of this is true as well, and the service department can just as easily lose sales. It's not that they do this intentionally; in fact, they have probably maintained the same standards for years - which is exactly the problem. The market has changed. Consumers have changed with it, yet most dealerships are managing their service customers exactly the way they were ten or more years ago. Management of those very valuable customers might include sending them a letter or postcard stating, "according to our records, it's time for your next service" or worse, simply putting an oil change reminder on their windshield. Not exactly the textbook definition of Customer Relationship Management. Sure, this was fine years ago, but not today. For most of our customers, money is tight and that means those out of warranty will be shopping around when they need work done on their car. Some are looking for the best price, some are looking for the best value and some are looking for the best experience. In all cases, new research indicates that dealer service departments are coming up short. 53% of consumers feel that a locally owned independent repair center will provide a better value than either a new car service department (24%) or a nationally owned light repair center chain (23%). While that might not be surprising, this is: Most consumers (46%) felt that the locally owned repair center would provide the highest quality of repair - if price were equal. And the real zinger is that the new car service department was perceived to be the most likely to overcharge them. Ok, so those poor guys in the service department have a consumer perception problem, too bad for them right? Why should those in the sales department care? Two words: social media. Ratings and reviews of vehicle service providers are taking off, and their impact is huge. 86% of consumers read online business reviews before making purchase decisions, and 90% say they trust these reviews (Kudzu.com survey of 600 users, December 2008). Three out of four (74%) of consumers report that they choose companies and brands based on what others say online about their customer service experience (Society for New Communications Research, May 2008). The reason this matters to the sales department is because dealership and brand loyalty is on the decline. Consumers are cross shopping more than ever and when doing so, they increasingly turn to social media and dealership ratings and reviews when deciding which dealership to give their business to. Poor service department reviews impact both service business and sales department business. Progressive dealerships realize that they can use service department ratings and reviews as a competitive advantage, especially now when most dealerships aren't thinking about reviews. Those that are tend to be focused on building sales reviews, not service. Think about how powerful it is to point sales prospects to independent review sites and show them how your dealership stacks up to the guy down the street. He may be offering the same model for $500 below your price, but his bad customer reviews compared to your good ones can swing the sale to you. So how do we respond to this? Start by helping the service manager or dealer principal realize the problem. Share some of the data above with him. If yours is like most dealer websites, point out the ratio of information on your website that is sales related verses service related. Now compare the ratio of dealership profits from the service department verses the sales department. Kind of unbalanced isn't it? Help them to understand that today's service marketing is about the 3 Rs: Relevancy, Reputation and Results. Relevancy pertains to the type of communication the dealership sends to its customers. Crude time-based "service reminders" don't cut it anymore. Communication has to be highly informative and highly specific to that customer's exact set of service needs and should include additional information relevant to the consumer, their vehicle and their interests. It should be part of a larger holistic approach to service customer retention that combines both relevant communication and content made available to your customer. To learn more about the 3 Rs of service marketing, as well as how to grow your service customer base, read our new white paper, Service Marketing: New Solutions for New Challenges. Study highlights will be delivered in an upcoming webinar. All webinar participants will receive the free white paper before it is made available to the general public. For more information please visit: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/740829824 Or visit http://www.driverside.com/sales/demo/dealer/ to learn more about DriverSide and our service customer retention programs.