Are safety recall alerts for cars a problem for your service department?

Wait, how is this possible? Between being mandated by law, issued by manufacturers and no additional cost to the consumer, safety recalls are a gold mine for any dealership. The problem is, this gold mine is largely untapped by the majority of service departments.

It is not for lack of desire on the part of customers. Many safety recalls get overlooked because customers are unaware they even exist. This situation can occur for a number of reasons:

• Since used vehicles are not always sold by the original manufacturer, the OEM would have no way of notifying the customer itself.
• Some people purchase vehicles from private owners or receive used vehicles as gifts from loved ones, taking the OEM out of the picture completely.
• People do not always update their addresses if they move, creating inconsistencies in databases.
• Some people neglect to update their vehicle’s registration.

As a result, recalls for at least 45 million vehicles – about one in six vehicles – DO NOT get serviced.

Letting customers know they have an open safety recall is challenging, not only because of the aforementioned reason but also because neither email nor snail mail is an effective means of communicating. Text messaging, however, changes the game.

Customers prefer communicating with dealerships via texts. The numbers back up this preference with Text messaging having an open rate of 98%.

The makers of TEXT2DRIVE™ took all of these facts into account when they created their text communications software that was developed specifically for auto dealers. One of the features they incorporated into it is hands-free safety recall alerts. These notifications are sent via text directly to the customer’s mobile device using pre-existing templates that can be personalized.

Dealerships Earned An Average Total Pay Of $282.20 Per Repair Order Using Safety Recall Alerts

Dealerships earned an average total pay of $282.20 per repair order (RO) * from January 2019 to February 2019 by using vehicle safety recall alerts. Service advisors’ ability to easily find open recalls and alert customers of them brought more recalls into their service bay. Alerting customers via text message ensured the notifications were seen and sending them via text minimized the time and energy service staff spent on the task.

Finding available safety recalls for your dealership is easy with TEXT2DRIVE. The full-featured communications platform does so through the following process:

1. TEXT2DRIVE reviews all of the contacts in your customer database and cross references it with available open safety recalls from the manufacturer
2. It provides a detailed report outlining the types and number of open recalls
3. You can filter campaigns according to your preference, with options including the quantity and frequency of sends, as well as the types of recall codes

TEXT2DRIVE pulls all of the necessary data from your database, saving your staff time they can devote to the job at hand – servicing vehicles, completing ROs and generating revenue. The pre-existing text templates can be personalized with information including the dealership’s name, service advisor’s name, the customer’s name and the make and model of the vehicle. In this sense, our communications platform makes the task hands-free for your employees.

It truly is that easy. Turn your recall “problem” into a money-making solution with safety recall alerts from TEXT2DRIVE.

* From TEXT2DRIVE; January 13, 2020 data usage report from the dates of January 2019 to February 2019 Author Norm Crawford.