Tips, Tools, and Strategies to Earn Customers’ Trust and Gain Positive Reviews
The role of transparency, ethics and compliance in improving F&I and cars sales:
Turning to used car inventory is the need of the hour during the inventory shortage. However, selling used cars could be a tricky proposition for dealers. Transparency, ethics, and compliance help grow your F&I and car sales, and take your profits to the next level.
During their time on the road, cars face several potential hazards ranging from damage to neglect, including accidents, overloading, and often a constant lack of maintenance.
Therefore, it is critical to recognize those problems and stay adept at addressing them quickly and affordably. A practical approach is providing dealer certified warranty to confirm mechanical fitness and provide higher satisfaction as well as peace of mind to the customers.
In addition, being transparent and honest with your customers and holding the highest standards of ethics and integrity would help you make the most money! To emphasize, failure to do so would reduce customers’ trust in your store, decrease loyalty, and significantly impact your bottom line.
A negative reputation leads to negative sales:
90% of consumers read online reviews
before visiting a business.
88% of consumers trust online reviews
as much as personal recommendations.
86% of consumers hesitate to purchase
from a business that has negative online reviews.
The above listed stats show that online and Google reviews are a social proof for your reputation and significantly influences customers’ perception and decision-making.
Consequently, with the following negative reviews would chase away customers from your dealership to your competitors.
Furthermore, A short term gain is never worth as much as a long-term relationship with a customer that on average buys a car every three to four years. So, being honest with your customers would win a good reputation and reviews for your dealership. You will gain greater trust, more customers, and higher profits.
The three critical factors could help you cultivate ethical work culture:
- Over time the unacceptable can become the norm, and the energy for change dissipates.
- A single person with clarity of conscience and willingness to speak up can make a difference.
- When even a mid-level or lower-level leader skillfully induces a voice and a vision, others will follow. Surprisingly, it can initiate change for the better—even culture change on a large scale.
Practical approaches to ensure customers’ peace of mind:
Proactively inspecting the vehicle inventory and informing the customers about the mechanical fitness or reconditioning of the vehicle would help maintain higher customer satisfaction and brand reputation. To emphasize, ethics and compliance in car sales and F&I products positively impacts your image and customer experience. Some of the approaches you can take:
Factory Certified Warranty:
To bring the vehicle back to the factory standards. The customers would gain higher trust and confidence in buying a factory certified vehicle.
Dealer Certified Warranty:
Providing dealer certified warranty would provide the similar level of trust and satisfaction to the customers. Additionally, it would build trust and loyalty towards your store.
Managing your online reputation to improve car sales:
On a different note, customers are more likely to share their feedback when they are satisfied. Request online reviews from your happy customers. The most favorable touchpoint in a dealership to ask for an online feedback is just after a car purchase or service. Sometimes, even requesting to leave a feedback can result in eliciting positive reviews.
Text message is a powerful tool as the messages are generally opened within three minutes. Send a text message requesting for feedback. Review request link makes it convenient for buyers to leave an online review.
Make use of dealer reviews and reputation monitoring services such as Reputation Rhino and FeedCheck help you listen to your customers and address their issues while building a positive online reputation.
Lastly, you can make more profits over the long run by promoting ethics, compliance, and being customer oriented. For instance, assessing customers’ needs, offering valuable products or custom packages and giving control of their buying experience would build trust with car buyers.
The key mantra: To win with today’s consumers, you must earn their trust.