4 Reasons Every Dealership Needs a CRM

Written by Blackpurl

Successful dealerships set themselves apart by placing their customers at the heart of every decision they make. As such, significant, sustained customer relationships are necessary in order to compete. Product, innovation, and service decisions should at least partially rely on consumer data, which is why storing this relevant information is pertinent. This article will explain how and why a CRM can be a comprehensive solution to bundle your customer data and better understand their behaviour, needs, and desires.

What is a CRM?

A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool is used to manage all of your business’s current and potential customer relationships and interactions. The goal of a CRM is relatively straightforward: improve and nourish customer relationships which, in turn, grows your business. CRM tools help companies connect to their customers, streamline customer-oriented processes, and increase profitability.

Why have a CRM?

CRMs are important for all businesses, but especially for dealerships. In fact, 74% of businesses using CRM report that their customer relationships are stronger than they were before. Below are four reasons why we recommend every dealership consider adding a CRM to their customer relations strategy.

1. Better Customer Insights

CRMs collect, organize, and store complete customer data, like buying history, personal choices, and family details, in their database. This information, in turn, allows you to better target customers at a personal level. 

Using in-depth reports generated by your CRM can help you learn what parts, products, and content each individual customer is interested in. In other words, your CRM system enables you to provide customers with strategically targeted, relevant information that is specific to them. For instance, if a customer clicked on a link in an email relating to a specific motorcycle, it is safe to assume that they’re intrigued by the product and are considering making a purchase. As such, you can tailor content or an offer to best suit them, improving their customer experience and generating more revenue for your business.

2. Personalized Customer Experience

When you have all your customer data collected and organized in a CRM, you can compare this data and create segmentations: a prerequisite for a better customer experience and higher retention rates.

For example, If Bob reads your blog and then buys a part for his trailer, email him blog articles filled with subtle product references. If you notice that many people place an order for a refill of the same product they bought last month, you can offer them an exclusive subscription. If some customers only buy from a certain product category, like replacement trailer parts, you shouldn’t be marketing brand new trailers to them.

Customers value unique, personalized experiences. CRM systems enable you to segment your email list and send targeted content to particular customers. This could be based on location, age, gender, interests, industry, hobbies, or any other marker. Sending relevant and personalized communications keeps your customers engaged and open-rates high. 

3. Increases Customer Retention

Most businesses spend a lot of money advertising in the hope of gaining new customers, but very few put an effort into retention. You can think of a CRM as a more reliable advertising tool for your existing customers. A CRM allows you to quantify the return on your investment because your customers are a known quantity; whereas, advertising is a leap of faith that is very hard to measure.

One way CRMs can help you increase consumer retention is by helping you keep track of customer purchasing patterns and behaviour. This can be done through identifying key variables like product usage, service calls, or by running a report of sales for the last six months. Any customers that have not made any purchases may need to be followed up with.

Another way that CRM softwares can help customer retention is by giving you the information necessary to create a personal marketing strategy. These valuable insights from your CRM about purchase history let you target your offers and make them more appealing to your most important customers and those at risk for leaving.

4. Nearly Instantaneous Feedback 

75% of customer management executives and leaders say that customer experience and satisfaction is of the highest importance in their organizations. This is why having on-going customer feedback is so important.

Effective use of a CRM will give you feedback when you are not meeting your customers expectations. The quicker you learn this, investigate, and adapt, the less that profit leaks from your business. Additionally, when customers are properly engaged, they are more likely to promote your business for free - either through word of mouth or on social media.

Summary

Considering adopting a CRM in your dealership? We recommend DP360. The nation’s largest dealers trust DP360 to help them run their business. Blackpurl seamlessly integrates with DP360 as well, so you can feel confident that you are picking the right tool for every job. 

Overall, CRMs are very effective business softwares that help teams maximize their customer communications, relationships, sales, and marketing efforts. No matter your dealership’s size, CRMs are trusted by many businesses to help facilitate customer retention, customer satisfaction and overall growth.  

For more information, please visit blackpurl.com.

About Blackpurl

Blackpurl makes dealership management awesome. It believes in keeping it simple by eliminating hefty training and setup fees, making it easier to operate a dealership and creating a game-changing customer experience by building a platform dealerships love to use. With everything needed to run an operation included, rebelling against DMS has never felt so easy.