Depending on the stage and severity of the lockdown, dealerships will need to think outside the box now more than ever to stay connected, stay relevant and ride out the storm. We’ve created a list of things your dealership could be doing to make sure you keep up the communication while keeping your staff and your customers safe throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Contactless Service and Parts

Service and parts is the easiest part of your business to go contactless with. You can offer your customers a pick-up and drop off service. Sanitise their car before you take it back and get your drivers to wear a new set of gloves to drive it with. They can pay over the phone and you can call them if anything goes wrong.

If they’re coming to you, shut down your coffee and tea areas, or at least use disposable cups. Separate couches to allow for social distancing and limit the amount of passengers in your courtesy bus.

Ask your customers to book online, over the phone or through chat. If you’re running a skeleton staff on your counters, ask us to update your chat script and we can do online bookings for you through your website instead of sending details to your team. All our staff are trained to be able to do this and we’re offering this extra service free of charge to keep you connected.

Facetime and Video conferencing

Utilise what’s at your disposal. Now more than ever people will be online. Everything they do over the coming months will be web based so use what you have to your advantage. Try and find sites where a user doesn’t have to create an account to make it easier. Skype and Google hangouts are fine for us in the industry, but your customers may have limited knowledge so start investigating video call sites such as Join.me where they don’t need to log in.

If you don’t have these, there’s always Facetime through FB. That way you can still talk to your customers face to face about what they need and even walk them through the car if you’re still in the dealership. If you have sales staff working from home, why not send them home with 1 of each of your most popular models so if you get an enquiry on it, they can do a virtual walk around through video chat.

Live Chat

Keeping in touch 24/7 is easy through chat. Most people already have this feature on their website so you can update your chat team with your response to the crisis and make sure they are informed as to what to tell your Customers and how to reassure them that you’re keeping them safe.

That way you can have a whole team of remote staff members working to reassure your customers and keep the business running while you can’t physically see them. If you need help with this, let us know and we can talk you through it.

Fb Messenger and Google my Business chat

Like Live Chat, FB and Google have their own chat features so make sure your key staff have access to them and that they are turned on. Ensure your cars are listed on Fb Marketplace and that you’re chatting with those visitors online.

This is a great way to make an appointment with them off Facebook for a video call or virtual test drive if we are in full lockdown.

Off site test drives

In stage 1 of lockdown and even once it’s been lifted, the dealership will still be open for business but customers will still be reluctant to come in so why not take the car to them for a test drive. You can ensure no contamination by sanitising the car, wearing gloves and taking a pair of gloves for your customer so they don’t need to touch anything. Take it to their home and even offer extended test drives and leave it with them for an hour or so to drive on their own.

Obviously all the standard safety precautions need to be taken with a photo of licences etc, but this can be done by mobile phone. You can even get an app that operates as a scanner called camscanner so that you can scan and email licences back to your dealership.

A time for thinking, not panicking

Although this is something we’ve never seen before, this will be a great opportunity to utilise what we already have such as websites, social media and chat services. We can really get into the minds of our customers and work out how best to serve them in a digital world with limited face time. We have so much technology at our fingertips, there’s no reason we can’t keep everyone safe, whilst still keeping businesses running.

• Author Details

Author Details

Tracey Horey

CEO of Live Chat Agent

Tracey Horey is a 20 year veteran of the Automotive industry and has been writing Automotive content and helping Dealerships optimise their digital space for over 15 years. Her experience working with various sized dealerships and her passion for exploring and understanding new tools for the auto industry has given her an in depth understanding of the challenges all dealerships face in a changing landscape.

accounts@livechatagent.com.au

1800 332 428