What Is CRM In Automotive Businesses?
Picture: Photomix Ltd via Pexels.com
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is a great tool for automotive businesses small and large alike.
As the name may suggest, this type of software helps an automotive business manage the relationships it has with customers, partners, and even suppliers by allowing the organization to keep track of every single interaction with its stakeholders. This means that every meeting, visit, and even every phone call and email that goes out or comes in is tracked by the system for easy referencing.
Here are some reasons why your automotive establishment should implement the use of a CRM system:
Single Source of Customer Information
In my personal experience, one of the most important uses of a CRM software is that it acts as a single, shared source of all customer information. That means that anyone, be it the automotive customer service professional, the finance team, technicians working on the customer’s vehicle, and even senior management all see the same information when it comes to customers.
This is great for avoiding miscommunications, as everyone who accesses the customer’s profile will know about every transaction, every repair, and every complaint or issue that the customer has ever highlighted.
Clear Communications
As mentioned above, CRM software allows for employees of an automotive business to know exactly what emails and other communications were received from the customer or sent out to the customer.
While this may sound like a small matter, it actually makes a large difference to the business and its professional image, because it ensures that any necessary communications are indeed sent out, and also ensures that there is no double communication or mixed messages sent to the customer.
In an automotive business, one important example is in communicating to customers if there are major delays to repairs to their car or other vehicles. Managers would be able to use the CRM to see whether or not the customer service professional has communicated details of the delay to the customer.
Reports
Seeing as how the CRM software is where information about all customers is collected, it also allows for producing reports for the automotive business’ management team to see how the business is performing.
For example, managers can see which periods of the year are the busiest. This allows them to forecast and schedule manpower appropriately for the future.
Additionally, managers and other team members would be able to see which spare parts or services are high in demand, or which ones have such low demand that they are not worth offering.
These patterns would be difficult to figure out if it weren’t for the data that the CRM software collects and displays for the management team of the automotive business.
Continuity
Complete information about the customer, as well as details of any communications or issues the customer may have had, is all great for the purpose of continuity.
To put it simply, continuity means that if there were any changes in the automotive business’ staffing, for example of staff were to resign or if new staff were to be recruited, they would be able to immediately get informed about customers that they interact with. Thanks to the CRM software, new employees will be able to look up a customer’s history to understand how they should be dealing with them during their interactions.
From a management perspective, this is incredibly helpful because it helps to minimize issues and shortens the learning process for new employees joining the automotive business.
Examples
High-end CRM software does come with a heavy price tag, and if the automotive business has a large operation, it may very well be worth the investment.
However, for smaller automotive businesses and the customer service professionals that work with customers, there are plenty of free options available.
Hubspot is a personal favourite of mine, but there are also others such as Bitrix24, Agile CRM, and even Zoho CRM.
Not all CRM software is created the same, so in order to choose the right one, the automotive business must evaluate and compare the features of each one.
While adopting the use of a CRM software is challenging at first, in the long run it will prove to be an important tool for any automotive business in managing relationships with their customers.