Customer Insights from Artificial Intelligence

 

Thanks to recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) technology, dealers can now use customer data to improve the car sales process. AI gives dealers key insights into individual customer interests to better personalize the buying experience and to build a larger sales funnel. But because AI is relatively new to automotive retail, there is much to learn from other retail industries that have been successfully using this technology for several years.  

In this white paper, you’ll learn how retailers in a variety of industries are using AI to:  

  • Personalize product offerings  
  • Uncover buying signals  
  • Improve customer satisfaction  
  • Streamline the shopping and buying process  

Learn how your dealership could drive better results with AI.

Dealer.com’s New SRP Delivers Efficiencies for Consumers

No one likes detours. A wrong turn that requires re-navigation is both frustrating and time consuming. And detours in the online car shopping experience only distract your customers from finding what they want. That’s why it’s so important to facilitate an efficient online experience and help steer your customers down the right path, toward the right VDPs as quickly as possible. 

Avoiding Buyer Roadblocks 

VDP views are an important website engagement indicator, but many shoppers spend a significant amount of negative sweat equity researching multiple Vehicle Deal Pages (VDPs) in search of the right vehicle. They search from a group of listings, click on a VDP, check the vehicle out, and view some photos before backing out to the listings and repeating the process. 

You might say this is just part of the automotive digital retailing experience, but in reality, every click back and forth is a detour—and a potential roadblock—that could force an abandoned search and lead to a bounce or interruption of the buyer journey. 

With the core belief that a dealership’s digital storefront should always be evolving to improve efficiency for the customer, Dealer.com’s User Experience team has designed, built, and tested a brand-new Search Results Page experience (SRP) that reduces some of the back and forth, helping consumers find the right vehicle and growing your dealership’s automobile leads. Shoppers and Dealers alike benefit in the following ways: 

  • Effortless Mobile Shopping – This new, responsive search experience features mobile-minded menus and tabbed content areas that make vehicle selection fast and easy from any device.   
  • Convenient Search Tools – Faceted Search tools and a Free-form Search Bar (with auto-complete suggestions) offer multiple ways to shop and select. 
  • Customizable Design – Grid or List view provides flexibility for dealers and shoppers alike.  
  • Photo Carousel – Moving one of the more popular elements of the VDP higher up in the shopping funnel helps shoppers more quickly identify the vehicles they like and don’t like. 

This, and other features like this, will reduce the back and forth that might jeopardize the user experience. Instead, the new SRP will help customers reach the right vehicle more efficiently than ever before.  

Proven In UX Testing 
During qualitative and quantitative testing, with the new photo carousel feature enabled, shoppers viewed 18% fewer VDPs on mobile and 9% fewer on desktop. Importantly, however, there was no change in lead volume. This suggests shoppers were able to filter more information from the SRP and find what they wanted earlier in the shopping process.  

Pilot Feedback 
The final design incorporated feedback from both dealers and consumers, and during the Pilot, dealers provided their thoughts on the redesigned experience. 
 
“It is a better VLP overall. It has larger images and the search capabilities are much better.” 
—Jeff Ramsey, Jones Junction 

“The mobile experience is the best part of the new design. Loved the tabbed content widget, and the ability to scroll through photos. The look and feel on mobile is 1000 times better.” 
—Town East Ford 

Coming to Dealer.com Websites This Fall 

We are constantly evaluating and tweaking our platform to make it friendlier for your customers and more effective for you. And we can’t wait to deliver this exciting, no-cost upgrade and give your customers a more efficient inventory search experience.  

Dealer.com will soon begin migrating all car dealer websites to the new SRP experience. Our clients can expect advanced notification via email, ControlCenter, or their Performance Manager ahead of the changes. If you have any questions, reach out to your Performance Manager for more details.  

Searchers, Browsers, and Tool Users: How Different Types of Car Shoppers Find What They Need with Dealer.com’s New SRP

Did you know that on average, your customers spend about 60% of their total shopping time online. That’s a lot of time spent researching cars. And this trend is likely to continue (even increase), given current circumstances and social behaviors. But even though nearly every shopper spends time researching cars online, every customer is different. In fact, online car shoppers can be categorized into three main groups: Searchers, Browsers, and Tool-users. And your Digital Storefront should cater to each of these customer types. 

Available this coming fall, our all-new Search Results Page (SRP) experience was built with each of these shoppers in mind. Understanding that different shoppers use different devices–tablets, phones, home computers—and that shoppers approach car buying differently, our new SRP delivers a more efficient inventory search, and helps every type of shopper reach the right vehicle earlier in the shopping process. 

Searchers 

Searchers are confident in what they want, and are frustrated by website experiences that force them into predetermined paths that don’t meet their primary motivations. These shoppers feel empowered by choice and prefer tools that allow them to specify the exact information they want. Searchers make up the smallest number of online car shoppers, as many customers don’t know enough to articulate exactly what they want through a search tool.  

Our new SRP experience caters to Searchers by offering features like auto-complete, suggested searches, free-form or faceted searching, and more organized search information that eliminates negative workflow. In testing, our User Experience Lab found that shoppers viewed fewer vehicles overall with no volume drop in automobile leads. In other words, shoppers worked less to achieve the same result. 

Tool-Users  

A second type of car shoppers, Tool-users, desire a more interactive online shopping experience. They like to set up parameters and manipulate information within a widget. These shoppers are the puzzle-solvers, the gamers, and the high-level explorers of online car research. Tool-users like to learn about cars through the relationships that exist between information on a car dealer’s website and the variables that can be manipulated through that website’s tools. 

With new Tabbed Search Content and Search Facets that allow shoppers to refine vehicle lists quickly and efficiently, our new SRP gives shoppers tools to interact with the car buying experience in a more intuitive way. Tool users favor mobile browsing, and the new SRP design features mobile-minded menus that make interacting with search facets easy for shoppers on-the-go. Interestingly, while designed for mobile shoppers, in testing these facets saw an uptick in use on desktop, suggesting easy engagement on any device. 

Browsers 

Our third group, Browsers, are more casual by nature. They’ll consume whatever information is in front of them at the time, and may wander through different high-level categories of vehicles until they eventually find one that meet their needs. Browsers tend to be learners and explorers, a low-intensity strategy for finding the right vehicle. 

Catering especially to these types of customers, our new SRP experience brings the Photo Carousel feature from the VDP further up into the funnel, and allows browsers to see additional product photos within the listings page. Moving this feature to the Search Results Page provides another layer of engagement to help shoppers find the right vehicle. In testing, 35% of mobile shoppers and 16% of desktop shoppers used the photo carousel feature on our SRP. As a result, shoppers viewed fewer VDPs but there was no change in lead volume, as customers found what they wanted earlier in the shopping process.  

Our new SRP Experience delivers critical vehicle information to consumers more efficiently than ever before. Through mobile-minded tools, multiple ways to search, and a customizable, responsive design, we’ve created an experience that helps shoppers narrow their consideration set and reach the right VDP.  

In designing and building this new automotive digital retailing experience, we wanted to ensure that the right content and the right tools were in place for every type of shopper. We also wanted to ensure that your dealership benefited from a more efficient inventory search that helped shoppers reach the right vehicle earlier in the research process.  

We can’t wait to bring you this no-cost enhancement starting this fall! To learn more about your website’s new Search Results Page and its new shopper-friendly features, visit https://www.dealer.com/explore/search-results/.

Xtime Launches FlexPay to Offer Improved Service Financing Options to Dealers and Customers

Xtime Launches FlexPay to Offer Improved Service Financing Options to Dealers and Customers

New solution helps maximize revenue for dealers through more simplified payment plans for customers

MISSION, Kan., July 7, 2020 – Many service customers struggle to pay for auto repairs out of pocket, making it difficult for dealerships to sell service recommendations in a way that maximizes fixed ops revenue. In fact, 71% of additional service recommendations and 29% of primary service lines go unsold.[1] To help increase dealer revenue per repair order and provide customers with more flexible service financing, Xtime is integrating with DigniFi to launch FlexPay, an easy-to-use payment option offered directly through the Xtime platform. With FlexPay, dealers can help boost service department revenue while making comprehensive auto repairs more affordable to customers.

“Our research shows 63% of customers are unable to pay for a $500 auto repair out of pocket, so advisors are having difficulty selling not just additional service recommendations, but also regularly scheduled maintenance,” said Tracy Fred, vice president of operations at Xtime.[2] “These unsold services present a missed opportunity that dealers can reclaim by offering a simplified and streamlined service financing process.”

To fill this gap in the market, many forward-thinking dealers have already adopted service financing options to help make automotive repair software more accessible to customers and lessen the impact of unexpected repairs on consumers’ budgets. However, until FlexPay, service financing solutions required their own separate systems, complicating the sales process for service advisors and depreciating the customer experience. FlexPay offers a more streamlined service financing option from within a dealer’s existing appointment scheduling and inspection process. The payment option is displayed to consumers at every digital touchpoint throughout the service process.

“Today, making a service experience easy and contactless are the keys to success, so excluding financing solutions as part of the process is no longer optional,” said Richard Counihan, CEO at DigniFi. “By integrating with Xtime to create FlexPay, our dealer clients can provide a better customer experience while enjoying easy processing and potentially higher profitability.”

Dealers will discover the following competitive advantages by offering Xtime’s FlexPay:

  • Increased revenue per repair order: Customers are 76% more likely to make purchases if a simple and seamless payment plan is available, making it easier for advisors to sell primary and additional service recommendations.[3]
  • Simplified service financing sales process: By integrating seamlessly into dealerships preexisting automotive scheduling software and inspection systems, FlexPay provides more efficiency through the sales process and a better customer experience.
  • Higher repair order close rates: Xtime’s FlexPay has a consistent presentation of offerings across multiple customer touchpoints that drives wider knowledge of the service financing option and in turn, increases business opportunities for the dealer as well as more comprehensive service for the customer.  

“The option for flexible service financing through Xtime’s FlexPay is a real game changer for a lot of our customers who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford their repair order upfront,” said Jay Helbert, Operations Director at Town East Ford. “It’s also a big advantage for our service advisors who no longer have to toggle between systems to process financing and technicians can perform the full level of service recommendations that they make for a vehicle, which at the end of the day, means better service and a better experience for the customer too.”

Xtime’s FlexPay is currently available at no additional cost to all U.S. Xtime dealers with a DigniFi account through Xtime’s Schedule, Inspect and Engage products. For more information, visit xtime.com/flexpay.

About Xtime
Xtime increases customer retention for automotive dealer service departments by using technology to transform the ownership experience. Improving customer satisfaction and retention drives dealer revenue and profitability. Xtime is committed to delivering the experience consumers demand – an experience which emphasizes value, convenience and trust. In 2019, Xtime booked 55 million service appointments and processed more than 100 million repair orders annually. Forty-four global OEMs have chosen Xtime to drive that same type of success for their businesses, converting more than $23 billion in service revenue last year for more than 7,300 dealerships.

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

About DigniFi

DigniFi is a platform company that connects consumers with lenders for car repairs, tires, accessories, and other auto-related needs. The automated, contactless process serves up financial products through the point of sale at car dealerships and independent repair shops. DigniFi provides consumers with fixed payment plans from 12 to 36 months. The loans are originated through WebBank, an FDIC-regulated bank. To date, DigniFi has provided access to over $120 million in loans in partnership with more than 5,000 auto service centers. For more information, please visit www.dignifi.com.

###

Media Contact:

Brenna Buehler
Brenna.Buehler@coxautoinc.com
949-473-6595


[1] Cox Automotive, Cox Automotive’s 2018 Service Industry Study

[2] Cox Automotive, Cox Automotive’s 2018 Service Industry Study

[3]Citizens Financial Group Inc., Inaugural Citizens Point of Sale Survey, 2018

Key Dealership CRM Considerations Guide

Are you asking your staff and vendors the right questions about CRMs?

If you’re in the market (or even thinking about being in the market) for a new dealership CRM, you know there are lots of factors to consider. But understanding and evaluating all those factors is easier said than done. In the Key CRM Considerations guide, you’ll learn strategies for CRM evaluation that help ensure you find the tool that is right for your business.

The guide covers the importance of knowing your customers, your providers, and yourself when choosing a CRM, covering key considerations including: 

  • Technology requirements and integrations 
  • Process compatibility 
  • Data and insights 
  • Service and support

Get the guide to learn how to research the right CRM for your dealership.

Data Insights and Opportunities for the New Economy

In a matter of months, Automotive Retail has transformed itself to adapt  to new challenges and a brand new economic environment. The old strategy of  “just bring them in” can’t quite work the way it used to. Dealers have embraced new ways to do business, new ways to meet consumers wherever they are, and new ways to win.

Servicing more than half of all franchise dealers in the US, and bolstered by intelligence from across Cox Automotive’s family of automotive brands, Dealer.com is helping dealers chart a course through the impacts of COVID-19. For more than 21 years, we’ve been in the business of guiding buyers through their journey from consideration, to selection, to your showroom and your service department.

Key CRM Actions to Maximize Current Leads

With all of the unique challenges your dealership might be facing today, from reduced staff, to selling by appointment only, to being without a cleanup department, it can be really difficult to manage each day in the dealership and prioritize what is most important. 

With a few ideas, reports, and best practices gathered from the VinSolutions team and dealerships across the country, however, you can quickly identify and act upon your top opportunities. By prioritizing customers, responding appropriately, and optimizing your data for future success, you can spend time taking action that actually matters to your business – now and in the near future.  

Who are the #1 customers right now?  

One of the most productive tasks you can do for your sales team is to identify which leads are top priority right now. While fresh internet leads and those customers who have visited the showroom are certainly important, consider prioritizing a different group of customers: those who are responding to you.  

Customers who are actively engaging with you are much more likely to be ready to buy, so you must make sure you’re not letting these customers slip through the cracks. But if you’re working with a reduced staff, you might be missing valuable text messages and emails being sent to salespeople that aren’t working right now. It is important that you have a plan to monitor for these easy-to-miss messages.  

In VinSolutions Connect CRM, there is a report that will enable you to quickly and easily do just that. The Unanswered Email and Text Replies report automatically delivers you a list of unanswered communications, which you can prioritize based on the date the communication was received. In this report, you’ll also be able to see the age of the lead, which can help you quickly sort out who is most likely to be ready to buy based on how long ago they made their last purchase.  

Your goal should be to keep this report clean – to get this list to zero every day or maybe multiple times a day. If your customers are contacting you, they are likely contacting your competitors as well, so it is critical that you get back to them quickly. Set times for yourself to review this report daily, whether in the morning, in the evening before you go home or multiples times throughout the day. You can also schedule the report to be automatically delivered to staff you designate at times you designate. If you need help getting that set up, contact your Performance Manager.   

How should I respond to shoppers?  

With more and more of your customers shopping online, complimentary coffee and popcorn in your showroom are no longer the best ways to show your appreciation. That means that the way you respond to inquiries from customers is more important than ever.  

Even so, many dealers still default to cookie cutter responses to leads, such as, “Hi, my name is Kevin. When can you come in?” If your customer asked you if a vehicle had heated seats and remote start, they probably aren’t going to be very satisfied with that reply.  

You still need to win the race to respond to customers; speed is critical. But you can’t sacrifice speed for quality. Always take the time to read the lead and answer customers’ questions. Ignoring your customer’s questions doesn’t exactly send the message that you care. And on top of that, you’re wasting the precious advertising dollars you spent bringing those leads if you’re not going to respond in a way that a customer expects.  

What can I do now to set my dealership up for future success?  

Understandably, many customers want to wait to make a purchase until they can come into your dealership for a more traditional buying experience. It is important to give those customers confidence they are priority.  

You can do this by creating a special list of customers to contact when the dust settles. In the Customer Notes section of the Customer Dashboard in Connect CRM, you can label customers with tags (such as #priority) that you can quickly search. You can also make these notes using the Connect Mobile app.  

To get to your list of labeled customers, simply type the phrase you’re using to label customers in the Customer Notes field of the Advanced Search in the Customers menu. From there, you can select all the customers you’ve tagged as a priority and create tasks for a phone call or email right in the CRM – all with just a few clicks.  

You can then title the tasks in a way that lets your staff know the word track to use. You can even build a phone template, that includes a full script specific to the tag you’ve applied – whether it includes messaging about incentives, new delivery options or new hours. This is something else your Performance Manager can help you with if you need more ideas.  

For more information and to learn more about the Urgent Active Leads report, watch our on-demand webinar, Key CRM Actions to Maximize Current Leads.

For more information and to learn more about a new report, Urgent Active Leads,watchouron-demandwebinar,Key CRM Actions to Maximize Current Leads.

Watch Now

  

Here Are The Tools You Need to Provide for Your Customer

It’s time to go all-in. Have you been dabbling in creating a digital experience for your customer? Many dealers have. Your customer has been telling you for a while, they prefer digital interaction with the ability to self-serve. Your timeline to deliver that experience has been accelerated.  

Depending on where you are in the digital transformation, you may need to expand utilization of the tools you already have in place, or you may need to understand what is available to your dealership. In a recent Dealer Forward, Tully Williams, director of parts and service with the Niello Company shared, “In this digital age everybody has been using digital tools, but now it’s more important than ever to ask what can our software can do for us and maximize every opportunity.”  

Here’s a guide to providing a digital experience that gives your customer the opportunity to choose self-service throughout the service journey with Xtime.  

Scheduling an Appointment 

Back to the fundamentals. If you aren’t offering online scheduling and opening up your settings so your prospects and customer get the most choices, you need to make this priority number one. This is where digital interaction begins, and where your customers can see you’re providing them the opportunity to connect with you in a self-service manner, in which 67 percent prefer over speaking to a person. 

Make sure as soon as a visitor arrives at your website they see messaging that tells them you are open for business. It sounds simple, but it is so important. Let’s say you are craving your favorite dish from your go-to local restaurant today, what is the first thing you are going to do? Check their website to see if they are open. If they don’t say anything about their curbside pickup or delivery options, it’s not likely you’re going to pick up the phone and check.  

With Schedule, Xtime’s automotive scheduling software, give your customer the ability to book their own appointment, viewing all available options, including services they should consider based on vehicle mileage, service history, and previously declined services.  

Welcome Your Customer 

Prior to social distancing, the way your advisor welcomed the customer provided the backdrop to the entire service visit. Your advisor prepared to greet a customer by name armed with all the service history and previously declined services using Xtime Engage, and now you need to lean into the self-service feature in that product: Self Check-In.  

With 54 percent of your customers delaying service due to concern about contact with people outside of their homes, Self Check-In can help you alleviate the anxiety of face-to-face interaction with your employees or other customers. When they arrive, instead of coming inside or being greeted at their car, your customer can use their mobile device to initiate the check-in process for their service appointment and sign for services.  

Once your customer has safely deposited their keys, your advisor is then free to safely complete a walk-around without contact with your customer. When the customer initiates check-in on their mobile device, it provides efficiency and social distancing for your advisors too.  

Self Check-In requires no additional hardware to purchase and is available for no additional charge with Xtime Engage. 

Your Customer Still Wants to Watch Service Progress 

With less in-person interaction, you may need to up communication frequency to provide visibility and promote trust. Thankfully, this isn’t on your advisor to pick up the phone with every update. With Service Tracker, an add-on feature in Xtime Inspect, your customer can see real-time status updates.  

Service Tracker is a way to digitize the service experience, and let your customer self-serve their status updates. After check-in, your customer will receive a text message with a link to access Service Tracker. The link can also be found in any email they receive during the service visit. It’s an amazing tool to enhance the service experience, as well as free up your advisors from phone calls.   

Complete the Service Visit Online 

You’re connecting all of the service dots with a digital experience for your customer. Keep it going. With the Enhanced Multi-Media add-on to Inspect, you can send your customer video and pictures to help them decide on additional service recommendations, and they can approve them right from their phone.    

When it’s time to close out, they’ll be able to self-serve by paying from their mobile device as well. Send a link using Payment that allows your customer to click and pay safely and in a secure fashion.  

Xtime Payment is included at no additional cost to all dealers with Xtime Engage.   

Summary 

As your partner in providing the right approach to meet your customer’s preferences — self-service and digital — we want to help you complete the digital transformation. With tools that allow your customer to interact digitally, safely, and on their own terms, you’ll build consumer confidence and a superior customer experience.  

Visit our Business Continuity Hub for more tools and resources. 


Self-Service Options for Safety & Great Customer Experience

We live in a digital-first world — and it’s no longer optional. You need to drive revenue. To do that today, you have to provide a safe, online experience for your customers and employees and completely reimagine your customer’s journey by providing self-service capabilities.  

Self-Service Preference

Put your customer hat on for a moment. You’ve grown accustomed to checking into flights on your phone, getting carry-out food or groceries delivered with a couple of clicks, and even ordering up a ride through an app. If you had to talk to someone each time you needed one of these services, would you still find them just as convenient?  

For the majority of us, the answer is no. In a recent survey, 67 percent confessed preference of self-service over speaking to a live representative. Let’s walk through the options you have to let your fixed ops customer self-serve. 

Scheduling an Appointment

Get it right from the get-go. Self-service should start before your customer arrives at your service department. Appointment booking is your opportunity to make a great first impression. 

Whether through your email and text marketing efforts or social media, make sure to provide a link that directs your customer to your website to schedule their appointment. 

Beyond the ability to book online, really think about the experience your customer needs for proper self-service. They will want choices, including multiple dates and time options. Also consider the information your customer needs to properly care for their vehicle. Provide their service history and any previously declined services alongside recommendations based on their vehicle’s mileage. 

Self Check-In

Part of the self-service appeal is the no-wait factor. When you couple that with the general anxiety your customer may have right now about coming into contact with others outside of their safe space — 54 percent delaying service for this reason — providing the opportunity to check-in for their service appointment from their own mobile device makes complete sense. 

Give your customer the ability to initiate check-in on their phone when they arrive and create a safe process and instructions for dropping off their keys. With this level of self service in place, your customer is not waiting for their advisor, and they can feel confident in their safety when the interaction at your dealership is with their own phone.

Track Service Progress

Your customer may prefer to take things into their own hands, but they still want to hear updates from you during the service visit. Luckily, this can be done digitally and even through self-service. You can use texting and email to send updates, but you may also consider using a tool that allows your customer to see where their car is throughout the service visit. Choose a service that gives your customer the ability to click and check progress as they like while their car is in your shop. 

Online Approvals and Payment

The goal is a seamless service experience that weaves in self-service options for your customer without ever feeling disconnected from the in-shop experience. With that in mind, you want to send the multipoint inspection and any ASRs through links in emails or texts. This way your customer can see what your tech sees through photos or video to help them make a decision. 

Once they’ve signed off, digitally, and service is complete, you can ask them to submit payment in a similar fashion. For your part, make sure it’s communicated to your customer that the online payment is secure. Not only have you provided the ability for them to connect with you in the self-service manner they prefer, you will have proven your determination to reduce in-person interaction and commitment to keeping your customer and your employees safe.

Summary

The majority of people today prefer self-service. Bring this ability to your dealership to show you care about the safety of your employees and customers as well as the desire your customer has to act in their own time and way. The new service visit journey means blurring the lines between online and in-store for your customers by giving them the opportunity to self-serve. 

Visit our Business Continuity Hub for more tools and resources.

Sources: Nuance Enterprise 

Cox Automotive COVID-19 Consumer Impact Study

Your Customers are Interested in Valet Service

What is the right move to make at this moment? If you consider consumer sentiment in this time of social distancing, offering valet pickup and delivery service may be the step that makes sense. Darrel Ferguson, Xtime’s director of performance management, and some members of his team recently hosted a webinar, Be Safe Workshop: Valet Pickup & Delivery. They shared recent data along with best practices and how-tos for the valet feature in Schedule. Here’s a bit of what they discussed. 

The Data Tells the Story

The 2020 Cox Automotive COVID-19 Dealer Impact Study tells us there has been a 68 percent decline in vehicle sales and a 57 percent decline in service appointments. Service operations with some type of remote service option have not been hit quite as hard, with a 48 percent decline in appointments, but still a significant number. 

The top reasons customers delay service are social distancing and concern of contact with staff or people outside of their safe environment. Valet service could be your direct response to the concern over contact with your staff. 

While we know a vast majority of consumers say they’re delaying vehicle service because they just aren’t driving very much, 41 percent say they’d be willing to get their vehicle serviced if the dealership picks up the vehicle at their home, takes it in for service or maintenance, then delivers it back to their home. There is also interest in having a tech complete the service at their home according to 30 percent of the consumers surveyed.   

So, where’s the disconnect? It’s consumer awareness. Only 18 percent of consumers know there may be a valet option available to them. Let’s get valet in place for your dealership, then we need to make sure and tell your customers. 

Valet Set Up

Xtime’s valet functionality lives within the Schedule product and can be tailored to your valet capacities. There are steps you’ll want to take, like enabling valet appointments for each Make you service so all customers can select to have their vehicle picked up when scheduling online. You’ll also want to revisit your Rideshare Powered by Lyft spend caps. Some dealers are using Rideshare to take the valet to the customer and then the valet drives the customer’s car back to the dealership. It may be time to reevaluate what you’re willing to spend on Rideshare in order to get the customer’s car in the door —a lot has changed in the last 30 days. 

Find detailed, step-by-step valet set up instructions when you watch the full the webinar . 

Best Practices and Tips

We take some best practice cues from retailers that are putting customer experience first, like Amazon. As an industry we used to sell things based on price. Today convenience may trump price for many of your customers. 

Once such form of convenience is valet service. What we’ve found is that while many dealers may have already enabled this service, they may not have told customers it’s available. Get proactive in your marketing and communication. Take the time to explain what valet service is, otherwise, they may not know or understand. Talk about valet on your website and in your email and text marketing as well as social media. Don’t be afraid to create video and have digital dialogue with your audience about what you’re doing to keep them safe. And when you do, make sure to link the posts back to your online scheduler. 

Now, let’s talk about how to get in front of your audience that may have cancelled or no-showed in the past few weeks. You likely have a large pool from the start of social distancing until now. Calling them and talk about how you can help them get their service done safely with valet. 

Best practice conversations are happening now because you need every car and you need every dollar. Get on the phone every day to confirm appointments. If they’re considering cancelling, talk to them about valet. You can make servicing their vehicle convenient and safe. 

While you’re at it, contact customers with recalls. Selling service may be a challenge right now, but you may be able to find work that does not include customer pay. 

You may also find opportunities to get creative. We’ve talked with some dealerships that have their sales people and other sidelined employees acting as valets, picking up and delivering vehicles.  

Lastly, let’s remember this: coupons are not today’s answer. The reason people aren’t coming in is bigger than price. It’s their health and safety they are concerned with. Make sure to communicate what you’re doing with valet and beyond for your customers so they can feel good about making and keeping an appointment. 

The webinar, Be Safe Workshop: Valet Pickup & Delivery, included statistics, detailed valet set up instruction, and best practices beyond what we’ve catalogued here, not to mention some great Q&A and discussion. Watch the full webinar now.