New research by Frost & Sullivan describes pitfalls in the “fiercely competitive” aftermarket sector that can lead to dealerships losing loyal customers, and also prescribes recommendations to avoid these problems and gain customer loyalty.
“All the challenges in the automotive after-sales service market directly impact customer satisfaction. This explains why a lack of transparency and lengthy repair delays result in customers losing their trust. However, effective communications and updates about the cost and time required for a job can prevent most of the issues. A simple straightforward communication system provides customers with an achievable, realistic expectation,” said Mukul Krishna, Global Supply Chain & Logistics Practice Leader at Frost & Sullivan, in the whitepaper “Intelligent Planning: The Magic Sauce for Building Customer Loyalty.”
The white paper describes how customers will seek out other dealer service centres if they perceive a lack of transparency and communication. Other reasons they will go elsewhere are paper-based processing errors, disparate and siloed systems, human errors due to overworked technicians, and resource barriers such as inadequate training.
“After-sales service enables automotive dealers to build more sustainable long-term relationships with their clients,” said Russell Younghusband, Global Automotive Director at Getac Technology Corporation, a rugged mobile technology company. “Customer experience through after-sales services has the potential to create a substantial and dependable recurring revenue stream.”
Recommendations of the whitepaper include the creation of dealer management systems (DMS) and customer relationship management (CRM) that can be combined with rugged handhelds and digitization to give dealer services centre workers access to customer information, including their relationship history. The paper recommends that dealership service centres should:
- Adopt a system based on simple deductive algorithms to help technicians discuss predictive maintenance with the customer.
- Empower customers with a front-end web and/or mobile interface to let the dealer know their needs beforehand.
- Allocate a dynamic time slot based on the requirements for the customer to visit, availing the correct technician and auto parts while providing the customer with a more accurate time and cost estimate.
- Automate sending push notifications based on customer preferences as reminders for the next scheduled maintenance visit.
- Provide data access to customers, scale it up across the service department, and integrate it with the DMS.
