Revolutionising the Automotive Repair Industry: How Garages Can Leverage IT Solutions for Enhanced Efficiency and Customer Experience

The automotive industry is about to go through a significant change. In the future, we will have cars that are self-driving and have a range of other features. This will lead to the industry having to shift its main focus from production to intelligent movement and the customer experience. There will be an increased emphasis on saving time, being more efficient, cutting costs and having a minimal effect on the environment.

The automotive repair industry will need to go beyond just car repairs. To stay ahead of the competition, they will need to invest in software solutions, IT support and digitising their processes for an enhanced customer experience.

Learn about the Customer Journey

Before you can improve the customer experience, you need to keep track of and understand every touch point. Most dealerships and service centres use web analytics tools or garage software to track customer preferences. For example, with IT software, you can find out the exact number of customers choosing to visit you to schedule maintenance and repair jobs versus those who make an appointment online.

Many garages use conversation intelligence to solve this problem. With garage management software, you can track the entire digital-to-call experience and learn which marketing campaigns, channels, keywords and web pages send the most traffic to your business. You can also use AI to learn about your customers, like what each caller was interested in, whether they were a good lead and if they made an appointment. Lastly, you can use AI to ensure that your customers are receiving quality service.

Invest in Omnichannel Marketing

Your customers are likely to interact with you across several channels before visiting your garage. You should use marketing efforts to keep your leads warm as they move from one touchpoint to another. 

But when you market to potential customers, giving them the same experience across all platforms is important. If your ads aren’t tailored to their most recent experience with your store, they’ll be less likely to buy from you. 

To do this, you should divide your audience into groups based on which car pages they looked at. It would also help to segregate your audience based on the specific ads that get them interested. This lets you sell to your online audience based on how they have interacted with you, providing a personalised customer experience.

It would help if you also linked a customer’s digital activities with the calls. With a conversation intelligence system, you can get a lot of information from phone calls, like the car features they are interested in, the type of repair or maintenance they require and more. You can then use this information to attract other potential customers with similar requirements to your garage. 

Make Lasting Relationships with Your Customers

Your relationship with your customers begins from the moment they first engage with you and end when they are satisfied with your service. To provide a quality experience to your customers, you need to connect with them in a way that lasts. This means remembering what they like and ensuring that all future contact is tailored to their preferences.

To do this, you need to collect customer information from past interactions and use it to help create targeted ads, send emails and make phone calls in the future. However, remember to ensure that your customer records are updated so that you can deliver efficient service. 

With the integration of IT systems, you can automatically add information from phone calls to your database, such as the customer’s interest in a particular service, the services they requested in the past and more. This ensures that all of the information from your interaction with the customer boosts CRM and ensures a smooth customer relationship. 

Moreover, this also gives you additional information about the type of service a customer prefers. For example, a customer may be interested in purchasing a used car but may need to apply for a salary advance or car loan. You could provide quality service by offering the option to reserve their chosen vehicle for a certain amount of time until they can make a payment. 

Similarly, some customers may prefer making half of their total payment before the job and half after. By tailoring your services to the customer’s preferences, you can ensure high customer satisfaction as well as repeat business.

Automate Call Quality Assurance

To ensure your quality service, you need to conduct regular quality assurance checks to see how you are doing as a business. 

As a garage business, you can use automated call quality assurance to solve this problem and measure your progress. For example, every sales call can be optimised with the help of AI software. You can set your criteria for call scoring, such as whether a current offer was mentioned or an appointment was scheduled. This ensures that you provide quality service to your customers. 

You will also have real-time access to your automated scores so you can keep track of their growth. You’ll be able to tell what is working for you and identify areas of improvement. 

Ask for Feedback

Providing quality customer experience is an ongoing process that needs to be tweaked and improvised from time to time. Your customer experience is one of the most important ways to set yourself apart.

Many garages use customer satisfaction surveys to determine where they are doing well and where to improve. These give customers a place to talk in-depth about their experiences. Here are some ways to make sure the survey process goes as smoothly as possible:

• Use an adequate sample size
• Send the report to the customer at the right time.
• Only ask questions that help you reach your end goal.
• Try not to ask leading or loaded questions.
• Use rating scales and yes/no questions to help people fill out the poll.
• Start with some easy “warm-up” questions.
• Offer a reward or bonus to get more people to fill out the poll.

To Sum Up

The use of digital technology across the automotive industry is resulting in significant shifts for garages all over the world. To achieve success, you need to step up and find ways to integrate technological advancements with your business.