Tweet, child of mine!
Social media can not be avoided! New research shows that more and more organisations are using Twitter and other forms of social media as part of external communications. 1 in 10 companies are now “Tweeting” regularly, as well as using Twitter to make news announcements, promotions and to identify unsatisfied customers.
Companies can monitor what people are saying about them, their company and product. This can be done using hash tags (#) for key words which identify the business or the owner or by doing a search on @yourtwittername.
Companies can connect Twitter to their website and people can make a lot of damage with a 140 characters. Tweets can be seen by all users and followers. These Tweets can then be retweeted to even more followers, So bad news spreads fast! Equally, good news can also spread fast, therefore twitter is an excellent way to increase your good reputation as a car dealership.
A recent example I found on twitter of a customer sharing their experience with a dealership was on the Land Rover UK twitter page. Whilst looking through the page, I came across a comment from @onlydads which read “still thinking you could do a little better with customer service” and then a link to their blog which then detailed their bad experience with Land Rover.
This might put you off wanting to use a social media site like twitter, however its how you can handle these types of customer complaints which gives back the power to the dealerships. In response to @onlydads comment, Land Rover UK wrote “thanks for sharing your blog post. We'd really like to help you resolve this issue. Sent a DM with our contact details . Thanks”. What twitter can do is to create a dialogue between customers and help do damage control on any bad publicity.
Twitter is not only for customers to share their bad experiences. It can be used as a valuable publicity tool for your dealership. A tweet from a Mr Smith on the Rybrook cars twitter page read “Back at the Mini garage: customer service at Rybrook Stratford is brilliant. Free coffee; free wifi. If only the work was free, too!”
So how can you best utilise twitter for your dealership? Well its all about establishing good relationships with your customers. Using social media you need to try to encourage dialogue with you customers to used this as good publicity. Also use it to gain the trust of your customers. If they communicate via twitter that they are not happy with one of your services use this as an opportunity to show your customer service skills to remedy the problem, like Land Rover UK. If you'd like to find out more about setting up your Twitter account, contact us here.
By
Lauren Coakeley and Steve Gleadall
