How Car Dealers Can Develop Loyalty and Retain Customers

Customer loyalty is difficult to achieve, but can be incredibly rewarding for car dealers, having a retention process in place is worthwhile.

There are a number of reasons why loyal customers are so valuable: they are easier and cheaper to market and sell to, they may recommend you to friends and relatives and if they are really devoted, they may even choose you over other dealerships with better incentives.

These reasons should be enough to convince you to develop a retention scheme, but whenever you implement a new process within your dealership, you will want it to have minimal disruption, so you should have a good plan of action before you get started.

Regular Communication

The aim with a loyalty strategy is to keep in touch with customers so that they have you in mind the next time that they want a product or service you offer without bombarding them with messages. It is also important to make customers feel like you care about them with personal messages.

A good plan is to get in touch with the customer after six months to ask how they are finding their new car and then again after another six months with an MOT reminder.

ClickDMS allows you to keep track of important dates for each of your customers, with a Key Marketing Reminders feature which enables you to send communications at important trigger points.

Trigger Points

Consider all of the triggers you are able to track that could provide an opportunity for a renewal interaction, for example, if someone’s finance agreement is coming to an end or they request an early settlement fee.

Preparation

Before making a renewal call to a customer, check your CRM to see whether or not the customer has had an interaction with your dealership recently. If they have been in touch about an issue which is already being handled, you will want to be aware of this, to ensure that the call is relevant and prevent confusing or annoying the customer. It’s scenarios such as this which make detailed note-taking on your CRM system vital.

Training

Everyone must receive the same training. Ensure that staff handling a renewal call or training appointment are aware of the structure they should be following, but you should also make sure they know why they are doing it.

If all of your staff members understand the bigger picture of the importance of customer loyalty and retention and how their actions can have an impact on this, they will see the reasoning behind it and everyone can work towards the same goal.

For more advice about how ClickDMS can help you retain customers, get in touch with Click Dealer and speak to one of our experts. Email marketing@clickdealer.co.uk, call 01782 478220 or send us a message via our contact page!