When you’re in the research portion of your buying journey, where do you start?
Whether it’s for shoes, a 65-inch smart TV, a lawnmower, or car parts, it starts online for 95 percent of millennials and 85 percent of the general public. You browse products and services, and the locations where they are available, searching for a differentiator that sets one apart.
Amazon, eBay, or Google: the number of stars the product or store receives makes a lasting impact in your purchasing decision, doesn’t it? It’s the same thing for the customers who are looking at the cars you sell or the automotive service you provide.
Online Reviews?
You’ve undoubtedly implemented policies and practices at your dealership to drum up positive reviews online. It’s as important, or even more so, than CSI survey results in a customer’s eye. Online reviews are raw, unedited experienced-based analyses of how your store performs from the customer’s perspective and greatly influences potential new clients. This is an area that you know is important.
Think About Staff Reviews Instead
You want positive things said about your team, but that’s not the intention of staff reviews. What you want are reviews written by your team members from their perspective. Increasingly, before committing their dollars to your service department or product on the showroom floor, customers want to know what your staff think of your dealership.
It’s an Insight into Culture
When staff members inject their own reviews into your online presence, it’s like opening a window on your dealership’s values. It is evidence of what drives your store, delving beyond the surface clutter of happy or dissatisfied customers, however fickle.
It Gives a View of Long-Term Relationships
When each of your team leaves an online review for your store, it gives a wide-lens snapshot of your team. There will be members who are new while, ideally, you’d have longtime employees provide meaty, shining reviews. It tells a customer there are people who have been, and will be, around for a long time.
Staff Reviews are Personal
On your website, you can say all you want about your values and mission. It’s in your online reviews that the evidence shows itself. When it comes from real people who work the front lines, not a faceless business, it gives customers a thread of personal connection to your store.
Consider how it can work for your dealership. Request an online review from your team members over the course of several months, spreading it out among customer reviews. It’s another tool that can set you apart from your competition.
From Inner Circle News