Are you great at Auto Service but not at Customer Service? There’s help for that

In Temkin’s 2018 customer experience report, auto dealerships were ranked thirteenth among twenty industries, earning an “Okay” rating on average. Why was that?

Temkin generated the ratings by asking 10,000 US consumers how they would rate their recent interactions with 318 companies, specifically according to three dimensions: success, effort, and emotion. So the auto dealership industry’s score is lackluster because auto dealership customers didn’t rate these three categories highly.

Whether your business is automobile sales, leasing, parts, or service, live chat can help you boost these three dimensions for your customers. Live chat helps you create success, understand deep customer needs, and invest in your customers’ emotions.

Create Success, Don’t Just Measure It

When customers come to you for help, they have a specific goal in mind, whether that be learning, purchasing, or resolving an issue. Your job is to help them be successful!

Live chat facilitates this effort by helping you take advantage of customer feedback and create success for you and your customers. First, a customer visits your website and asks a question about your services or products. Second, they receive an answer from one of our accommodating live chat agents. Third, you choose a specific action to take in response to each bit of feedback you receive. You also design a system to measure your progress in each of these areas.

Over time, you’ll hear from different customers and be able to measure your improvement. While doing so, it’s very important that you keep customers in the loop. You tell them you’re working on the problem, and you let them know when it is resolved.

Put Effort into Understanding Deeper Customer Needs

Robert recently bought a Volvo C30 from a private seller. He purchased the car and quickly realized the front left tire was low on air. He filled it with air, but the problem recurred shortly. Thinking the tire had a slow leak, he took the car into a tire repair shop to be patched up. They found a nail in the tire. Robert was right about the slow leak, but he had no idea about the nail.

Like Robert, we sometimes don’t look too deep when presented with a problem. We may try to help our customers with a temporary measure, but those temporary measures don’t solve real, underlying problems. Like the workers in the tire shop, we should put effort into discovering the root causes of our customers’ problems so our customers don’t have to put that effort in themselves.

Live chat takes the burden off of customers and puts it into your capable hands. This helps not only each customer who uses the live chat but future customers as well.

“By understanding the drivers of dissatisfaction, businesses can . . . ensure that future customers do not have to contend with the same issues,” says Paul Clark, CEO of Charter UK, a customer complaints and feedback company. “Identifying the root cause of a problem—and then fixing it—will always be the best way to improve customer satisfaction.”

Invest in Your Customer’s Emotions

When your customer visits your business either online or in person, you want them to feel positive emotions. Amenities certainly help with that, but what will really help your customers feel great is customer service improvements.

Live chat for auto dealers is a customer service improvement that makes customers feel comfortable, valued, and satisfied with their experience.

“Even in today’s 24/7 web-enabled world, customers still value the human touch,” reports Business Matters. “Introducing some human interaction at the right time, via web chat for example, can turn [a] customer from annoyed to advocate in seconds.”

If you could use a customer service boost (who couldn’t?), try HelpSquad’s live chat! Live chat will help you create success, understand deep customer needs, and invest in your customers’ emotions. Contact us today to get started.