Table of Contents
According to one research, automotive businesses can increase their productivity by 34% and sales by 29% using automotive CRM software. However, there are some factors that should be considered to get the most out of automotive CRM tools, such as dealership business requirements, automotive industry trends, current customer demands, and more. Failing to do so might result in auto dealers not seeing the expected outcomes.
Here, we have included the 17 best practices of CRM for the automotive industry while keeping all the crucial factors at center. Enforcing them in your auto dealership business processes may pave the way for achieving your specific business goals. You will also find the best features of automotive CRM software and the benefits of automotive CRM software in this post.
» What is Automotive CRM Software?
Automotive CRM software solutions which is also known as Dealership CRM, are cloud-hosted customer relationship management (CRM) tools that many automobile businesses use to manage and maintain healthy customer relationships while maximizing car sales. Dealership CRM tools are different than any typical CRM systems. They are tailor-made for the automotive industry and offer many top-notch features, such as test drive scheduling, appointment booking, DMS integrations, automation, and more.
Auto dealerships can use these amazing features to perform intricate operations like fetching and qualifying leads, creating effective marketing strategies, designing and sending quotations, and more. Using these automotive CRM systems, dealerships can increase their sales teams’ performance, improve customer support services, and provide exceptional customer experiences.
» Why Using CRM in The Automotive Industry is Super Important?
While automotive CRM software is useful for many things like automating and optimizing processes, maximizing sales, streamlining accounting operations, and more, it is super important due to its ability to efficiently manage leads and potential customers.
According to one report, dealerships lose around 37% of online leads because they miss follow-up within 24 hours and fail to record the leads in CRM systems. Automotive CRM systems empower car dealers with robust features, such as meeting scheduling, notifications, and online forms.
Using these features, dealers can schedule follow-ups and set reminders. They can also create online forms for prospects to fill in and submit. This may ensure that not a single lead slips through the gaps and that sales reps can efficiently track and monitor prospects throughout the sales funnel.
» What are The Best Features of Automotive CRM Systems?
There are many top-notch automotive CRM systems available on the market, offering a plethora of world-class features. Dealerships can leverage these features to efficiently manage their complex automotive business processes and avail many advantages. Some of the cool features provided by CRM software for car dealerships are:
- Lead Management
- Contact Management
- Sales Pipeline Management
- Vehicle Inventory Management
- Communication Management
- Third-party Integrations
- Sales Forecasting
- Analytics & Reporting
- Automation
- Mobile CRM
» What are The Top Benefits of Using CRM in The Automotive Industry?
Automotive CRM Software may bring so many advantages to your auto dealership business. Below are some of the many benefits that might draw your attention:
- Optimized sales processes to maximize car sales.
- Improved cross-sell and upsell.
- Boosted team efficiency and productivity.
- Enhanced lead management.
- Streamlined team communication and collaboration.
- Automated complex workflows.
- Enhanced security with encrypted data.
- 24x7 accessibility with mobile CRM.
- Advanced analytical ability to gain data-driven insights.
- Satisfactory customer service.
- Efficient vehicle inventory management.
» 17 Automotive CRM Best Practices | Tips and Tricks of Using CRM For The Automotive Industry
The following are the 17 best CRM practices in the automotive industry that may assist businesses in maximizing sales and boosting ROI while providing adequate customer support services and increasing customer satisfaction rates.
1. Plan Automotive CRM Strategy
Planning an automotive CRM strategy is crucial for your business since the automotive industry has changed in a lot of ways due to technological advancement. Now, everything is different, like how cars are financed, stocked, sold, and serviced. Hence, automotive businesses must prepare a full-proof CRM strategy to know customers’ likes, dislikes, and requirements to keep up with their increasing demands.
2. Customize Automotive CRM Software to Meet Automobile Business Needs
One of the most demanding features of automotive CRMs is customization. Automotive companies can use this feature to facilitate their employees and increase their productivity. For instance, users can add custom fields in the database to store more information. Another form of customization is pre-defined templates. Employees can use pre-defined templates and customize them so that they can be used for various activities, like sending quotes, running customized email campaigns, etc.
3. Analyze Customer Data to Gain Data-driven Insights
According to one survey, businesses that analyze customer data and use gained insights for business decisions have experienced 115% greater ROI. Automotive CRM solutions generate and contain huge amounts of customer data. Dealership businesses can analyze these data to gain valuable insights and make data-driven business decisions. For example, by analyzing customers' and leads surfing history, businesses can identify which landing pages are attracting quality leads and which have higher bounce rates so they can be optimized for better performance.
4. Check Customer Records Regularly
This is one of the amazing automotive CRM best practices. You should regularly check your customer records to sustain their accuracy and reliability. This includes regularly updating vital contact information (email ID, contact numbers, and more) and removing duplicate entries. An updated customer database can help sales, marketing, and customer support teams to perform their routine activities efficiently. It also ensures that your marketing teams won’t waste their valuable time on obsolete leads.
5. Leverage Social Media Marketing for The Automotive Industry
Since 84% of automobile buyers are using social media platforms, leveraging automotive CRM software for marketing and advertising on social channels like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter is one of the best ways for auto dealerships to increase leads (67%), maximize brand visibility, and boost conversions.
Additionally, automotive companies should include video content in their social marketing. As per one research, online video content for automobile businesses has a 135% higher engagement rate compared to other types of content.
Here’s a list of the social media platforms that are most used while searching for buying a new car:
6. Send Reminders for Car Insurance Renewals
Sending reminders and notifications for car insurance renewals is one of the best practices that the majority of insurance companies perform. However, dealership businesses should also use this technique to win their customers' trust and loyalty. How? Failing to renew the car insurance policy may increase the rate by 9% (If the lapse is under 30 days). Sending reminders for insurance renewal indicates that dealerships genuinely care for their customers and don’t want them to pay any fines.
7. Segment Customer Base Smartly
Segmenting and grouping customers based on diverse elements such as their purchase history, engagement rate, preferences, and more are essential for dealership businesses. For example, marketing teams can design and create marketing strategies to target specific customer segments to attract quality leads. This will help sales teams crack deals faster.
8. Integrate Routine Apps with Dealership CRM
Another best practice of automotive CRM is to integrate third-party apps that automotive businesses use on a daily basis. For example, dealerships can integrate finance or accounting apps with CRM systems. This will reduce the time users spend going back and forth from one app to another and create a cohesive ecosystem where employees can perform various activities without leaving the CRM systems.
9. Use Mobile CRM for the Automotive Industry
According to one study, employees can increase their productivity by 15% using mobile CRM. Additionally, the same study found that 65% of sales reps have achieved their sales targets using mobile CRM software. Hence, empowering your employees with mobile CRM is good practice for dealership businesses. This practice will specifically help sales staff working on the dealership floor. Using mobile CRM, they can easily and promptly fetch customer information, verify inventory for particular products that customers are asking for, and do more.
10. Conduct Regular Training Sessions for Employees
Regularly scheduled training sessions for employees using automotive CRM systems ensure that the staff is well-prepared for using maximum CRM features. Training sessions may include how to input customer information precisely, how to create insightful reports, how to leverage mobile CRM features and many more. Efficiently trained staff can lead to optimum CRM usage and increase their productivity.
11. Create Automated Workflows for Routine Activities
Setting up automatic workflows for routine activities can fast-forward tasks and lift the heavy burden from employees so they can be free to perform other vital operations. Automotive businesses can automate activities like sending service reminders, follow-up emails within 24 hours, appointment confirmation emails, and more.
12. Personalize CRM Dashboards
Customize and personalize your automobile CRM dashboard so you can see the most relevant data in real-time to perform various activities. This is very useful for sales, marketing, or customer support employees. For example, marketing teams can display various metrics on dashboards, such as marketing channels’ performance, to instantly know which channels are high-performing and which channels need more optimization.
13. Increase Customer Engagement
Dealerships should increase customer engagement using automotive CRM systems to stay current with trending customers' needs and know their actual pain points. This can be done in many ways. For instance, businesses can email eye-catching online survey forms, collect customer feedback, and blog on social media channels to begin communications.
14. Emphasize Team Collaboration
Emphasizing team collaboration means allowing sales, marketing, and customer support teams, regardless of their physical locations, to work cohesively. This may bring many advantages to your auto dealerships. For instance, you can eradicate organizational silos by equally granting data access to every department.
This means every employee can access and update the required customer information in real time so that every team can be aware of recent customer communications and requirements. Practicing team collaboration is much needed in the case of multiple-location dealerships where headquarters are handling numerous teams from other offices.
15. Assess Automotive CRM Tools Performance Occasionally
Regularly checking and assessing auto dealership CRM systems’ performance is vital. It ensures that the CRM system is well-updated and configured to meet current and growing automobile business requirements proactively. You can check how automated workflows are performing, how accurate reports are generated, and whether integrated tools are functioning seamlessly.
16. Strengthen Data Security
Ensure your CRM system has top-notch data security to protect your precious customer database from any kind of online threats. It is very important, especially for automotive businesses, as they store critical customer information, such as personal data, purchase history information, and more. You should also review access permissions to ensure that only authorized employees have clearance to access critical customer information.
17. Regularly Check for Automotive CRM Software Updates
This is one of the best CRM practices for automotive businesses. Since new updates and more features are regularly added to CRM software, auto car dealers should check whether their CRM system is up to date. This will ensure that the CRM system is equipped with robust functionalities and follows the latest security protocols.
Too much information to grasp? Here’s a simple infographic to easily digest automotive CRM best practices:
» In Summary
In today’s tech-driven era, using dedicated CRM software for automotive business is no longer an option. In order to achieve success, dealerships must leverage automotive CRM solutions. We have revealed 17 best CRM practices in the automotive industry to help businesses increase car sales and reach their desired goals.
However, the efficiency and outcome of automotive CRM best practices may depend on many factors, such as automobile business size, geographical location, customer base, brand popularity in the market, and more. Hence, it might be possible that the best practices that work for one dealership might be less effective for another automotive business.
