Imagine your dealership texting a special offer to a past customer — except it never reaches them because they changed their number. This situation could be playing out at your dealership.
Let’s say you’re trying to reach out to Aimee, but instead, your message goes to someone with no history with your dealership. Not only is the real buyer oblivious, but the unintended recipient is confused or even annoyed. Multiply that by dozens of records per month, and you have a hidden drain on your sales pipeline and brand reputation. In fact, according to
Monte Carlo, poor data quality costs companies an average of 31 percent of revenue. This same situation could be playing out at your dealership. Would you have any way of knowing? Let’s dig deeper into the impact this can have.
Sales Impact
Aimee never got the text message, so if she were in the market for a new vehicle, she’s likely begun her research elsewhere. The worst part is that the dealership doesn’t even know she never received the text. In the salesperson’s mind, they’ve reached out to a lead and haven’t received a response. They think the customer isn’t interested, and they move on, job done. Meanwhile, Aimee could be driving off the lot at the store down the street. And that’s just one occurrence. According to a study by
Gemstone Data, roughly 25 percent of phone numbers become outdated every year. So nearly one out of every four customers could be missing out on your targeted messaging. How many potential sales opportunities are you losing?
Service Impact
Customers spend more time in your service drive than at the front end of your dealership. This gives you multiple opportunities to upsell to your customers. But what if you’re trying to reach out to Aimee about a 100,000-mile service? You risk running into the same problem. You still don’t know that the phone number is incorrect, and you’re losing out on another chance to get Aimee back to your dealership. That means you’re missing valuable upsell opportunities and conversations that strengthen the customer relationship. And if you’re not continuing to build relationships, it’s harder for you to create loyal customers who will want to keep coming back.
A Seamless Connection at Every Touchpoint
What your team needs is access to complete, accurate information for every customer across their entire lifecycle, including sales and service records. To accomplish this, your CRM, your sales tools, and your service tools should be
unified with a single, unique identifier for every customer. When you layer in connected
AI-powered tools, you can ensure Aimee and others get the right message at the right time.
If you’re not confident that this is happening in your store today, it’s time to reassess your database management. Ensuring your information is accurate and up to date protects your reputation, maximizes opportunities, and empowers your team to drive more sales.
