A recent article in Wards Auto shares results from a study of 6,200 dealerships conducted by analytics company Marchex. According to the survey, dealerships who use active listening techniques and build rapport with customers on the initial calls are the…

Rising interest rates and stagnant incentives point to a slowing new vehicle market through the end of the year. NADA predicts new vehicle sales will decline at least one percent, and probably more. Used car sales are picking up. But not at a velocity to make up for the loss of new vehicle sales. What should a dealer do? Some may need to lean on the parts and…

I have been studying Amazon and unknown to me, they seem to follow the same principle that I promote to dealers. I call it the Circle of Convenience and Trust.

Amazon obsesses about convenience. I am sure some of you suffer from the "brown box syndrome." A brown box arrives on your doorstep every day. Amazon makes it so easy that I…

Arguably, one of the most important marketing channels any dealership has is their website. Think about it. How much money do you spend simply to get customers there? When you combine all marketing efforts including, but not limited to, SEO, SEM, some third-party listing sites and more, dealerships spend tens of thousands of dollars (or more) per month.

Once…

If you have flown recently there are two unescapable and related facts: (1) nearly every seat is full and (2) nearly every seat is priced differently. This is because airlines realize that planes taking off with empty seats represents lost revenue that will never come back. Our service bays and technician time are pretty much the same – idle time is revenue lost…

LONG BEACH, California –April 5, 2018-- --myKaarma, the leading communications and payments software provider for automotive dealer service departments, today announced it has received a $15 million investment led by Kayne Partners, the growth private equity group of Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors, L.P., an alternative investment firm managing $26 billion in assets. The investment will be used to…

LONG BEACH, Calif.,-- April 2, 2018-- -- myKaarma, software that helps dealerships communicate better with their customers at every stage of the service process, right from check-in through to payment, today announced that Mercedes Benz of North Palm Beach stopped using their regular phone system in service and now puts every call, text and email through myKaarma. The system keeps a record of every customer interaction, is fully searchable…

There is nothing more frustrating to a customer than being told a repair will take X amount of time - only to be informed later that it will take longer. To those who work in busy dealership service departments, this happens frequently. Customers come in for one thing and, during the multi-point inspection, additional issues are found. Or, as can sometimes be the case, a…

According to a recent article in Automotive News, Motorcars Honda in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, believes that the future of franchise dealership profitability lies in efficient vehicle service, and as a result it’s service…

By many historical measures, service opportunities have never been greater for auto dealers. In the last decade auto sales have boomed, creating an unprecedented service opportunity tailwind for the next decade. More factory scheduled maintenance programs are driving initial service visits. Increased CPO volume has created more reconditioning and used vehicle service…

As industry experts forecast slumping sales numbers, a…

A trending technology is the use of bots in customer service. While bots can certainly help companies manage communications faster, sometimes they fail to provide the correct information and consumers just stop communicating with them…

Customer satisfaction is one of the most important ingredients for your dealership success. It is plain simple: if you are doing it right, your CSI scores will go up. And if you are not, you should be thinking how to increase it in the future.

Wanting to research the quality of automotive service in the US, in March 2017. J.D.…

Customer Experience Improvement Drives 15 Percent Increase in Fixed Ops