Used car marketing - aftersales builds trust, relationships sell cars
Recently I read that China's car production rose 32% in 2010, this will lead to an increase in the requirement for servicing. This got me thinking about how dealerships gear themselves towards the servicing of vehicles in general.
All dealerships consider after-sales a big priority. Your customers want to be able to ensure they have somewhere reliable to service their car. The quality of your performance is an important factor in ensuring that you develop and maintain a strong competitive advantage. A recent study shows that owners are willing to buy their next car from the same dealer if they receive an excellent after-sales service.
The benefit of enhancing the after-sales experience for the customer is they will inevitably start to trust you. One way to increase trust is to use words which the customer can understand rather than reverting to technical jargon. Put yourself in your customer's shoes - how would you feel paying out for an expensive repair that you really had no idea about? Even worse, if outwardly the car didn't appear to have any problems when you drove it that morning.
Your after-sales team needs to help educate the customer about their car and its problems. This isn't easy. Your staff are stretched already, yet to really get customers onside, someone needs to find the time to explain exactly what a timing belt tensioner is, for instance, and why it needs replacing. One way is to use video.
'A video is worth a thousand pictures, a picture a thousand words.'
Including video as part of your car dealer marketing strategy, gives your service staff a sales tool that can quickly explain a problem far more succinctly than they ever could over the phone. Importantly it should feature the technician, he's the expert whose opinion the viewer will trust and appreciate. It also takes the owness off your front line staff who then become order takers rather than pushy salespeople. Creating a unique, personalised experience for your customers by making it part of your service process, alongside the VHC will convert more red and amber work as well as build trust, ready for the next time your customer is in the market for a new car.
Rorie Hannigan
