There’s a communication breakdown that’s been plaguing dealerships for years between the sales floor and the service department.

When I say communication breakdown, what I’m getting at is the disconnected nature of various departments – in terms of technology and processes – resulting in a siloed and isolated approach to literally everything. Consider your own dealership. How much customer information successfully (and accurately) makes its way from the initial point of contact on a sales transaction to the first maintenance visit without being rekeyed at some point? How many customers are salespeople passing to service for future reference? How many opportunities for a fresh vehicle sale are identified in service and passed along to sales?

If these scenarios sound like unusual, then like many dealers, you are already familiar with the gap between sales and service.

This gap is costing you a number of revenue opportunities as it reflects an overall dealership inability to track customers throughout their journey with your business – not just at the time of sale, but over the lifespan of the whole relationship.

What’s driving this interdepartmental disconnect? The lack of a single system that can keep everyone in sync with immediacy and accuracy.

Bridging the Gap

This system that connects dealership departments is a web-based tool that’s built as part of the DMS and serves as a single point of data entry and retrieval.

This system eliminates the awkward way in which a series of manual and/or automated processes interact (or fail to interact) across departments, and even at various stages of workflow within a single department.

By implementing a dealership-wide solution that connects departments and databases, your dealership will:

• Share customer information in real time, keeping data updated and accurate.
• Automatically send leads to various departments without rekeying data.
• Provide opportunities to up-sell in sales and service through detailed customer information.

It’s obvious accurate customer information is important. You want every possible revenue source in the dealership to have the most updated information at all times, especially if the prospect is on-site.

The second point above gets right to the heart of what bridging the gap is all about: wider distribution of leads to maximize revenue opportunities from service to the showroom. Connecting sales and service gives your dealership the chance to make the most profits in both areas. With sales expected to drop, finding new revenue flows is a necessity. When sales and service are working together, your dealership has more opportunities to up-sell customers and create more revenue and profit streams.

Communication breakdown between dealership departments is a real problem that can lead to lost opportunities, especially when that breakdown happens between two departments as pivotal to your operations as service and the showroom.

By investing in the right technology to take the burden off your employees and make customer information accessible, accurate, and actionable across the dealership, you invest in sustainable success for the future.

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