Customer relationship management systems, or CRM, are key to any modern business’s success. They help to manage and track all customer interactions and automate certain processes that help to build positive relationships.
More and more businesses are moving to a cloud-based CRM model, including automotive dealerships. Cloud-based CRM tools help streamline customer and sales operations as well as offer greater insight, transparency, and flexibility.
How cloud-based CRM programs help automotive dealers
Here are some ways that automotive dealerships have benefited from moving to cloud-based CRM programs.
1. Better support for customer-centric marketing and outreach
Many car dealerships are focusing less on pushing products and more on finding out which products can truly fit the needs of their demographics. Instead of just promoting a new model car as they roll off the assembly line year after year and listing their new features, car marketing and sales is focusing more on how dealerships generally and cars specifically can help improve customer lives. A cloud-based CRM makes it much easier to put the customer first.
2. Better integration
Cloud-based systems often tie in better to existing car dealership programs that are necessary to run many of the operations of the dealer. Additionally, cloud-based CRM makes it easier for salespeople across dealerships to assist customers. Dealerships that all belong to the same owner aren’t necessarily competing against each other for the same customer. Instead, their strategy should be to help that customer no matter where they are. If the first stop into Dealer A and take a test drive but don’t purchase and later go to Dealer B in the same automotive dealer network for financing information, both dealerships should be able to easily pull up the customer information so that Dealer B can seamlessly pick up and continue the customer experience. Consumers are both savvy and busy – they do research and also have a lot taking up their time. It’s normal to have customers who’re shopping experience spans locations and cloud-based CRM tools help to make managing that process much easier.
3. Better follow up
CRM platforms make it much easier to proactively initiative sales and service recommendations. Since a CRM tool is a huge record database with all customer transactions and interactions tracked, it’s easy for salespeople and marketers to create automated messaging that reaches out to customers to remind them of the last time they were in the service shop for maintenance and encourage them to stop in for a visit. This serves customers by helping remind them of necessary preventative maintenance and also works to drive sales for the dealership. These kinds of interactions help foster positive relationships and create customer loyalty.
4. Better reporting and customer intelligence
CRM tools create better insight into the customer buying process. When sales reps understand how customers are finding the dealership – through email outreach, social, or Google, for instance – they have a better idea of where the customer is in their buying journey. If they know the customers have visited either there or a related dealer a number of times, they can customize their approach in their conversations. Cloud-based CRM tools help keep track of all of this information, giving sales teams and businesses a wealth of data to help them understand their customers and more effectively do their jobs and meet their goals.
The right cloud-based CRM can transform the way that auto dealerships do business and help drastically improve the customer experience. The model for business at an automotive dealership is nurturing a long sales cycle with prospective buyers and then providing a level of service that brings them back to you down the road. A cloud-based CRM business tool helps companies better support these objectives.
