One night a little over 2 years ago and armed with my laptop, I sat on my couch and investigated why so many good car dealerships had negative online reviews.  I took one brand and one state, California, and looked up each store’s profile on Yelp.  Shockingly, nearly every store was rated poorly and that was the catalyst for my mission to serve dealers in Social Media.  I knew from working in daily operations and from working at some of those same stores, that the truth had to be told.

It’s inevitable that some customers are going to write negative reviews.  Cars break, staff makes mistakes, people don’t trust.  Online ratings can be managed just like your store’s CSI process is managed now but with a little further attention.  Loyal happy customers can be called upon to tell their story on ratings sites and that gives a more balanced picture of what it’s like to do business with your dealership.

What’s great about these ratings sites is that they foster transparency. Transparency builds trust.  When your customer knows you and trusts you they’re likely to do business with you.  Transparency and authenticity, what ever the dirty laundry might be, shows your customer that you’re REAL and you’re RESPONSIVE.  In today’s Social climate, that is why people buy.

This week I found out that a popular auto dealership ratings management service is not transparent.  To say I’m disappointed is a gross understatement.  They’re “gaming” the system and that’s just not okay with me.  I’ve spent my life in the car business, most of that time managing stores.  I love serving customers and their word-of-mouth referrals are what makes it all worthwhile.  I can’t tell you how many customers over the years who’ve thanked me for making their lives better because we helped them with their car.

Knowing their true opinion helped us become a better dealership.  The stereotypical dealership, the one that’s portrayed in movies, didn’t get that way by accident.  What’s cool now is that Social Media is shining the Klieg light on this behavior and it’s becoming extinct.  Lip service is not enough anymore–dealerships have to deliver all they promise.

Which makes this “Dealer Rating” website/service so damaging.  I learned this week that when a dealership signs up with them and pays a fee, they ask the store to send them all their Customer Satisfaction Surveys that are conducted through the manufacturer.  That’s a great system except for one thing: apparently they’re “cherry-picked” to make the review aggregate more positive and those are the reviews that are entered into the “system” by this provider.  That makes the results tainted and not trustworthy…Ugh!

Yelp and Google Places are two sites that are objective 3rd party platforms.  Those sites and others give raw testimonials from the consumer’s mouth.  These sites are harder to manage for a dealership, they take more time and effort, but the result is a true picture of what it’s like to experience the store.

I understand wanting to protect your reputation but delivering bogus survey results is not how to do it. When a dealership receives 600 reviews and all of them are 5-star, the consumer is going to smell a fish.  It’s the nature of dealership operations (and every other business) to have dissatisfied customers.  When that happens, how a dealership deals with it is what sets that store’s reputation–online or off.  A negative review is a chance to win the customer back and turn them into a “Raving Fan”.  When stores do that online, the potential customer says, “Hey, this store really cares about their customers, I’ll check them out.”

I hope the ratings provider that I’m speaking of here changes their direction.  There’s a lot of talk amongst some of my Google research friends that those ratings may get filtered (not included) from Google Places.  That’s what happens when you’re not authentic.  Give people the whole truth and let them decide who they want to do business with.  The truth always comes out in the end.

It comes down to this basic principle: Treat people right, give them what they want, serve their needs and they will buy from you and tell their friends and family about you.  It’s the same as it’s always been:  Good business gets good business.

Kathi Kruse
Kruse Control Inc.
www.krusecontrolinc.com