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Top tips to improve your customer communications
In last week’s blog, you read our top 5 tips for putting customers first. We touched on communications as an exceptionally important tool for ensuring customer satisfaction, follow-up sales of financial add-on products, boosting retention rates, as well as maintaining and improving your dealership’s reputation.
All of these can drive up your sales and revenue and they stem from effective communications with your customers, from the moment they walk into your forecourt to the days, weeks and months after they drive their new vehicle away. Maintaining a friendly, personable approach when speaking to a prospective buyer is just as important as your ongoing strategy for keeping-in-touch with them in future.
With this in mind, here are our …
Top 5 tips for communicating with customers
Connect with your customers
When a customer walks into a car retailer, they shouldn’t be seen as a potential sale, but an individual with a need that you can address. The first conversation will be a foundation for all future interactions, from the sale of financial add-on products to their annual MOT and service through to their next vehicle purchase. Drop the hard sell. Learn more about them, build a rapport and then tell them what your business can do for them.
Provide easy-to-understand documentation
Meaning avoid baffling customers with a litany of graphs and tables. Give them the facts in a clearly laid out, easy to follow and readable document. When it comes to financial add-on products, a good provider will be able to supply this information to you, and take you through the benefits and disadvantages of each product.
Keep in touch
Keeping in touch with customers maintains the relationship – ensuring that when they need an MOT or service, or when they come to buy their next vehicle, your business is the first place they go.. A leading provider of add-on products – such as Car Care Plan – will manage this process for you and give your business ways to maintain communications.
Use the right communications tool
There are ever increasing ways to communicate with your customers. Gone are the days when a letter or telephone call were the only methods to keep in touch. While both are still effective, you also have emails, text messages and social media, as well as digital and traditional advertising. All of these have their advantages and the best communications strategies usually incorporate most, if not all, elements.
Download our free eBook to learn more about how digital technology has transformed car sales.
Timing is everything
Knowing when to contact your customers is just as important as how you’re contacting them and what you’re sending. For example, if you want to get them back for their MOT, start with a reminder that it’s due next month, follow it up with details of your offering a few weeks out and then send a promotion if they still haven’t booked with a week to go. A tailored, multi-stage communications campaign is much more effective than a blanket leaflet or email distribution.
Want to know more about improving your customer communications?
Contact the Car Care Plan team or book a free Dealer Health Check.