TICK-TOCK (Part 2): Engineer Your Dealership’s CX To Build Trust, Engage Users, and Expedite The Sales Process.

In part one of this article, we discussed some of the evolving needs of modern shoppers. How to identify and develop the best digital CX (Customer Experience) for your unique brand and market is the aspect many dealers struggle with. The data proves that a more transparent, efficient, and value-driven shopping experience will lead to more trust and higher customer satisfaction. This, in-turn, promotes organic growth, repeat business, and referrals. There were, however, some very hard learned lessons for us to arrive at these conclusions.

The 2022 Car Buyer Journey reflected that consumers were so troubled by the ‘hassle’ of car buying, that it drove a sharp 11% decline in car shopper satisfaction between 2019-2022.

To put it simply, car buyers were not impressed. Not impressed with dealers, or OEM’s, and not impressed with how counter-intuitive, opaque, and time-consuming the process was. That loss of trust and confidence comes with hard-to-quantify but still very real consequences for dealers and brands alike. It’s not hard to imagine that in-addition to near-term sales drop-offs and market share losses, a precipitous drop in consumer confidence could rapidly reshape the entire industry and make the dealer business model non-viable in the near-future.

During the peak of the satisfaction slide, the retail market saw a surge of sterilized, online-only digital retailers (like Carvana, Vroom, etc.) pop up to take advantage of the negative sentiment growing around dealers, and boasting of “a better way to buy a car”. For all their obvious faults and shortcomings, those online retailers did one thing very well: they made it their top priority to reimagine and modernize their CX, and consumers loved them for it.

Dealers have started to make significant changes, at a critical time for the industry, and are quickly being rewarded with happier customers, and sustainable lanes for growth. +

Fast forward a year, and the 2023 Car Shopper Study offers dealers a glimmer of hope. The morale of the story seems to be that if you build a more relevant, helpful, and trustworthy  retail experience, they will come. Thousands of car dealers implemented major technological upgrades to their website and retail experience during this time. All over the country, dealers began adding more engaging native lead-generation tools, like Custom Order (Build & Price), Factory Reservemerchandising software, as well as innovative new Communications and Point-Of-Sale solutions like TalkExpress- Conversational Commerce and Digital Retail platforms.

The simplest answer for dealers who want to optimize and grow is…you should question everything. From the “certified” (or not certified) providers and solutions you utilize and partner with, to how those solutions are configured and deployed at a granular level, and more.

If you’ve previously read about the Autofusion Advantage, you know about our universal 360º Optimization strategy, which is a methodology we use to test and optimize every facet and detail of our product and service offerings. If you regularly ask yourself how different types of car shoppers might be perceiving and reacting to individual aspects of your overall digital sales atmosphere, much less how it all works together, you’ll be able to see things the way your shoppers see them. That is half the battle, in and of itself.

So, what now? What’s the best way for car dealers to continue improving and optimizing their online car shopping experience?

Car dealers and technology providers alike made an extraordinary effort in the last couple of years to modernize and adapt. As a result of these innovations (and the dealer-body’s persistent effort to drive that improvement), the dealer-centric automotive retail model has made significant strides towards securing its future viability. Dealers make a huge difference for car shoppers, as well as in their local communities, and the retailers who want to continue to provide local car shoppers with a trustworthy and relevant experience for decades to come, should turn their attention to the following concepts:

• Emphasize and promote a personal connection, wherever you can. The human-touch that your consultants provide can often be the difference maker (even for online shoppers who are typically left, quite literally, to their own devices). Get your expert staff in front of your shoppers any way you can, and allow them to build trust, move shoppers forward, and engineer better sales outcomes.
  
  
• Focus on providing a more engaging, product-driven experience: As opposed to just offering a more sterilized retail transaction for the expert and low-funnel shoppers. Get more of your shoppers in front of the product, virtually kicking tires and building value, instead of just dropping them off at an unruly SRP and hoping one of the 57 boiler-plate CTA hooks gets a bite.
  
  
• Build a More Personalized and Relevant Website Experience – Help shoppers feel more understood by offering a dynamic website experience that analyzes your shoppers interests and behaviors and displays content better-suited to their needs (like the one provided by our Complete Website Solution’s “Intent AI” Engine).

We will continue to write about specific technologies and strategies we’ve developed to help you dial in your own fully-optimized CX at your dealership. If you’d like to schedule a consultation and demo with one of our digital marketing experts to get your dealership’s wheels turning, Click, Call 800-410-7354, or email sales@autofusion.com