Servicing Charge Customers: How one dealership improved the experience.

When you think about the payment process at your dealership, you might think its status quo. However, when it comes to charge accounts, there is an easy way to improve the experience. I recently spoke with Gina Abbott, office manager at Andrew Chevrolet, about their payment process for charge accounts. Instead of mailing invoices, Andrew Chevrolet has been using a new, and more efficient, payment process by leveraging online payments.

Here’s how this process can benefit your dealership:

1. Save time. It’s been stressed enough that time is valuable both to you and your customers. By emailing invoices, customers can view the invoice and pay online without ever stepping into the dealership. “Our customers like seeing their invoice right away and paying online so when their employees come in, there are no questions. Just sign and go,” said Abbott.
2. Ensure secure payments. “Before, we kept two different cards here for one company and we would run a card when the vehicle was done. That’s not secure. Now, the email is sent to the appropriate director and they pay before the employee leaves the building,” Abbott mentioned. Customers might think paying online isn’t as secure but that isn’t necessarily true. If your dealership is using a solution that’s encrypted and tokenized, payments can be more secure than physical cards.
3. Accept accurate payments. By allowing customers to pay online, you’re giving them the control to make their payment and ensure the totals are correct. “It’s nice when you open the RO, the payment information is already there. The cashier doesn’t have to question whether the customer paid or not,” Abbott said. Furthermore, the more people keying in information, the more risk for human error. If a cashier is busy and cashing out a long line of customers, it’s possible she could enter one number wrong. Good luck finding the paperwork you need when that customer calls about the mistake a week later.
4. Get paid quicker. Before enhancing their payment process, Andrew Chevrolet sent their charge account customers an invoice at the first of the month. Usually, they’d have a payment by the 10^th, but not always. Sometimes, from the point of service to when they received a payment, it could be 45 days! Why wait to get paid? With their new payment process Abbott says the payment is “instantaneous.”

Learn more about how a better payment process can improve your customers’ experience and increase efficiency in your dealership.

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