Digital technology continues to permeate car dealerships across the country. Many dealerships have incorporated Business Development Centers (BDC) to better serve their customers and boost inbound marketing efforts. 

If you want to start a service BDC for your dealership in Lincoln Park, MI, click here to get a live demo of Singlethread’s service BDC solutions. 

What Is A Business Development Center?

A BDC comprises employees working under a manager that serves as the customers’ initial point of contact. The center is responsible for handling appointments and managing inbound and outbound communications. 

In the long run, a BDC creates a smooth purchase and service experience for your customers. This experience will, in turn, build loyalty and increase the number of repeat clients. Many dealerships have a BDC for the sales end of the operations, but there are several reasons to set up a service BDC as well.

Retain And Attract More Customers

As mentioned above, BDC helps to provide an excellent customer experience. More often than not, customers leave a dealership because of poor service. They end up giving their business to a competitor. 

A poor customer experience occurs when your clients feel like they are talking to someone who doesn’t reply promptly or doesn’t have the relevant answers to their queries.

Customers can also sense a disconnect when the sales team doesn’t provide them the right information once they visit the dealership. With a BDC, you can ‘warm up’ your visitors with initial engagement. 

Nurture Your Leads

This follows from the previous point. Professionals skilled at servicing vehicles don’t often have the customer service skills to drive clients into your dealership. That is why a service BDC is vital for efficient lead management.

BDCs will be available to answer calls and messages from all your prospects. They will nurture the leads before setting up an appointment. They will also gain relevant information from the customers, provide follow-up, and communicate all the essential details to the sales team. 

Over time, this system makes it faster and cheaper to close a deal, making your business more profitable. This brings us to the next point. 

Achieve Economies Of Scale

A dedicated service BDC helps your business become more efficient. BDCs communicate promptly with customers. This means there is always an inflow of fresh leads in your business that can become serious customers. 

Moreover, BDC representatives will screen the prospects based on their personal and financial information. They will only pass on those leads to the sales team that is most likely to buy. They will answer inbound calls, address customer queries, set service appointments, confirm appointments, provide follow-up, etc. 

This helps your sales staff to focus on their core function: selling vehicles to showroom traffic.

For dealerships in Lincoln, MI, we offer a complete service BDC solution. This includes Singlethread text services that enable multiple users to communicate with one customer and store the transaction indefinitely. We also make it easy to manage declined services reporting and follow up messaging. Click here to get a live demo. 

Just like any other business industry, the impact of technology has also improved things for auto dealership businesses. One of the major benefits that technology has brought to auto dealerships is the convenience of contactless transactions.

Enabling contactless transactions profits auto dealers in many ways. If you have not switched to a contactless transaction method of payment, read on to find why you should do it now.

Before we move forward with the benefits, here is a free live demo by Single Thread, a top company offering communication solutions for car dealers in Lincoln Park, MI.

Here is a list of advantages that vehicle dealers can avail by switching to a contactless transaction method for all their business payments.

Contactless transactions are more reliable and secure.

Contactless transactions are secure as they make it almost impossible for the cases of fraud and losses to occur to your business. Businesses often experience theft and loss due to small mistakes and negligence while receiving money from customers.

With contactless transactions, these losses can be avoided easily. Moreover, devices that enable contactless transactions are designed to protect receivers against fraud and secure the payments.

Contactless transactions are easier to manage.

Collecting and keeping a record of cash payments from auto-related dealings is a big hassle. The inability to track your money due to inefficient record-keeping can cause severe hindrance in your business’s progress.

This is because incorrect records will have a negative impact on your ability to make the right decisions based on the correct estimations about the business’s profit rate. Contactless transactions are a great solution to this issue as they help you manage your money more efficiently by generating records of each transaction immediately.

Contactless transactions build customer trust.

It is easier for businesses who implement a contactless transaction method to build customer loyalty as contactless transactions are almost completely error-free. It makes money transfers easier, accurate, and timely, all at once. It also helps both parties with other financial services, like keeping records of payments and more.

Contactless transactions save a lot of time.

Have you ever noticed how you have to always invest your most important resource (time) in entertaining customers for payments? Cash payments are often delayed and paid in installments in auto dealing businesses, which means you have to wait for long periods for the payment to complete.

Contactless transactions resolve these problems by enabling a quick and smart way of performing money transactions. It saves up a lot of time and allows businesses to invest it in other more crucial aspects instead. Auto businesses can also access other modern banking and financial tools via contactless transaction devices.

These are a few main advantages that auto dealers can make by enabling contactless transactions for their business dealings.

To summarize it all, these benefits ensure business growth, improved customer relations, and better revenue generation. Auto dealers in Lincoln Park, MI, who are seeking more information about how they can develop their business further by improving communication with clients, join Single Thread to get a free live demo.

Texting is a powerful marketing tool used by auto dealerships, which is subject to unique regulations. Violation of these regulations may result in powerful financial consequences.

Texting can become an effective channel for communicating with customers if done correctly. However, many dealerships tend to refrain from this to avoid paying hefty fines.

What they fail to realize is, the issue is not with texting. The problem lies with improper or illegal texting. If you use this means the correct way, it can significantly benefit your car dealership.

Here are five mistakes that dealerships make that can ruin their service reputation.

Opt-Out Option

Many dealerships have been under fire for violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) by not providing customers the option to opt-out of future text messages. Since consumers have to pay to receive text messages sent from a regulated cellular service to their personal cellphone network, random text messages can annoy them greatly.

In 1991, the TCPA was established. It prohibits businesses from establishing any form of unsolicited communication with customers through telephone technology. This law applies to text messages, robocalls, pre-recorded messages, and faxes.

A dealership must have prior written consent to contact a customer, among other guidelines, as highlighted by the TCPA. Otherwise, they might get penalties that canrange from $500 to $1500 per message.

To avoid problems due to legal violations, dealerships should use double opt-in, a double notification signifying that a customer has granted permission to send marketing text messages.

The first step is to obtain permission from customers to send them text messages through recorded verbal consent or a written or web form. Next, the dealership should send a text message to customers seeking consent for further text messaging. Generally, customers can reply with a Y or N response to show their approval or disapproval.

The double opt-out is basically follow-up communication like a text to confirm a customer’s consent for receiving text messages that may incur standard data fees, along with options to determine the type and frequency of text messaging.

Legal Compliance

Aside from TCPA, there are multiple state and federal laws and industry standards that dealerships should follow with text messaging. An example is contests and sweepstakes. These may be good marketing programs, but promoting them through text messages can lead to trouble.

All dealership customers need to opt in to receive promotions for contests or sweepstakes. Also, they need to indicate if they are 13 years of age or older and legally eligible to participate. If the contest or sweepstake is sponsored in conjunction with alcoholic-related content, then age verification of 21 years old and over is required.

Furthermore, dealerships need to distinguish between marketing messages and transactional messages and give customers the option to opt-in to one or both.

Employees’ Personal Cell Phones

Protecting confidential data and personal privacy has become the number one priority for businesses. Do not risk losing private business information or the personal data of your customers.

Use company text messaging numbers and plans to contact customers, so they never get your employees’ cell phone numbers or personal data. This way, the only thing customers will be able to access is their own information, so the privacy of your employees and dealership will be protected.

Collecting & Documenting Communications

The more dealerships rely on electronics, the riskier it gets for them since they no longer have a well-documented ‘paper trail’ if an employee leaves the job or to protect against legal liabilities.

Searching for a paper trail on various cell phones can be time-consuming, frustrating, and expensive. It will also highlight your inefficiency in front of customers. Use a service that safely stores, archives, and makes all internal and external communication easily searchable.

Unauthorized Work

The consumer protection laws of most states require dealerships to take prior customer authorization to perform auto repairs. If the repair is unauthorized, the customer might refuse to pay, which will cost the dealership time and money and result in poor customer experience, and possibly a lost customer.

Although many customers check the box in work orders for pre-authorization of additional repairs, they sign it without reading the document or understanding it. To avoid any unpleasantness, text the customer informing them of additional issues and request authorization to proceed. It is simple, quick, and verifiable.

We have a simple solution to all your dealership’s text messaging woes.

Singlethread offers a seamless automatic text messaging system to dealerships in Lincoln Park, MI, so your customers can stay updated about their vehicle status at every stage of the repair process. Click Here To Get A Free Live Demo.