The 3 E’s of easy payment options.

In my previous article about modern payments, I stressed how important it is to give customers payment options, because that’s what they want. Now, let’s focus on why those options should also be important for you.

• Email collection. Turn service customers into sales customers. Accurate email addresses are the foundation for communicating with customers. Consider how many times you’ve shopped and been asked for your email. Have you ever refused or given a fake email address? When the communication is valuable to the customer, a 2015 study by MarketingSherpa found that more than 70% of  those surveyed prefer to be contacted via email. Give customers what they want. Coach advisors and cashiers to ask for email addresses when customers drop off their vehicle and you’ll be able to notify them as soon as their car is ready and give them the option to pay via their phone. Additionally, now you have accurate email addresses for future communications and marketing use.
• Efficiency. Offering more payment options means a smoother checkout process. Recently, I spoke with a dealer who said, “Everybody comes after work at the same time. We wanted to lighten this load (for our cashier) so we started searching for a way for customers to pay online before they get here.” If customers are paying online they see shorter pick-up times. What does this mean for you? Advisors can spend less time cashing out customers and more time selling additional services. We’ve even seen dealerships eliminate the need for cashiers and shift their job focus elsewhere.
• Exactitude. Minimize costly transposition errors in the service department and help out the office at the same time. Online payments can help reduce transposition errors if the payment solution is built to work with your DMS. This not only saves the office time when trying to reconcile receipts the next day, but it also provides a better customer experience by ensuring the customer is charged the accurate amount for the services received.

Could your dealership benefit from improving any of the above?

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