The Method Customers Prefer in Service
Article Highlights:
- 80% of Americans are online shoppers.
- Customers prefer texts over phone calls.
We all know consumers enjoy using their phones. In fact, love it or hate it, they spend at least three hours a day on their smartphones.1 To attract this audience, many industries have made major changes to enhance brick-and-mortar experiences with mobility. These changes range from allowing customers to buy clothes online, to scheduling grocery pickup, to “checking in” remotely for a haircut, and even confirming a doctor’s appointment with a text message. With these changes comes the expectation of convenience for the consumer. They want to work with your business by interacting with their smartphones.
How do we know?
- In the last six months, 83% of online shoppers made a purchase using Amazon2 and 95 million people (almost a third of the US population) are using Amazon Prime to make these purchases.3 The majority of your customer base is shopping online, and many prefer (and will pay more for) the most convenient option.
- A recent survey showed customers across the board preferred receiving texts over a phone call or in-person interaction.
- 80% of Americans are online shoppers with more than half of them having made purchases on a mobile device. 4
Dealerships aren’t exempt from this. In fact, when customers come to your store for maintenance or major repairs they are comparing your store to every other buying experience they’ve had. Yours not only needs to meet these expectations, but given the price tag on some repairs, you need to exceed them.
How are you providing this experience to customers? Are you making them play phone tag with the advisor during the repair? Do they have to stand in line waiting to pay once their repair is complete? Make sure your dealership stays competitive by investing in communication and payment tools that give your customers a mobile experience that will exceed their expectations (and increase your CSI score). In the end, your dealership will collect payments faster and your customers will continue to come back for service, and potentially their next new car.
1 DealerMarketing
2Big Commerce
3Jumpshot
4Pew Research Center
5Think With Google
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Vice President of Fixed Operations Product Planning
Jason Sideris is the vice president of fixed operations product planning at Reynolds and Reynolds. For over 25 years, his focus has been on how innovative technology and dealership processes come together to create an efficient experience where both dealership customers and employees thrive.
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