Once financing is approved, the buyer gets the keys and the car gets driven off the dealer’s lot, that’s just the beginning of the relationship between buyer and dealership. How can AI help close some of the gaps that occur between the service department and the showroom?
What Sales-To-Service Handoff Really Means at a Dealership
If there’s one thing that customers value in their dealership relations, it’s transparency. Transparency means trust and loyalty, and adoption of automotive AI can keep customers in the loop after the sale. AI can take over service updates, maintenance interval reminders, appointment scheduling and other conversations over text, giving the customer a little more control and autonomy over what’s going on with their vehicles. It’s also a great way to ensure the service department stays connected to the customer after a vehicle’s been sold.
The Disconnect Between Sales and Service Departments
Unfortunately, dropping the ball has been a pretty common pattern with dealerships and service departments. The sales staff wants to close transactions, and service departments want to zero in on efficiency. With that communications gap, customer relationship management and dealer management systems stay siloed without being shared with each other. Service departments can be left out of the loop on customer history and other crucial info, while sales staff might not stay updated on where a customer is in the service cycle. That’s the kind of thing that breaks the trust between customers and dealers.
How AI For Car Dealerships Can Improve Retention
Automotive AI from Matador.ai can help button up some of those persistent loose ends, keep communication flowing between customers and the service department and most importantly, keep customers on board. That can include service reminders for overdue maintenance, ensuring that after-hours inquiries don’t get dropped, setting appointments via AI and closing the loop between customers and service departments.
Matador connects to your DMS and CRM so the conversation follows the customer from the sale into service. It can message customers as repair orders open and close, confirm and follow up on service appointments, send routine and op-code-specific reminders (like oil, tire and brake service), and reach back out about recommended service a customer previously declined. Because Matador works over text and email around the clock, an inquiry that comes in after hours gets a response instead of getting dropped.
When AI for car dealerships is part of the equation from the minute the sale is closed, it goes a long way toward building trust and loyalty as well as ensuring that all bases are covered from an operational standpoint.
Where Matador Covers the Sales-to-Service Journey
Instead of leaving the handoff to chance, Matador keeps one conversation thread moving with the customer from the showroom into the service lane over text and email, around the clock. Here’s where it steps in:
- First response on every lead so no inquiry sits unanswered, whether it comes from a website form, a third-party source or after hours
- Live texting and appointment setting that answers customer questions and books the appointment straight into your CRM
- Repair-order updates that message the customer as their RO opens and when the vehicle is ready for pickup
- Service reminders for routine and op-code-specific maintenance like oil changes, tire service and brakes
- Declined-service follow-up that circles back on recommended work the customer passed on the first time
- Appointment confirmations and missed-appointment outreach to keep the service schedule full
- Post-service review requests to turn a good experience into a public one
Book a Demo With Matador AI
Put all this together as a whole and you can see how dealership AI from Matador can help optimize your operations. That means satisfied customers, improved sales performance and a more informed and efficient service department. It’s an end-to-end solution that addresses all kinds of potential hurdles in a dealership’s day-to-day business. We invite you to set up a demo to find out what Matador AI can do for you.
