Your Service Department Needs an End-to-End Platform

Start-to-finish, top-to-bottom, soup-to-nuts. Great visual phrases, but they don’t quite explain what we’re getting at here. We want to discuss how the industry’s best service departments operate using another common expression, end-to-end. The most successful dealerships are creating end-to-end service experiences that fulfill every customer need through a single, seamless process. But even that simple sentence doesn’t tell the full story, because your customer’s experience should never be over. Instead, each customer interaction should lead to another, natural next step and every conversation should continue long after a customer checks out of the shop.

Why an end-to-end solution?

Your service department is a complex operation and, from a logistical standpoint, it makes sense to divide it into distinct processes and efficiently defined parts and roles. And in today’s high-tech world, every one of those roles and their processes need a software system. But when your customers bring their vehicles in for maintenance or service, they don’t care where one role ends or where the next software system begins. For them, it’s all one, single service experience, and your dealership needs to make it as smooth, seamless, and efficient as possible.

How do you create a service cycle that doesn’t end?

Great service departments never stop cultivating the customer experience. Instead, they retain and they create repeat customers that return over and over again. The real trick, then, is to turn the end of one service visit into the beginning of the next. And that means capturing and storing information—including previously declined services—across the customer journey.

Communications like text or email marketing remind customers of what happened (and what didn’t) during previous service visits, and they are a great way to keep the conversation going. They promote consistency, build trust, and improve the customer experience. These touchpoints are where you can talk about previously declined services and possibly offer discounts. But these communications must be personalized and they must remind the customer that they have a true relationship with you and your staff. After all, it’s the relationship that gets customers in the door of the service department, with 53 percent returning based on trust.

Xtime offers a full suite of integrated solutions.

We are the automotive industry’s only end-to-end service experience platform. Our clients get a full suite of integrated solutions to optimize the automotive service experience every step of the way, while also driving dealership profits and a best-in-class customer experience.

From check-in to check-out and in between, you can create the high-quality interactions your customers expect and drive the growth your dealership needs. Known together as Spectrum, each of our four tightly-integrated products — Schedule, Engage, Inspect and Invite —optimize an essential part of the service experience.

Schedule

The customer experience kicks off with appointment scheduling. Keep your customers coming back with the convenience of online and mobile appointment scheduling while maximizing your service department’s potential with robust shop management and scheduling controls. 

Engage 

When your customer arrives at the dealership, that’s when you really get the chance to roll out the red carpet. Engage offers a truly personalized experience where you greet customers by name to help grow retention and ROs. This robust product facilitates tablet reception, instant access to declined services, and text communication. Plus, online and in-lane payment. 

Inspect

Multipoint inspections seem so straight forward, but there is a lot happening in this stage that can impact the customer experience. If you want to boost revenue, increase shop efficiency, and improve customer satisfaction with a built-in digital multipoint inspection process, you need Inspect. Did we mention customer approvals with pictures and video are features in the Inspect process? You’ll also be able to chat internally and check parts inventory. Plus, your customers will be able to see service status updates in the palm of their hand through the Service Tracker add-on. All this through one powerful tool. 

Invite

Here’s where you connect the ends. Between service visits, this powerful demand generation tool helps you visualize and target unsold shop capacity and recapture declined services. You can even utilize text marketing to increase customer engagement and awareness with an expanded reach and new targeted campaign opportunities.  

Find out how you can increase your dealership profits by improving the service experience from start to finish and beyond. Sign up for a quick product demo.

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