Have You Secret Shopped Yourself?

Every business experiences its own pain points. And oftentimes, these pain points go unnoticed. The automotive industry is no different. It certainly doesn't help that when it comes to keeping up with the digital age, dealerships tend to dig their heels in and resist change.

Have you audited your own dealership recently to identify and address pain points, weak spots, and room for improvement?

Let's talk about some of the more common challenges that dealerships face and how Quotible can help to eliminate them.

4 Common Problems at Dealerships and How to Resolve Them With Quotible

1. Declining Email Open Rates

Dealers spend a significant amount of their marketing budget every month to drive traffic and in-market shoppers to their inventory. But here's the problem: The approach to lead response has gone virtually unchanged for the last 20 years. Leads enter the CRM, and the CRM automatically sends a templated email response. Half of the time (if not more), these emails end up in spam. The ones that manage to make it in the consumers’ inbox often go unread or trashed.

If consumers don't engage with your email responses, then the relationship ends there. There isn't going to be a conversation, never mind a sale.

Creating emails that people actually engage with is imperative to your dealership's survival and success.

Quotible resolves this in a number of ways. First of all, it allows you to create branded, personalized, interactive e-quotes. We send them via both email and text, to make it easier for the consumer to respond on their terms. Quotible vastly improves the customer experience and gives dealers the power to reach more shoppers, increasing the average open rate to 88-92%.

With Quotible, dealers can maximize their marketing spend and increase appointments with leads.

2. A Lack of Engagement

Improving the open rate is the first step — but what happens next?

For most dealers, the answer is... nothing. There is little to no interest in the contents of their emails. Recipients leave seconds after opening it in their inbox.

Once again, the relationship is going to end here if the email isn't engaging enough to get people to take action. Antiquated, canned CRM templates simply aren't going to cut it. Period. They deliver a poor first impression, which leaves consumers unimpressed and dealers incredibly frustrated.

Quotible quotes not only land in more inboxes and reach more consumers but also have incredibly high engagement. On average, consumers spend four minutes viewing and engaging with their personalized quote, returning twice after to view them again. They receive high engagement and high activity, leading to more conversations and appointments with the dealer.

3. No Distinction From Competitors

Traditional CRM templates present another huge problem. Because most dealers rely on the same templates, they all look the same. This severe lack of differentiation means that if your dealership is leaning on these templates, you're going to get lost in the sea of competitors.

Dealers using Quotible deliver a high-quality first lead response that stands out in the market and engages more consumers. The e-quotes are highly personalized and interactive and provide customers with transparent and important information such as cash, finance and lease payment options, trade evaluations, dynamic facts about the vehicle, their salesperson, and the dealership.

This immensely helps to set the dealer apart from the competition, and it provides a far superior first impression in comparison.

4. Poor Mobile Experience

You don't need us to remind you that most of your customers — roughly 70% — are viewing your emails on their smartphones. If your response templates look low-quality on mobile, you're going to lose a significant portion of your traffic. With phones being the primary way that so many people consume information and content, dealers have to be on top of their game here.

And yet, dealers are communicating with their consumers using technology that was built in the early 2000s. Why?!

Quotible is built for today's mobile customer. We know that 70% of our quotes are viewed on a mobile device, so we design our templates keeping these consumers in mind. We make it easy for consumers to calculate their payments, book test drives, evaluate their trade, and more — all from the palm of their hand.

Again, this means a notable improvement in customer experience and a way to seriously stand out from your competition.

These pain points are serious, and here's an even bigger problem: We haven't even gotten into the pain points on the consumers' end. Typical email templates lack transparency, making it difficult for consumers to quickly and easily get the information they need. They also do a poor job of building trust.

Canned templates are impersonal and unattractive, negatively impacting the relationship between the consumer and the salesperson.

It’s bad news for the salesperson too — who spends eight to 10 minutes building and sending a single quote which probably will go unseen anyway.

The digital age has brought immense change to nearly every industry, and this includes the automotive industry. Dealerships must advance and adapt, pivoting their sales and marketing approaches to not just keep up with the consumer and the competition, but remain one step ahead.

With Quotible, you have the power to treat consumers not like just another lead, but an actual human being. Technology in the automotive industry is proving to be an incredible asset — not a threat, like so many professionals thought. Engage with your customers on a more personal level, establish trust, and ultimately boost sales.

Are you ready to see what Quotible can do? Request a demo today.