Building Customer Loyalty

Everyday you put your heart, soul and a lot of effort into growing your dealership’s business. You have a tremendous reputation, you’ve been around a while and you are considered a pillar in the community. But even with all that longevity and goodwill, you, like most dealers, have a serious customer retention problem. You are left with no choice but to spend thousands of dollars each month in advertising just to attract new vehicle shoppers.

In my opinion, customer retention or customer loyalty, as I like to call it, is more important now than ever before. With warranty work on a sharp decline, you simply can’t afford to lose any of your new and used car buyers to the competition. You need more customer pay service business now, just to survive.

This isn’t rocket science. You know that customer loyalty makes sense. Loyal customers spend more in your service department and are much more likely to buy their next car from you. The problem is that less than half of your new and used car buyers will return for customer pay service work after a year of ownership. Less than half! And it doesn’t get any better as time goes on.

So, what are you doing or going to do to increase customer loyalty? Airlines, hotels, restaurants, grocery stores, credit card companies and lots of other businesses also realized how important customer loyalty is and they did something about it. They, like you, needed to increase loyalty and increase sales. They did it, simply by making their customers feel special. They did it by creating owner loyalty clubs.

Imagine how your new and used car buyers would feel if you made them a member of your owner loyalty club. They just chose your store to make the second largest buying decision of their life; how do you say thank you now? Now imagine arming your vehicle salespeople with an extra advantage, something that sets your dealership apart from the rest, something that adds more value to your deal. Something they could use as a closer; a reason to only buy from you.

After they buy, new and used car buyers are enticed to have all of their service work done at your store with special service discounts for club members only. You could even offer a trade-in bonus for members that have all their service work completed and documented at your store and then use the documented records to earn more gross on their trade-in. You could even reward members for their loyalty with a member ID card that tracks points they earn for every service purchase. Club members could then redeem their points for savings on future service or vehicle purchases.

Remember, most customers think you charge too much, take too long and are too inconvenient. They think that all they ever need is ‘just an oil change’ and they think they can get that done anywhere. You need to give them a reason to buy from you. Priority service, special recognition, member’s only discounts and reward points make their decision easy. Why would they ever go anywhere else?