At the North American International Auto Show, Ford unveiled an interesting new program to the world – FordPass. According to The Detroit News, Ford’s goal with this app is to create a centralized hub which allows Ford owners to utilize some unique…

Competition for air travel is fierce. Especially when it comes to wooing business travelers. An interesting fact that recently came to light is that the most desirable customers are not necessarily those that have flown the most miles. Airlines have realized this and have changed how rewards and statuses are earned. You see, flying longer distances doesn’t necessarily equate…

Earning customer loyalty in today’s society is especially tricky. As almost every retailer now has a loyalty program, it’s difficult to stand out and make your customer truly feel special and appreciated. Earning loyalty isn’t simply about giving something away. It’s about creating and nurturing a relationship that builds a brand advocate who will continue to patronize your…

An interesting study conducted by MaritzCX and published on CustomerThink relays how dealers should care about – and invest in – the creation of a better customer experience in their stores.

While customer experience can be vague, and in the past has mostly been measured through surveys and…

In dealing with the customer experience, all too often the conversation centers on the customer’s buying path from initial contact through the sale. What many businesses don’t think about, however, is that the sale is only the start of the relationship. Customer loyalty is built through a consistent customer-centric experience. In the retail automotive space, this is more…

Yes.

Now let me explain.

In our industry – as well as life – we continuously talk about transparency. Let’s be brutally honest here. Sometimes honesty isn’t the best policy. Is it always that way in real life? If your wife asks you whether she looks fat, you know you’re always going to say “No.” How about those times you go to a friend’s house…

The reason that consumers don’t trust us is simple… the messages we send them aren’t believable.

Point in case: Doug Demiro, a former manager of Porsche Cars North America, and now author of a popular column on automotive website Jalopnik, answered a…

In the automotive industry, hundreds of customers pass through dealerships on a daily basis. Each of these customers will interact with dealership staff multiple times during their visit - whether they’re there to buy a car, or for a simple oil change. It’s very easy to function as an organization with a focus on efficiency - how quickly can you complete a…

There is a group of people that seems to sit in limbo when it comes to dealership marketing messages, especially when it comes to service. This group of people tend to have cars in the 2-year old range. Yes, they’re probably getting the dealer’s random e-mail messages with service coupons. But, this is also the time when these vehicle owners may have to start shelling out…

In our industry, one universal sales practice is to tailor your techniques to the wants and needs of the customer in front of you. If you have a young male drooling over that sports car, you’ll probably be talking about performance specs, 0-60 times and horsepower. If you have a young family, you’re probably going to be reviewing all of the safety features of…

A hot topic of much discussion today is the decrease in the sales process. There are many opinions on whether shortening the time it takes consumers to buy a vehicle is the answer to providing a better customer experience. There’s no doubt that it can be arduous and exhausting for a consumer to buy a car - from finding the right one, to filling out paperwork,…

Mimicking customer behavior is one of the oldest sales techniques in the business. So is finding common interests and building rapport. However, with three generations of car buyers in and out of dealerships daily - Boomers, Gen X and Gen Y - it’s harder than ever for salespeople to accomplish this convincingly, let alone understand what type of experience each…

Loyalty programs surround us. We live in a world filled with keychains on which multiple little plastic mini loyalty cards dangle. There aren’t many places where we spend our money that don’t offer a rewards program or, at the very least, track our purchases via a quasi-rewards program that only allows us to purchase items at the “loyalty” price, versus the…

When done properly, Google Ads are an effective piece in any multi-channel marketing strategy. The ability to target traffic to specific behavior and keyword searches is invaluable. Well, Google is now following in the footsteps of Facebook and Twitter and on September 27…

In life, not everything goes our way. Things happen. Planes get delayed. It rains during a wedding. Life intervenes. In business, the same holds true. If a situation is handled improperly, or is unaddressed, customers are likely to get ignored. With proper attention, however, customers can be forgiving.

Take for example,…

The other day, a friend of mine was in the market for a new tech toy. As he researched the different available brands, he noticed a huge difference in pricing - from $325 all the way up to $1800 -- but was unable to tell the difference between any of the brand offerings. The features seemed the same. They all looked the same. He read reviews, even those were…

Human beings do have a tendency to overcomplicate things. In our industry, there are so many things that we need to deal with on a daily basis - customers, co-workers, employees, bosses, technology - at times it gets overwhelming. I believe that most dealers understand the importance of customer loyalty and retention. There are plenty of ways to entice customers…

Companies increasingly invent new and creative ways to earn loyalty from their customers. Every year we hear of companies pulling off interesting and creative ways to gain exposure and foster loyalty through acts of kindness, goodwill or just being fun. For the fourth consecutive year, Uber became the ice cream man. It seems that every year for the past four…

Today’s customers are fickle creatures -- one misstep and they never return. So, how is a dealership supposed to identify true customer loyalty if it can’t simply be judged by repeat business?

According to an article in Inc., the Disney…

A dealer in Washington state has taken a highly unusual - and unheard of - path to customer retention and loyalty. According to Automotive News, Denver Morford, dealer principal at Barry Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram in Ephrata, Wash.,…