- Dealer Marketing Magazine

It’s no surprise that communicating with your customers is the best way to receive repeat business; however, have you ever considered using contact center software to conduct customer outreach?

The latest contact center software is quite adaptive, and can be set up quickly in any location with just one user. For this reason, you should consider using this software to promote and grow your dealership. After all, for more than a decade, these communication tools have provided remarkable benefits to large automotive dealers by streamlining their financial operations, delivering time-efficient and cost-saving outreach, and offering approachable customer service. The following are four reasons why you should consider taking advantage of the latest communication tools for your dealership.

1. Communication at your fingertips

As we all know, communicating with customers is a critical component of any dealership. Dealers should utilize contact center communication tools to stay in touch continually with customers, keeping them informed about their vehicle’s service needs, special offers, dealership events, and more. Some communications tools to consider include:

Short message service (SMS). SMS can instantly confirm appointments, send payment reminders, and even alert individuals of recalls or oil changes via text messages.
Interactive voice messaging (IVM). IVM allows dealers to make automated calls with interactive customer response features. These features can direct customers down the appropriate channel to either confirm or change appointment information, participate in surveys, or provide reminders that can be responded to by using the phone’s keypad.
Ringless voicemail technology. Ringless voicemail technology enables dealers to instantly send automated voicemails directly to the voicemail boxes of thousands of customers all at once. This enhanced technology not only ensures that the dealer’s message is received, but saves the dealer money by not having to conduct manual outreach.

These easy-to-use, cloud-based solutions provide a direct and reliable way to communicate with your customers effortlessly.

2. Money back in your pocket

As you know from your expense statements, dealerships spend an excessive amount of time and money sending out communications via U.S. postal mail or through calling individual customers manually. Research has shown that USPS and manual dialing is more expensive and time-consuming than conducting outreach via integrated and automated dialing tools.

For example, to run a promotion or marketing campaign for about 400 individuals, a dealer would spend close to $200 via USPS mailing ($0.44/mailer), and approximately $150 for manual dialing ($10/hour for staff). Conducting similar outreach via cloud-based communications tools, however, would be significantly cheaper and lower the cost of outreach by 75% to 90%, depending on the pricing structure of the call center agency.

3. Turning back the clocks

Aside from cost savings, communications tools can significantly improve time management for dealers. Some tools to consider for your dealership include auto dialers and predictive dialers, which can send prerecorded messages — such as promotions, scheduling reminders, and other notifications — to a large list of customers within minutes.

Additionally, these tools can monitor and track busy signals, voicemail, no-answers, and disconnected numbers to improve the efficiency and speed of the auto dialing process. By using these contact center tools, dealers will save time, resources, and money by utilizing faster and more direct ways to communicate with their customers.

4. Enhances customer service

Keeping customers feeling continuously connected and informed about your dealership is one way to enhance customer loyalty. Customer service is the most important factor in the decision-making process when it comes to customers looking to buy, sell, or trade in a vehicle. With advanced communication technology, dealers can now share pertinent information with more customers quickly and efficiently over a multitude of different channels (phone, text, email, in-person, etc.).

Integrating contact center technology into your dealership’s business strategy will ultimately increase your revenue streams because it provides direct, reliable, and customizable communication options that were designed to engage and resonate with a diverse customer base. Cloud-based contact center communication solutions will soon be the preferred method of communication and customer relationship management in the auto industry.

In 2016, $111 billion was spent by companies shifting to the cloud, according to InfoWorld. Research estimates the number will double to $216 billion by 2020. In today’s consumer-driven, technological world, new technologies are being developed every day to improve business operations and customer service. Don’t be the last dealership to realize the benefits of cloud-based contact center solutions.

Mckay Bird is the chief marketing officer for TCN, Inc., a leading provider of cloud-based call center technology for enterprises, contact centers, BPOs, and collection agencies worldwide.