Basic CRM platforms don’t cut it in an integrated world
Questions to Contemplate as the Automotive Industry Moves into a New Era
How can a dealership differentiate itself from the rest of the competition?
In the current emerging automotive landscape, dealership software requires more strategic vision and data-driven decision-making than building a standalone product. As a company with a reputation for perfecting the art of building innovative platforms in the automotive software space, AutoAlert recognizes that continuous innovation of a platform as complex as ours cannot be achieved without a deep understanding of how all components work together.
AutoAlert has a suite of products that all provide tremendous value on their own; however, the collaboration of those tools has the power to drive incredible change. So, we built AutoAlert CXM, an car dealer CRM that allows enhanced integrations between our solutions and funnels to provide an exceptional customer experience.
How is AutoAlert CXM more beneficial than just a dealership CRM?
The digital world offers capabilities we didn’t have 10 or 15 years ago. The amount of data and intelligence we can draw from today is astounding. The technology available to create actions using that intelligence allows us to redefine this process. However, building a collaborative platform goes much deeper than just integrating code.
AutoAlert’s CRM not only finds patterns that allow you to increase purchase and service frequency by offering customers already in your database benefits that fit their needs at just the right time, but it will connect the dots that otherwise wouldn’t be if your data mining, marketing, and CRM platforms were siloed.
For example, a reputation management tool is vital to the marketing efforts of a dealership, but when the data from that tool is captured and integrated into our CRM platform, you can activate your data to trigger a conflict resolution process that can now manage reviews.
How is this different than the CRMs that most dealerships are using today?
For many dealership CRMs, most communication with the customer is automated, and all of it is time-based, mainly driven by an automated scheduler. An automated email fires 24 months after purchase, and a follow-up call on month 32. For what reason? And, to say what?
AutoAlert CXM takes the personalized experience customers have come to expect and transfers that same experience to the brick-and-mortar. To do that, dealers must make sure they are not only communicating the right message to the right consumers but also communicating the right message to the right employee at the right time. This is being achieved internally at the store level via technology-driven communication processes.
We are proving that a data-driven communication strategy’s impact on our dealers and their relationships with their customers is profound.
Increasing dealership output is not limited to communication with customers but equally to employee engagement. And it makes perfect sense because, let’s face it, it doesn’t matter how the customer is driven to the dealership; if the employee they interact with is disengaged or, even worse, disgruntled, all the hard work is done in vain.
How can you ensure employees are showing up the way you want?
How do we develop a tool to support the need to keep employees engaged with their dealership’s mission? Much like the relationship with your customers, communication is the key to maintaining employee engagement and satisfaction, which shouldn’t surprise anyone.
Your employees are key in the relationships customers have with your dealership. They create the perception that customers have when they think of your brand.
Today’s workforce demands open communication and fluid collaboration with their peers. For us, the first goal is to create a platform that encourages communication, inspires collaboration, and drives operational efficiency. Even minor adjustments in employee communication and how they collaborate greatly impact how they feel when they come to work daily.
How can you keep employees engaged long-term?
A team of engaged employees won’t stay engaged long-term without personal success. AutoAlert CXM arms them with new tools and heightened intelligence to provide customers with the best overall experience, creating better sales opportunities.
The most exciting part of the AutoAlert CXM platform is the algorithms running in the background that make the data smarter daily. Every transaction feeds our algorithms, so the tool performs better at predicting behavior. Imagine how powerful it would be to arm your dealership’s staff with the same level of intelligence every time they interact with a customer.
For example, when a BDC Agent picks up the phone to call a customer, we want them to have background information about the person they are calling and exactly what the conversation should be about. Or, when a salesperson ups a customer on the lot, they know what drove that customer to the dealership, putting them at an advantage from the get-go.
What is the big-picture benefit of AutoAlert CXM that propels overall success?
Dealerships typically have a portfolio of vendors handling different aspects of the business, most of which don’t communicate with each other. It’s no wonder the customer experience can be so fragmented and disjointed. This is why integrations among all the verticals contributing to dealership management are vital.
CRMs were, and are, great for what they were designed for, but in an increasingly competitive market, a CRM is too limited to deliver alone.
These days, customers expect a seamless, personalized, and beneficial experience. The AutoAlert CXM platform is built with the infrastructure needed to allow for synergies between software tools, your employees, and your customers to effectively differentiate your dealership from the competition. After all, as we navigate our work-life balance, isn’t it simply a better experience we are all after?
