Upselling and Cross-Selling in Automotive Customer Service

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If you were to mention ‘Automotive Customer Care’ to anyone, the first things that’ll probably come to mind are images of a trained professional who handles customer requests and complaints in a professional manner.

While this is true, your role as an automotive customer care professional goes way beyond that.

As part of your responsibilities, you will be consulting and advising your customers on solutions and upgrades. These interactions also open up the opportunity for you to do two more things, commonly known as upselling and cross-selling.

As the customer’s main contact person within your organization, you have a responsibility to ensure that your customers are fully aware of all the repair and upgrade options that are relevant and available to them. After all, if you did not try to upsell or cross-sell to your customers, they may not even be aware that there are options that will provide them with much more value and increase their satisfaction while still remaining within their budget.

So let’s look at a few basics of these two customer service activities.

Upselling

‘Upselling’ simply means to convince a customer to purchase additional items or items that are more expensive. Sometimes, a customer’s first instinct is to look for the cheapest option available, without taking into consideration the lower quality of those cheaper options.

Sometimes, customers may feel that your main objective is to get them to spend more of their money. While this may be true to a certain extent, the key here is for you to communicate that you are proposing a greater exchange of value to the customer, by comparing and contrasting the differences between the options you have proposed.

Always remember: the emphasis here is not about money, but in the exchange of value that happens between your organization and the customer.

Cross-Selling

Cross-selling on the other hand means to sell additional products and services to your customers. Often-times, customers come into your organization for a very specific reason. Perhaps they’re only looking to fix one problem, or looking to upgrade just one part of their vehicle.

By being a good listener and communicator, it would be great for you to listen and sense opportunities for you to cross-sell. For instance, a customer may only want to change a single tire, so what are additional products and services that you might be able to recommend to them? Perhaps with the sale of that one tire you could also recommend balancing and rotation services as well.

With practice and experience, you’ll be able to sense these opportunities and needs your customers may have that you’ll be able to cater to.

Final Considerations

One of the most important parts to upselling and cross-selling is to never push too hard. Don’t be pushy, and don’t try to make so many recommendations at one time. This could backfire because it may put your customers on the defensive, making them feel uncomfortable and reluctant to return to your business ever again.

However, if it is done properly, you’ll be able to increase your organization's revenues while also increasing your customer’s satisfaction.