Introduction:

We've got a great success story to share with you today, showcasing how one of our dealer partners used AutoEngage to identify a customer who had a bad experience with a previous vehicle he had purchased. Using AutoEngage the dealer managed to rectify the situation and earning the customer's trust back, which ultimately resulted in selling them another vehicle.

By the very nature of the products that motor traders sell (used vehicles) It's not uncommon for dealerships to encounter customers with less-than-stellar experiences. It's not always deliberate, but what sets successful dealerships apart is their ability to identify and rectify these situations.

AutoEngage is a sales and marketing platform for UK motor traders, that helps them sell more vehicles to previous customer, manage their online reputation and manage their incoming enquiries.

One of the core parts of AutoEngage is reputation management and we have a product within AutoEngage called ReviewEngage. ReviewEngage actively reaches out to previous customers, asking them to rate their purchase experience from 1-5 (1 being the lowest and 5 the highest)
If the rating is 4 or 5 they are thanked for their rating and asked if they would mind sharing their experience online.If the rating is 1,2 or 3 the customer is then asked if they are happy to share where the dealership has gone wrong and what can be done to rectify it.
The replies are then emailed back to the dealership, so that they can then decide how best to rectify the situation.

Quite often a dealer is unaware of any issues that have occurred as they are not in regular contact with their previous customers and more often than not, the customer will not bring it to the dealers attention and will just get on with it. Problem is that if the dealer is unaware they do not get an opportunity to rectify the situation, plus when the customer is due for a change the likelihood is they will go elsewhere.

Our dealer partner Criteria Cars had this exact scenario and in this article we are going to have a look at exactly what had happened and how they dealt with it.

Overview

Criteria Cars sold a Vauxhall Zafira to their customer in May 2019, fast forward to JAnuary 2023 and AutoEngage reached out to their customer asking to rate their purchase experience.

The customer responded with a 2 as can be seen in the picture below:

Now the system knows that 2 isn't great and that the customer is not happy about something. AutoEngage then replied to the customer, asking if he would be happy to share where the dealer may have gone wrong, as can be seen in the picture below:

As you can see from the reply above, customer had some issues, they were not very happy and it would be fair to say from the message above unlikely to purchase again.

Criteria Cars owner Ben Buey prides himself on all aspects of how he runs his dealership, especially customer satisfaction, which can be seen if you check out their Google reviews.

Ben also understands that 9/10 you can turn a negative into a positive. He proceeded to acknowledge the customers comments and sent a reply, as can be seen in the picture below:

The customer did no respond to Ben's reply instantly, however he did eventually...

Further more the customer made an enquiry a month after Ben had sent his reply to the customers 2 star rating...We are also please to say, that it does get better than that! The customer did buy the Vauxhall Antara as per the picture above.

Ben Buey personally contacted us and alerted us to the scenario above, as he maintains without using AutoEngage it is unlikely he would have got to hear about the customer's negative experience and even more unlikely he would have sold him another vehicle.

Summary

One of the biggest challenges faced by car dealerships is identifying customers who were unhappy with their previous purchases and then trying to turn the situation around. But with AutoEngage, this task has become easier than ever before. Criteria Cars used AutoEngage to identify a previous customer who was unhappy with a vehicle he had purchased earlier. Criteria Cars were then able to draft a suitable reply and send it back to the customer . The result? Not only was the situation rectified, but the customer ended up purchasing another car from Criteria Cars.

We really appreciate Criteria Cars bringing this story to our attention as It's stories like these that confirm that AutoEngage is doing exactly what we set it out to do.