As the business environment gets more competitive, businesses have to find ways to retain customers. Retaining customers assures businesses of repeat business and makes satisfied and loyal customers more likely to recommend your business to new potential customers. For car dealerships, retaining customers goes beyond providing good pricing or incentives. It is therefore important that car dealerships find ways to retain customers and turn them into life-long customers. With this in mind, here are some tips to help car dealership owners increase customer retention and repeat business.
Offer Incentives and Rewards
Many dealerships now offer incentives and rewards to their loyal customers. They may be as simple as offering discounts to family members or free detailing at another business. The focus here should be creating unique incentives and rewards that your customers will enjoy. Offering incentives that make their life easier, such as oil changes for life, increases the chances of your customers coming back when they decide to purchase another car.
Offer Convenience
All car dealerships should do everything they can to optimize their services for convenience and availability. Listing the office hours on the dealership’s website is one way to make it more convenient for people to find out when you are open so they can come in or get in touch to have questions answered.
Increasing convenience also means offering additional services. These might include guiding people on how to get the right insurance for their cars or helping them arrange personal auto shipping through reputable car transport companies like Acertus. Doing this assures customers that they can purchase a car from your dealership and get it delivered conveniently, no matter where they may be.
Work on the Small Stuff
Working on the small stuff shows that you care, and customers are likely to notice many of these things. They may include providing a waiting room for children to busy themselves while the customer waits, ensuring you serve every customer as fast as possible or making sure your website is usable and useful for your customers in case they would like to confirm something or get in touch with the business.
Follow Up After a Sale
Many car dealerships will make a few calls or send a few emails for a few weeks after a sale is completed. Many of them stop after about a month and customers only receive occasional marketing material in their email or mailboxes.
To enhance your relationship with your customers, you have to do a lot more than this. You should consider interacting through social media, making monthly calls, sending follow up emails, and more. Keeping in touch this way helps create a strong relationship and builds brand loyalty because most customers appreciate businesses that go out of their way.
Put Out Useful Information
If you have a social media presence or a website (as you should), try to post useful content for your customers to find. This can be anything from taking care of their cars to events you might be hosting. This will show the customers that things do not always have to be about money but rather helping each other out.
Dealerships need to focus on a lot more than landing a sale if they want to stay afloat. Customers are a crucial asset and should be treated as such to turn them into repeat, lifelong customers.