Staying connected with your dealership’s customers is strongly desirable. If you can communicate everything, things get done – fast. Especially today when time is money and customers are often impatient to get everything completed as soon as possible and as expected – or else they will switch to your closest competitor.

Data obtained from Shiftcom suggest that 82% of survey respondents open every text message they get, whereas only 1% confirmed that they do not read text messages. This number is high enough for you to consider choosing a suitable texting platform for your car dealership.

However, with so many texting platforms out there, such as Messenger, WhatsApp, Snapchat, SMS, online chats, etc. one must wonder which option is best for them.

So, let’s see what we have got.

Social networks

The adage, “be where your customers are” is so true in certain forms of promotion. Since people spend most of their time on social networks, it seems quite logical to be where they are. There are dozens of social media platforms which have a chat or instant messaging app connected with their services, some of which are the following:

1) Facebook

The biggest social network on the planet, which recently became infamous due to the Cambridge Analytica and data misuse case. With its inbox and Messenger chats, as well as company pages, there are many options for you to connect with your users/followers. For example, your customers can write messages directly into company inbox and get instant replies.

However, the downside of this is that you need to have a Social Media Manager to reply to those messages if they become frequent, which may pose an additional cost for your dealership. Social media presence is a good thing, but issues may arise, primarily in the forthcoming months and with the application of potential new laws in regards to data protection and safety.

2) Twitter

Twitter is another great social media platform where you can monitor events as they happen. It also has a personal messaging option, so your dealership may have to have another SMM employee to respond to those messages as well. If your consumers are using their app, they would probably want to get replies in real time, which may pose a challenge when it comes to managing different channels.

3) LinkedIn

Although their business messaging options are limited, meaning that company profiles still cannot exchange private messages with individual profiles. The only alternative is to communicate via comments. However, the odds are that you are probably not going to get into a B2C conversation via LinkedIn, but rather focus on some other platform instead.

Instant messaging apps

The proliferation of smartphones and their massive usage in connection with the Internet revolutionized how people communicate. The fact that almost every demographic population now has Internet access in their pocket brought about the need to develop messaging apps.

(i) WhatsApp

In 2018, WhatsApp has been the third most popular messaging app in the US (source: Statista). Used by more than 18 million people, it has a lot of advantages: it is easy to use, direct, and people can exchange different formats, such as images, videos, links, PNGs, etc. Concerning business communication, however, it may pose specific challenges such as data protection and history.

(ii) Snapchat

The second most popular mobile messaging app, Snapchat is trendy among the youngsters (usually Generation Y) but also the Millennials. However, one of the central concepts it was based on is that messages are only available for a short time, which makes this platform a no-go for dealership texting. Unless you are testing it as a means of promotion, using which you can give special offers to your target group for a limited period of time. But that is a whole different story.

(iii) Messenger

Facebook’s Messenger is an excellent option for consumers, especially since more than 100 million Americans use it. However, the very fact that it requires a downloading action means that not all of your customers would have it, thus still making it an imperfect means of communication.

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