Every dealership reaches customers through various channels, but are you omnichannel? What is it, and why should you be?
Omnichannel marketing strategy isn’t new, but it is something not all dealerships have embraced, and that could be costing them business and money. Not only does it help get customers engaged and into your store, but it can reduce some of the pain points that may prevent them from recommending you to others.
Most dealers are already working with multichannel strategies, and that’s a good start, but an omnichannel approach can move you up to a new level of customer service.
What is a multichannel strategy?
As its name implies, a multichannel strategy reaches your customers across a number of different channels. You may have your own website, links on your brand’s consumer site, social media pages, mobile apps, or marketplace ads. These are all channels where customers can interact with you.
The disadvantage to multichannel
All of these can do a great job of grabbing your customers’ attention, but each channel is treated as its own entity. Each may sit in its own data silo, separated from other your touchpoints with the customer. For example, customers may provide their personal information when they do an online build-and-price, but when they come into your store, they have to provide it all over again to the salesperson, which is frustrating.
Multichannel may also prevent departments from optimally working together. Data silos can inhibit sales, service, or parts from each looking at a customer’s complete history, preventing the symbiotic relationships of all working together for the customer’s benefit.
What is an omnichannel strategy?
Instead of separate data silos, omnichannel seamlessly “weaves” data throughout the customer experience. As customers switch between channels, their information is integrated. Someone can land on your website, make a service appointment, look at a new vehicle, or watch a video on your social media with all of their data following with them to the next channel they choose. Almost all dealerships today are multichannel, but are less likely to be omnichannel.
The advantage to omnichannel
Omnichannel creates a seamless shopping experience for the customer, which in turn makes it easier for them to move forward into new channels without the need to repeat their information to each new segment where they want to connect with you.
It also has numerous benefits for the dealership. Leads from the dealer or manufacturer websites can be seamlessly integrated into the follow-up process, and from there, transferred to the right people. When someone does a build-and-price on your site and then comes into your store, you can immediately look up the vehicle they were considering, and any trade-in or financial information they may have provided. Rather than a cold start, you’re already well into the shopping and purchasing process.
In virtually all dealerships, the sales and service departments operate their own operations independently. That’s to be expected, but in many cases, a single customer is treated as two customers – one at sales and one at service.
Information is centralized with omnichannel, including the customer’s contact and financial information, sales and service preferences, previous purchases, and even how and where they looked for you online. In the bigger picture, this can allow you to concentrate your marketing efforts, maximize the return on your advertising dollars, and better handle your customer appointments.
It also gives you the ability to centralize your inventory information, so your new and used vehicles appear in all of your online channels – and can come off across them all when something’s sold.
Omnichannel can potentially supply information to all departments. Salespeople can know a customer’s coming in for service and can fill the waiting time with what’s new in the showroom; or F&I can check a vehicle’s mileage from service records and proactively offer warranties or other products.
Your brand and marketing are the same across all channels. Consumers like consistency in the messaging they receive, along with quality of service and attention.
What it takes to make omnichannel work
Omnichannel can do some pretty impressive stuff, but it can’t do it alone. Everyone in the dealership has to be board with the information that’s being handed to them, and to seamlessly follow through on every transaction as the next step of the customer’s omnichannel experience.
Customers who reach out, across any channel, must be answered right away. That could involve using some form of AI chatbot, whether it’s to provide an immediate form of contact before a salesperson is able to answer, or outside of business hours when real people aren’t available to reply.
Whenever customers come into the brick-and-mortar store, the first person to greet them should ask if they’ve interacted with you virtually; and if they have, start from there. They’ve already moved along in their purchasing journey, and if you pick it up directly from their last step, you’ve saved time for everyone and created a more seamless experience for them.
The bottom line
Going omnichannel will likely require professional assistance, and there will be some time and money involved, but the results can be worth it. Customers already expect connected cars, and now they expect connected dealerships too. By guiding them through an interconnected car-shopping experience, you’re on the path to an interconnected purchase and beyond.