If you do not think that customer retention can make a significant impact on your service department revenue, consider the following:

• Acquiring a new customer costs more money than retaining an existing customer. It can cost a dealership up to 7x more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain a customer it already has
• Your existing customers are more likely to schedule service appointments than those who have never been to your dealership before.
• A 5% increase in customer retention can lead to a profit increase of up to 95%.

Despite how critical it is to the success of dealerships, too many service departments are lacking a solid strategy for improving customer retention. Making matters worse, the majority of customers have a tendency to get their vehicle serviced at places other than the dealership where they purchased their vehicle.

TEXT2DRIVE™ – a full-featured communications platform – gives your service department the tools it needs to retain customers for maintenance and repairs. It does so by keeping them engaged with automated service alerts, safety recall alerts, interactive website widgets and coupon campaigns.

Leveraging more than 20 years of experience in the automotive industry, the makers of TEXTDRIVE recognized how important it is for your service department to stay in touch with customers – from the day they drive off the lot with their new or used vehicle to the day they bring it in for service work and beyond. In order to fulfill this need, your communications platform must manage ALL communications between staff and customers throughout their lifecycle.

Text messages are deployed automatically to customers, which offers several distinct advantages:

First, the automated nature of text messages saves time, allowing your employees to focus on service work and customer satisfaction.

Secondly, since texts are sent by technology instead of people, the messages standardize your follow-up process, communicating with customers consistently. Every single customer is given a pleasant, easy, convenient and high-quality experience.

Dealerships were able to Increase their customer return rate to their service department by using TEXT2DRIVE.^*

TEXT2DRIVE does all of the above via text messaging, a non-invasive form of communication that customers prefer. Communicating with them via text keeps them informed and updated without intruding on their busy lives. Plus, text messages have a high response rate. Composing and sending a text can be done discreetly, and doing so is much easier and faster than making or taking a phone call.

Text messaging customers offers your staff plenty of benefits, as well. Sending texts is, as mentioned previously, lightning-fast and can be done anywhere without disrupting co-workers or customers. Your staff will spend much less time on the phone – freeing up their time and energy for service work.

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