Making Wait Time in Your Dealership More Enjoyable and Valuable

tURN WAIT TIME INTO A POSITIVE IN YOUR DEALERSHIP

How often have you found yourself frustrated in a business’ visitor lobby,  thumbing through magazines, clicking on your phone and staring at mindless images on the television as you wait for service.

It is an experience each and every one of us has faced and an event thousands of people are confronted with in auto dealerships each day. However, through custom messaging you can make wait time both enjoyable and valuable to customers visiting your dealership.

Let me tell you how.

In the 90’s, the advertising agency world developed the concept of personas.  This identified specific customer segments with coherent identities, or archetypal users, that a given communication can be most effectively focused on.  This was started with broadcast TV, and took off when integrated marketing added more media channels to the mix.

The original persona identification used best guesses at target audiences, profiling their demographics and what they might like through surveys and generic buying patterns.

However, in a known business environment, you are aware of your visitors and can develop a more accurate persona to effectively hit the target on your messaging.

In recent years the technology has evolved that this concept can be taken down to viewers of TVs at a business.  Custom TV channels can be built and maintained so a display can be your best tool for making the wait more enjoyable for your visitor, and of great value to your business.  

Using identified personas, day-parting and time-parting, and the vast growth of readily available tagged content, your business can effectively communicate with a customer with messaging they will watch and better retain.

If you have visitors to your business who wait, let us work with you to build personas that can be used to more effectively communicate with them through custom TV channels.  This will help you drive happy, repeat clients who brag about you to their friends.

3 ways to Ease the Number 1 Pain Point in Your Dealership

No one likes to wait. It is a basic fact of life. However, in the auto industry waiting is not only a pain for the consumer, it is the number one pain point.

According to the third annual eLEND Solutions™ auto dealers survey more than 50% of dealers feel wait time, either in F&I or the dealership, constitutes the number one pain point for consumers. This pain directly impacts your customer service experience and lead to the consumer canceling a purchase, not returning for service or potentially providing a poor review for your establishment.

Let's take a look at a few things you can do to address this pain point and prevent negative experiences.

Eliminate Choke Points

Wait time often results from bottlenecks in the new car purchase process. These bottlenecks can occur from the sales floor to the finance department or from the finance department to new car delivery. These stop gaps can differ at different times in the day or even be seasonal. To eliminate these gaps complete an audit of the annual sales history of your company and ensure that your organization is staffed properly to handle the anticipated volume of customers. 

Communicate

When you know customers have to wait, it is best to communicate that wait with them and provide them timely updates. This can be done by having a salesperson regularly checking back in on the client. You can also further improve upon this communication by implementing a ticker system on your televisions that notifies people of their place in line.

Provide Education and Distraction

Distraction is a great way to keep your clients from fretting about the wait time. The ultimate solution for this is the ability for you to provide your customers with unique and customized TV channels for your business. At AutoVision we have found this type of distraction can reduce perceived wait time by 35 percent! That reduction alone can be the difference between a furrowed eyebrow and happy face.

Comment below with other techniques you are using in your dealership to improve wait times. Also, if you would like more information about how to implement custom TV channels in your dealership feel free to contact us.