Pub. 1 2018-2019 |Issue 2

14 T echnology has opened countless doors to engaging with existing and potential customers. Dealers have more opportunities than ever to deliver personalized experiences, leading to increased satisfaction. While adopting new technologies can be intimidating at first, dealers who integrate emerging technologies into their marketing operations will have a considerable advantage over the competition. Get Smart - Use Artificial Intelligence Artificial Intelligence (AI) can make a big difference in being fast and efficient with lead and customer response. Many marketers are beginning to leverage chatbots, a type of machine-learning tool, that allows dealerships to engage with their audience at all hours of the day or night. The 24/7 nature of bots, such as Digital Air Strike’s Response Path intelligent messaging solution, is a primary reason this technology helps improve customer satisfaction ratings and drives more leads through social media. Instead of waiting for a response when a lead or customer sends an online message after hours, chatbots have evolved to the point where they can be programmed to engage with the customer at any time, day or night. In addition to 24/7 service, chatbots can free up valuable time for employees by capturing and qualifying leads, searching inventory, scheduling service appointments and test drives, and routing leads to appropriate team members when necessary. Chatbots can also deliver custom quotes, recommend additional vehicle options, and gather customer contact information—all within minutes. These bots can be seamlessly integrated into a dealer’s text messaging and social media tools including Facebook Messenger. Gain Real-time Customer Insight Surveying sales and service customers regularly gives dealerships powerful insight into how they’re doing as a business, if they’re meeting their customers’ needs and who their best employees are. While feedback is typically plentiful in negative reviews, dealers should also pay attention to what their happy customers say, address the concerns and report back to the customer that the issue has been addressed. Most likely, this will turn an already happy customer into a raving fan. The happy customers should also be asked to post their positive feedback publicly and dealers should include links to top review sites on their surveys to make this easy for the customer. New technology has created “smart surveys” which can detect when a customer is using a Gmail address and route happy respondents to post their positive feedback only on Google, increasing a dealership’s star rating on the most-used search engine. Dealers should also ask in their survey whether the customer would refer the dealership to others. The referral or Net Promoter Score is a valuable measurement of the success of a dealership. Use New Platforms When dealers survey customers and ask them to post reviews, they need to be prepared to monitor, manage and respond to what’s posted online. Having easy-to-use tools like a mobile app or a platform that gathers all the information from review sites and customers surveys into one place makes reputation management manageable. Dealers should showcase positive feedback on their website and with reputation tiles on Google that appear in first page search results. And have a plan to respond to all online reviews, using these opportunities to communicate what’s great about the dealership. Remember, customer service is a priority. When responding to a negative review, take the exchange offline immediately by providing a phone number of the highest-level contact possible at the dealership. Marketing technology has made an immense impact in allowing marketers to better maintain relationships with current and potential customers. These technologies excel at streamlining operations, fostering customer satisfaction, measuring social media sentiment, and providing dealers with simple solutions to maintaining their social media and review sites. Wondering how your technology performs when it comes to responding to leads? Request a freeMystery Shop at www. digitalairstrike.com/mystery-shop and we’ll show you. 3 Alexi Venneri is co-founder and CEO of Digital Air Strike, a leading social media and digital engagement company. Alexi has more than 20 years of experience in marketing and is a pioneer in digital response, social marketing and online reputation management. She can be reached at alexi@digitalairstrike.com. Marketing Technology Fuels SWIFT GROWTH By Alexi Venneri