BRINGING THE SHOWROOM TO THE LIVING ROOM

Our founder and CEO Aleks Gollu’s article “Bringing the Showroom to the Living Room” was published in Ford Minority Dealers Association‘s 2nd Quarter 2020 newsletter.

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The New Sheltered Reality as Covid-19 Hampers Sales

As business gear up to open again this summer, we all know that as science prevails, the cases will peak again in the fall, and there will be a second wave of shut-downs. Even worse, all data shows that, while Europe has flattened the curve, in USA cases remain steady.

In this climate the average car buyer will be reluctant to go out and visit multiple dealerships. Rather, many will prefer to complete the transaction online and have their new car delivered to them.

This means, success for a dealership demands making eye contact with the car buyers online.

Video Call Platforms to Enable Customers to Video-Call a Dealership Online

Today’s car buyer is quite familiar with video calls. Most have celebrated a family relative’s birthday on Zoom.

The needs of a car buyer dictate that they make eye contact with the dealership when and where they want, not after many steps of setting up an appointment or after many a struggle with a chat-bot. The correct solutions enable the car buyer to start a video call with a single click on a link online, or a single scan of a QR-Code in a printed advertising.

Luckily, many vendors, such as Sincro Digital (formerly CDK), Condition Now (inspection reports) have already integrated such video call capabilities into their offerings. Other solution providers are expected to follow suite. Dealers can also ask their vendors when the video call features will become available.

11Sight has been the company that has developed the technology that makes these calls possible.

How to Use Video Calls to Stay in Touch with the Customer Every Step of the Way

The video call is an ideal call to action for many a print and digital marketing campaign.

The relationship starts while the customer is still researching a vehicle. The video call can be about vehicle features, a walk around the vehicle, or about hard to research questions like financing or affordability. During the call, the product specialist can find out the customer’s hot points, buy/lease, new/used preferences; through desktop sharing, configure the exact model and options the customer desires. Even some of the paperwork can start online to accelerate the time to cash.

Past deployments have shown that video-call initiated relationships are 3x more likely to result in a transaction and offer a better experience to both sides.

The relationship is easily maintained throughout the ownership lifecycle.