The CRM moves at a relentless pace and streamlines many industrial processes. The automotive industry is not an exception here.
Automotives are experiencing a drastic change from product-driven businesses to customer-driven. Clients keep purchasing bigger and bigger fleets. It needs a strong relationship between the dealership and the client to develop loyalty and trust.
CRMs improve customer relationships and offer cutting-edge abilities that unlock new sales possibilities for automotive businesses.
The global CRM market size was estimated at 52.4 USD billion in 2021 and is forecasted to rise at a CAGR of 13.3% from 2022 to 2030.
CRMs are highly essential in today’s competitive dealership sector. But you can not opt for any random CRM. Only choosing the right one can turn the tables.
In this article, we explore why automobile industry dealerships need a CRM. So let’s get going.
Automotive CRM – A Brief Intro
An automotive CRM is a platform that streamlines the process of customer service, sales, and marketing. It is developed for the unique buying journey of car customers.
Usually, automotive CRMs are incorporated into existing DMS (Dealer Management Systems) to mitigate the duplicate data entry of customers.
CRM plays a significant role in,
| Showing actionable data Enable team communication Contacts and sales management Create and improve a bond with the existing customer Turn data into actionable insights Spreading brand loyalty through word of mouth Customer loyalty maintenance with personalised experiences More profitability and productivity, and improved customer service |
Perks of CRM in the Automobile Industry
|1. Organise Contacts and Leads
There are different sources to get leads like,
- Website forms
- Their OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturer)
- Online/Offline ads
- Third-party lead providers
- Traditional walk-ins
You can store all your contacts within a single place with CRMs and keep monitoring where the leads came from. Eventually, you can determine which channels generate the best outcome.
You can track conversations of days/weeks/years and have the entire history of every contact.
|2. Organise Sales Team
You can identify the total number of cars getting sold and a team member generating those leads.
CRMs build reports so that your sales team forecasts, establish quotas, and monitors performance.
|3. Provide Credit and Financing Options
Many CRMs enable you to pre-approve customers with soft credit pulls. Soft pulls never affect a customer’s credit, and run with information from a driver’s licence.
With the help of credit details, dealers can put customers in the right vehicle quickly. Soft pulls are easy to sell as it has no impact on customer credit score.
|4. Act Fast on New Leads
According to Harvard Business Review, dealers who get in touch with a lead within an hour have 7 times more chances to qualify them and 60 times better chances than those who waited more than a day.
Some CRMs contain auto-reply features. So none of your contacts remains unrecognised when you are occupied with other important activities.
|5. Maintain Compliance
Being TCPA compliant with dealership and customer communication is a tough nut to crack but not doing so can be worse and more costly.
TCPA (Telephone Consumer Protection Act) is a 1991 law that prevents businesses from sending any uninvited communication form to customers through telephone technology.
So, you must have customer approval to keep interacting through calls, text messages, or email. Furthermore, you need to respect their request to terminate contact.
|6. Optimise Marketing Spend
By monitoring new lead sources, CRM software aids dealers find their best and worst marketing channels and their performance. You can effortlessly identify which marketing channels are highly effective.
With some of the CRMs, you even execute tailored reports to share with your team.
|7. Simplify Communications
With text, email, and call management features of CRM solutions, you can document each communication with your lead, no matter if it is a call, text, email, or walk-in.
You can be free from recalling the whole communication details when you can get every recording from the CRM platform.
Key Features of CRM in the Automobile Industry
- Lead management
- Bulk import leads/clients
- Document storage
- Client management
- Easy onboarding and training
- Dashboard
- Document storage
- Manage carriers, plans, products
- Voice and text management
- Appointment/ ask management
- Renewals tracking
- Notes support
- DMS integrations
- Reporting
- Commissions tracking
- Automated email replies
Automobile CRM – What is Trending?
- Hyper-personalisation
- Enhanced customer models
- Artificial intelligence
- A rise in self-service models
- Enhanced mobility
Top CRMs in the Automobile Industry
- Salesforce Cloud
- VinSolutions Connect
- DealerMine
- Oracle NetSuite CRM
- DealerSocket
- Autojockey CRM
- DealerPeak
- Dominion Dealer Solutions
- MenuSys®
In a Nutshell
With the automotive sector expanding and customer needs changing quickly, now is the right time for car dealers to discover an effective way to manage leads, find new ones, and keep customers satisfied.
A CRM solution offers an organised platform to monitor prospects and maintain relations in the automotive industry.
If you also belong to the automotive sector and want future-ready CRM development services, consult a custom software development company. They will help you to accelerate productivity and drive more customer success.
