A specialist for dealership business-development centres sees profits slipping through their fingers and basic customer relations suffering, all from data-collection issues and misuse.
Speaking at the recent DealerTalk Toronto conference, Janis Showers said that dealers are doing a great job collecting contact information through digital formats, such as pop-ups on their websites and software technology in the business office.
But the consultant and trainer for business-development centres (BDC), and founder of The Car Girls, which offers call-centre and event-hosting services, also says that many dealers have no process or procedures to update these data bases when crucial customer information comes in through non-digital formats.
“We’ve created these awesome digital tools but we’re dropping the ball when the customer is right in front of us.”
As an example of dropping the ball, she said a customer called a dealership several times to change the contact name to his name instead of his wife’s because she died. It didn’t get done and he stopped coming.
Another example was a service customer who spent thousands of dollars a year in the service department and was clearly due for a new car. But he was never referred to the sales department and when he stopped coming he couldn’t be contacted due to incorrect data.
One more example was a person who sold their vehicle privately and wondered why the service department, many months later, was calling to promote maintenance services.