If your CRM helped you nurture customer relationships, could you transform more leads into loyal customers?

The short answer is “yes,” and here’s why:

• Today, a great customer experience drives loyalty, not product and/or price.
• Consumers expect personalized, relevant information to help them make the best purchasing decisions.
• Self-educated consumers want a consultative experience, not a hard sell.

Lead volume is up dramatically as people continue to shift from traditional drive by to more touchless research and shopping. What customers expect from a shopping experience has changed. Your dealership needs to change too.

The more you know about a customer, the better you can tailor and personalize your lead follow-up. You become a trusted expert, not just another dealer out for a quick sale. Customers will appreciate and reward your efforts. 

So, how do you get to know your customers better and nurture long-lasting relationships?

A recommended first step is to use a CRM that includes shopping intelligence tools. These tools allow you to track, record and analyze your customers’ online shopping behavior, tying it back to the customer record in your CRM. You can know where they are shopping, what vehicles they’re researching and what features matter most to them.

The CRM aggregates all of this data so your salespeople can have more relevant, consultative conversations with potential customers - and you get a true view of every customer. This includes their online activity, how the customer prefers to be contacted, vehicles of interest, pricing, etc. This level of insight contributes to more thorough, personal follow-up for a better customer experience that leads to long-term relationships.

Then, email alerts notify you when a customer is shopping on your website. They can also flag when they’re shopping with a competitor, or on a third-party site. This empowers salespeople to reach out at exactly the right time, with exactly the right information for that customer.

This technology is also a powerful addition to your marketing efforts. The perfect time to send a personalized email message or offer is right after a customer is looking at a particular vehicle make and model. Getting a pop-up notification in the CRM when the customer is actively shopping makes this type of hyper-personal and relevant marketing a breeze.

Remember that instantaneous communication is important to today’s always-connected consumer. If your staff is too busy to immediately follow up with a lead, your customer experience suffers. But many dealerships are experiencing limited resources right now. So, how do you make sure that you’re providing that instant communication customers have grown to expect?

Here’s where you can lean on a trained automotive virtual BDC to function as an extension of your dealership. The BDC can respond to requests, make follow-up calls and track every interaction in your CRM. When a tracking alert pops up, the BDC can jump on it immediately and send personal communications to keep relationships growing, while you staff can focus on the customers in front of them. A flexible mobile platform gives staff the ability to engage in conversations quickly and manage customer details from anywhere at any time.

A virtual BDC can nurture leads on an ongoing, long-term basis, using proven strategies to move customers down the funnel. The best part is, all of this ties back to the customer record in the CRM. When you aggregate all customer data in one system, you can have more productive conversations with customers and deliver a personal experience every time.

Your CRM can also help you make the most of the customers you already have. Most dealerships have hundreds of unclosed leads already in their CRM.

Using an integrated equity mining tool can leverage your existing database to generate more revenue. Lean on your CRM and shopping intelligence technology to nurture these relationships with personal, relevant communications that will help you transform leads into loyal customers.  

It’s much more cost effective to sell to a current customer than to acquire a new one, so there is a huge opportunity to increase profits without incurring those hefty customer acquisition costs. And who doesn’t want to do more while spending less?

 Your CRM is a powerful tool that can certainly help you transform more leads into loyal customers. Make sure you are utilizing your tools to their fullest extent so you can have happier customers and close more deals.

Good selling!