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Studies show that branding yourself as a salesman sells cars!  Why not have your own “member” site of your customers.  Think of this as your own website and your own mini facebook.  With your site, you can then easily communicate with your customers and they can with you, without having to know contact information.  And best yet the data belongs to you wherever you go.  How about having your own reputation portal, contact us for more; you will be amazed!

What Do I Get?

With salemansWALL, you will get:

1. Your own website portal:
   What good is that? For a change your customers get to know you rather than just a picture of you on "meet our staff"!
2. Your own owner portal:
   Your customers have a 'FaceBook' like page through which they can communicate with you directly, and see your postings. All communications on the Wall are kept under that customer and forever.
3. Easy, simple way to assign a car to your customer:
   Assign a car from your dealership inventory. Or any other car from our drop down list!
4. Easy simple way to communicate with your customer and set an appointment. Every communication has a 'FaceBook like notification' that goes to your customers phone or email.
5. A complete repository of your communications with your customer
6. A tool that is simple and is mobile compliant, so use your phone rather than computer!
7. No more sending cumbersome emails your site has the pictures and content
8. Your own site your own data
9. I leave this dealership, this goes with me!
10. We send two free posts of high quality based on your request per month, but you can post anytime you want!
11. How do you sign up?

Click this link and fill in the information!

1. How much is it?
         -  Pay outright. $29.98 per month

With salesmanWALL, you will get the following:

• Personal website portal
• Owner Portal
• Ability to assign a car to a customer
• Easy way to communicate with your customer and set an appointment. Every communication has a 'facebook like notification' that goes to your customers phone or email.
• History of communications with customers
• Mobile compliant
• Ownership of site, stays with you no matter which dealership you are with!
• Two automatic posts/month

truckWALL

This outstanding portal is focused toward anyone who wants to sell a truck easily and seamlessly at low presentation cost on the web.  The site provides outstanding placements on search engines and generates quick leads for truck dealers.  If you have a truck that needs selling then contact us!

DealerTruckWALL.com

Tired of simply maintaining a website destination for your customers? Wanting more results? Designed in responsive web-design, truckWALL is the only patent-pending interactive customer community specifically tailored to truck dealers and their customers, offering a comprehensive owner portal, complete with truck service history accessible anywhere at any time, marketing campaigns, proactive reputation management, and accompanying CRM. It takes the concept of social, and turns it on its head, to produce quantifiable results. Improve the ROI of your digital marketing spend with truckWALL today.

Examples of truckWALL

CRM

Dealing with prospects also comes into focus in addition to delivering your web content and owner marketing.

GratisCRM provides sixteen years of CRM production experience into one simple easy to use tool which is certified by most all OEM, and is mobile compliant!

What is special?

1. Customized home page to an individual’s needs
2. Easy to use search engine capabilities
3. Campaign marketing
4. Comprehensive workflow
5. Multi variable searching capabilities
6. Desking Tool
7. Equity Calculator
8. Automated work flows
9. Automated communications
10. Bi-directional DMS interface
11. Automatic multi level lead distribution

Check out our CRM!

Digital Solutions for
Service Drive

The consumer of millennium requires a different treatment at the dealership autoWALL is already there to support you.

1. Allow true appointment setting in form of "shop Loading" from the web by customer and import and append appointments into DMS
2. Using tablet search VIN and identify the customer vehicle
3. Using tablet take photos of vehicle and upload to customer profile
4. Have ability to text message client during visit and keep record within customer profile
5. Be able to communicate warranty information to the customer via text or post or email
6. Enable ability to choose a loaner
7. Pay on line, using PayWALL which uses trusted payment partners for ultimate security

Years of experience in providing technology solutions to the automotive industry, it became evident the tools available to the dealer were cumbersome, expensive and required long term contracts. These disparate and costly tools also do not address the problem of outward customer migration, how to retain them and how to make the service department, the true profit center of today, more effective.

autoWALL® is a holistic tool addressing the needs of a dealership be it website, marketing, owner portal and digitalization of service drive in one single simple system with total focus on improving dealership profitability and customer experience.

What is autoWALL®?

autoWALL is an “interactive customer community”. Think FaceBook where all the customer body and “dealership people” are members of the community. Through this tool the members can communicate without having to know each other’s email address or phone number. The customer community cannot communicate with one another; however, the customer can communicate directly to all members of the dealership people all the way up to dealer principal. autoWALL core functionality is primarily focused on customer retention and care. It is the voice of the customer being heard and issues handled. autoWALL addresses the most pressing concern of Millennials which is “Save me time and communicate”. The customer’s ability to communicate seamlessly with any member of the dealership is highly coveted by the customer. By opening the lines of communication, the dealership then in turn greatly affects their reputation scores on the web, increases their web lead generation scores and ultimately improves chances of acceptance of their communication with that customer. autoWALL, gives the customer the impression that, for a change in the automotive world, they are finally in the driver’s seat and that their voice really counts. There are many companies that provide surveying abilities; however, nothing replaces the ability to communicate in real time, when a customer needs help. autoWALL is the only tool in the market place that can deliver such functionality. System’s and tools that are successful are those that make the lives of everyday consumer easier. autoWALL certainly delivers on both the dealership side as well as consumer side.

How Does it work?

autoWALL is designed for use over the World Wide Web and is scalable for use with different size databases. The product is a tool for the dealership to build a community network of their own constituent clients in both sales and service as well as with their employees. autoWALL holds the entire historical database of a dealership and is certified with most all primary DMS providers. The dealer or the “Ultimate User” can put as much content as they wish on their WALL. This information can range from advertising, public relations information or newsletters and when tied to sites of other “authorities”, such as Toyota Motor, can greatly improve SEO. The WALL in actuality can and does replace the dealership website. The entire dealership inventory is accessible from the WALL; hence, constantly emailing a client with complex, long emails become unnecessary. Simple one line communications through the product can alert members of the “community” of the changes on the primary WALL be it new inventory or special content of interest. The entity customer can also use their own WALL to store information concerning items that they wish to be accessible to the dealership users. However, the customer does not build their “vehicle profile.” This profile is built from historical data of sales and service available through the dealer management system and in fact is another reason customers like autoWALL. This information is not easily accessible, as a rule, in a single concise format to anyone including the customer and this availability of the “profile” and the information contained makes the system highly popular with the customers. The customer can store makes and models of other cars they own so that their dealer can communicate with them if they have offers concerning a vehicle such as theirs. This is building a “Wish List” of vehicles of interest that can then be communicated with dealership employees when such vehicle enters the inventory. The product is used by dealership management as well as sales personnel to better track the activities of potential car buyers as well as follow the activities of dealership customers through the car ownership period including the very important service activity. This data in turn is provided in many management reports such as “vehicle popularity”. Gratis also provides tools and services that further address the concept of “Save Time and communicate” in service and sales departments. These tools include Digital Solutions 4 Service Drive, PayWALL (the most sought after online payment system available in this vertical) and techWALL where inspection tools are used for further communication, authorization acquisition and better vehicle care while the vehicle is still in the service department as well as for future services.

A Case for autoWALL ® as a Web site

Why does autoWALL make an outstanding website? If the first and foremost functionality of a website is to bring customers to the site, engage them and retain them, well the above description indicates how that is achieved. The customers frequently visit the site for their own vehicle information. Also all communication, pertinent vehicle information, dealer blogs and articles are posted on the WALL and the customer is always directed there to read the content. In this section we will discuss the actual success of the site as at present there are versions of autoWALL with over three years of data. As they say the “Proof is of course in the pudding.” There are many “tricks” of the trade for SEO optimization and many companies do sell SEM to dealers for high prices. However, as the numbers below indicate the best way to garner clients to a website is engaging with the client prior to and during their visit to the site. The website of the millennium is one that is specific to each and every customer and autoWALL is exactly that.

Wonder if customers will join?

After all they buy a car every four years and service that car twice a year! Who wants yet another portal!

Think Again!

• After having autoWALL as their website and customer community, an average size dealer in the southeast has 13,000 member customers who have voluntarily joined their “community!”
• A Toyota dealership improved visitor count by 60% from Jan 2015 to Jan 2016. This is after only three months. As the community grows, so will the results!
• A high line dealer has improved unique visitor count by 82%

• A Toyota dealer improved lead to unique visitor count from 1.4% to 3.8% in three months

• Customer issues that used to go undetected are resolved before they hit the web!

Reputation Scores on a Website Matter! How many Hyundai Dealers have this kind of Score or reviews?

• After each and every transaction a communication goes out to the customer asking for their voice on how they were treated. That information for each and every dealer would be of immense value

Contact Us for Installation

Advanta-STAR Endorses autoWALL

Dear Client,

Thank you for you loyal support of Advanta-STAR! It has been our pleasure to work with you and your associates over the years in providing unparalleled comprehensive competitive comparisons that has led to increased sales volume and gross profits. 

We’ve recently partnered with another outstanding company, Gratis Technologies.

Gratis Technologies also provides unparalleled connectivity with your customers through their autoWALL system.  Founded by Ms. Saphura Long, another loyal Advanta-STAR client, autoWall harnesses the power of social media, the connectivity of the web, the data-driven sophistication of CRM, the simplicity of email and the personalization of a private conversation.  This tool single handedly can improve the results of all your e-commerce marketing effort like no other available to you today. 

autoWALL was recently designated by Infiniti as a Certified Retailer Website provider, and was certified by MBUSA as the First Customer Interactive Community Tool or “Social CRM” for lead delivery to their Mercedes-Benz dealers, just to name a few accolades received.

I’d like to invite you to please listen to a short demonstration of autoWALL at your convenience.  Simply go to the www.gratistech.com website and hit the “Request A Demo” link button on the upper left corner of the home page.

Thank you for your time and kind consideration of autoWALL.  Once you get a chance to review its unique features, I’m certain that you’ll want to have it available for your staff and customers alike.

Sincerely,

Michael Champagne
Vice-President of Sales and Marketing,
Advanta-STAR Automotive Research
www.advantastar.com

Customers Benefit From Social CRM

     This series will discuss what’s in it for each and every constituent using the AutoWall.  The sign of a successful tool is one that every constituent benefits by using it.  The most important user of any business is their customer base.  We business holders have and should first and foremost focus on services and tools that benefit our clients.  The constituent who benefits most from the usage of the AutoWall is the customer.  How is that?  That is what this blog aims to address.  When communicating with clients as to one of the most aggravating issues when contacting their service provider be it an auto dealer or any other, most indicate finding and communicating with the right person within the company who can address their concern easily and in a timely manner is the number one issue.  Some, of the most successful and funniest advertisements have to do with customer treatment when calling a company and trying to communicate with someone within the company.  The customer could email someone at the dealership, but who is that person and when will they respond if the request is urgent?  They can call the dealership but usually after a lengthy wait they end up leaving a message which will end in a pile and usually goes unanswered.

     So, the customer wants to communicate with their favorite salesman and they do not remember who that guy was?  What do they do, call the dealership and ask who?   And where does that call go.  How about service advisors?  Who was the guy they liked so well?  How do you find again who that person was? And most importantly, if a service was performed on the customer’s car what was the nature of that reapir, how long ago was that?  What is the next service?  Supposing a customer just had their car serviced and he is driving the car and the car again has similar problems, how does the customer know exactly what was the service performed, what they paid for and what is their recourse if the service done did not address the need.

     The Autowall addresses exactly the problems portrayed here.  The Autowall is a community networking tool for the auto industry through which the whole community can communicate with one another.  Who is the community?  All employees of the dealership, all prospects and all customers who have had any transactions with the company are members of the community.  They each have their own profile.  However, unlike the profiles of most familiar social networking tools that have to do with a “personal” profile, this is more about the vehicular profile.  Meaning every member of the community has their vehicle list.  This includes employees as in many cases they are also customers as well.   This “profile” is only visible by those with “rights and privileges” to see it.  No customer has a right to access the profile of another.  All company members can access those customers to whom they are assigned.  Which means the salesman can access “his own” customers the service advisors the same, but if this is a group dealership each dealership manger can access his own customers, but only “group mangers” can access all.  On each profile, a user can load their own picture with a minimal description of themselves.  But each user has a list of their won vehicles and all the repairs done to that vehicle in chronological order.  Each user also has his own list of appointments and their “wish list” of any car they would like to have if that vehicle type entered the inventory.  Needless to say total access to inventory is available to all.

Dealerships Benefit from Social CRM

So, in the last Blog we discussed the benefits of the Autowall to the dealership customer.  In this Blog we will discuss the benefits to the dealership.  First and foremost the dealership can communicate easily and seamlessly with their customer base directly.  If they want the customer to see a special they do not have to email that customer they can just post that special on the wall for all to see or post it on specific profiles.  No more sending extensive emails that get lost in the great World Wide Web and no one is sure if they are ever received or even seen.   The Autowall is an application where the movement of the customer on the Wall is measurable and visible.  Hence the dealer now can tell which advertisement is receiving more attention.  Or which widgets tend to receive more clicks and therefore the dealer can measure customer trends and gain knowledge of customer interests and then tailor further advertising to match the interest.

Dealership data is also tremendously valuable, and few dealers know how to receive revenue from the valuable data base of their constituents.  The concept of “Adds-On” dealer has been born to address this tremendous revenue generating opportunity.  Here the dealership allows other service providers or retailers to post advertisements on his Wall, which is visible to his constituent customers and employees.  For this great opportunity afforded that retailer the dealer can and should charge a fee.  The revenue generated from this opportunity can easily offset the usage costs of the AutoWall and provide a nice stream of revenue.  For a change here the dealer makes money as he uses a service rather than always paying for that service.

Lastly, most web sites designed for a dealership are static boring and never changing.  Although the dealership pays monthly for these sites they are always the same.  The web site of a dealership is their presence on the World Wide Web and many customers walk into those “doors” far before they do the physical dealership without anyone having any knowledge of such and just as many are turned away by the  not useful difficult to maneuver web sites.  The question I would like to ask is what is the rule when a customer walks into your dealership?  Do you just allow him to roam around your dealership unattended?  Try and find a car he likes by himself?  And if he did not succeed do you just let him walk away unnoticed?  If the answer to all of above is NO, then why are you letting this go on in your virtual dealership?

The Autowall, lets you know who came on site, where they went, what they looked at and what was of interest to them.  Would you not like to gain this knowledge, while you are also making money from your hard earned customer base just by their presence on the Wall?

Another great advantage of the Autowall is its ability to store content.  This content is not only relevant information for the customer on product safety, product use and other pertinent information, but also moves the Autowall higher and higher in the search engine optimization.  The search engine crawlers of today are highly sensitive to words packed together just so that the site is elevated in the search results.  However, true relevant content is the best and most effective way of promoting your presence on the World Wide Web.

Can you afford to be without this tool?  

Social CRM Benefits Management

a.       Management can have the pulse of the customer and employees by knowing what communication is transpiring.  Every message posted on the Autowall is saved for ever.  In this way if promises are made that are not correct or accurate, the dealership has a copy and inversely if information is posted that the client took in a wrong way that record also exists.  But most importantly, communication with the client is far easier.  It is no longer necessary to have complex emails sent to the customer.  Specials are posted on the Wall and customers see it and take advantage by just logging into the Wall.  Each and every time a change is made to the specials, an email can be sent to remind customers of a new offer.  This can be automated or triggered by the user.

b.      Dealership management can also post content of interest for the customers on the wall.  As an example is dealership newsletters which are usually printed and mailed or emailed to the customer to be discarded once the client received and hopefully read.   Using the Autowall, the dealership can post newsletter without deleting the previous, thereby allowing the customer user to read old and new newsletters or any other content of choice.  All content can also be organized by the high end user, manger or Admin to reflect what the article pertains.  Thereby making the choice of an article easier for the customer.  The categories could be such as “Safety”, or “Newsletters” or “Recipes” or any other category of choice and content can be added for perpetuity or deleted per choice.  Also, this feature assists the Autowall to gain higher SEO rating as relevant content is truly what affects the SEO and the more content the better.

c.       Direct and quick communication, with those who you need to target.  Supposedly you have a great offer for a specific customer or a group of customers.  You can directly post messages in mass or individually on the vehicle profile of your customer and anytime you post a message an email is sent to that customer or employee about the comment, offer or anything else.

d.      Another tremendous way to use the Wall is to post receipts for your customers on their profile wall.  This cuts down or paper printing, ties your customer more to the wall and is a true service to your customer.  Of course all kinds of appointments are also posted on the Wall for the customer or anyone else.

e.      Internal usage of the Wall is also of tremendous value.  Management can post messages for a specific employee or for many, calling meetings, making announcements and anything else they choose.

f.        Widgets allow the dealership to gain knowledge of customer interests.  By posting widgets or Apps of interest and then receiving click results, the dealership can gauge customer trends and interests.   

Benefits of Social CRM to Salesmen

A salesman can first post a dealership accepted photo of him on his profile wall and write a short bio for customers to read. Per dealership permission he can post a mass message to all his customers but most importantly he can communicate with his customers directly and seamlessly. Of course the entire inventory is right there at his and the customers' disposal , so he can direct the customers' attention to the specific car he is marketing without asking the customer to yet log into another site. For that matter, using the monthly payment calculator widget the customer can get an idea of what his monthly might be. In short, the salesman lives on the Wall, so to speak, the benefits of this tool to the dealership and its employees are hard to quantify.

Benefits of Social CRM to Service Advisors

Of course the service advisor can post messages for the customer about a specific service and gain acceptance to change or up-sell a service easily and quickly in a documented form. Remember that all messages are kept for perpetuity. He can also post invoices and set appointments that are accessible at anytime the customer needs. He can also reference previous repairs done on a customer’s car at anytime he wishes without leaving the system as all previous repair orders are already posted on the Autowall customer profile.

A Case for Free CRM

     After 16 years of serving the Automotive CRM vertical, I have come to the conclusion that the best CRM is one that is specific to the user and is free.  Many CRM companies such as the one I founded Prize Corporation ReckonUp was and is capable of making some customization to the end users needs but never enough to be satisfactory.  I have gotten to believe that in the automotive space being a CRM vendor is a thankless task.  The greatest evidence of that is the end result that there is no CRM company in this vertical that has made a true success of them in the form that true financial success is defined in today’s world.  What is the reason for that?  Do we all not produce good solid products?  Do these products lack in functionality?  Do we not train users well enough?  Do we not produce enough interfaces?  What do we do wrong?

     The answer is none of the above.  Most all top CRM’s offered in this vertical are decent products with rich functionality.  They interface with DMS, OEM and other vendors to make life easy for the automotive end user and they do train the user as much as they are financially able to and as much as the user is willing to buy and to take.  So, what is the problem?  How come in other verticals users have adopted multimillion dollar companies such as Salesforce and Sugar and there is none of that level of success in automotive.  Of course one answer could be that those tools cover a much larger segment of the population but the Automotive sector is by no means a small one.  There are some 19000 franchised dealers whom on average employ around 190,000 people and some 35000 non-franchisee who employ about as much.  The revenue generated by this sector is in the billions and they certainly need CRM.  How come there is not one or only two who has not dominated this world?  You could say that R&R and ADP have most of the sector for CRM!  And my answer to that is well they have a lot of the sector as clients, but those clients are by no means “true” CRM users. 

   So, what makes a “true” CRM user?  We all know what it means to be a user; but the true user is defined by his usage style and frequency of the tool.  Having and using a CRM are two things.  Most of the sector might “have” a CRM but do they really use it.  It is not unlike saying that most of the population knows that if they exercise they will look better and live longer and most of us either have some kind of exercise machine or are members of an exercise club.  But how many of us really take exercise seriously?  What percentage actually puts time aside in their day that is cast in iron and actually goes and puts in the time?   It is dark in the morning when we got to go to gym or late when we are coming home.  We are sleepy or hungry or tired or many other issues and so we cut out the  exercise time and as we pay for the darn usage and we don’t take advantage we eventually give up send the machine to charity or give up on our exercise club subscription.  Also, it takes a long time and great effort to see results of exercise.  Once or twice or three times shows nothing, it is only after long term discipline and hard work that we see some change in our body.

     This is not too different than what happens in the CRM world.  CRM helps us stay in contact with our clients, get to know who they are and make sure they feel good about us and stay with us.  We all know that gaining a new customer is far more costly and harder than retaining one and that most of our revenue is generated by those that approve of our business practices and that without our customers, obviously we will not exist.  We also know that CRM holds our data base of customers, it is our venue of communication with them and brings accountability to our employees.  But, if our business has a hiccup one of the first vendors we cancel is CRM.  Also, just like trying to stay in shape, we got to get our usage of CRM in shape.  Meaning all employees have to use it.  That means you Mr. or Mrs. Dealer also.  All systems have to work together.  You need to make sure your database is clean and duplicate free.  You need to make sure your internet leads are coming in per minute and your service department information is merged accurately and each and every customer visit is logged.  The management needs to get on the tool and use it and have first rate knowledge of this tool, its reports, outcome and results.

     So, most dealerships are comprised of busy people and learning CRM is difficult and buying CRM is costly and training employees is difficult.  Specially a bunch of salesmen who are still our front face to the customer who are concerned about accountability these tools bring and are also highly transient. 

     Now supposing the dealership has “its own” CRM.  One they have invested in acquiring that actually belongs to them.  They can buy and get service when they need and they can buy hosting if they wish and they can buy training if they like and they can buy their own upgrade that they want not the one that fits all.  Think about a truly tailored CRM to your needs, that your people get to adopt and the cost can be managed based on your need.  This is the business model for CRM of this age, a free source CRM.  Although the tool is basically designed for Automotive and is highly rich functionally; it can be upgraded and changed as you wish.   You can buy training for it as you wish or train your own trainer on the tool. You have still not eliminated the fact that with CRM continuous proper usage is the key, but you have taken many of the stumbling blocks that make users shy of CRM out of their way and it is only by hacking away at the rock mountain one chip at the time that we can hope to succeed.

Come Join the Revolution

Social CRM and Why It Works!

The word CRM brings a warm and fuzzy feeling that we are doing something for our customers.  We enter our customers contact in the CRM, we send them lots of emails and we call them when we want and we are sure that our customers must be happy.  If you were to count the number of “we’s” in that sentence alone, you will realize the fallacy of the premise it alludes to.  When reading that sentence who comes in focus as the most important and focused actor?  The customer or “WE” the dealer?  Many years ago I was told as a CEO that when you interview a prospective employee, listen to how many times he uses the word “I”?  Large numbers of the usage of that one letter word, as a rule, indicates a person who is very self focused and not a team player.

Are we as dealers, using the conventional tools we have at hand, really focusing on the customer’s needs?  Or are we again only focusing on “our needs” which is to sell cars? What is unfortunate is that unless we start really focusing and listening to our customers and installing tools that really affects them we will sell fewer and fewer cars and lose our valued clients to the other guy who has solved the mystery.

The mystery is not so tough to crack; all you need to do is start listening to your customer and install tools that open the lines of communication so you can easily communicate both ways.  AutoWall the newest form of Social CRM does just that.  You can do all you did with your CRM here, but you can do far more than you ever did before for your customer and hence retain them.  In this CRM, the customer and the dealership “people” are all just simple members of a community.  These members have one thing in common and that is their relationship to the dealership.  Through this product they can communicate via post and get notifications that a post is awaiting exactly such as other social networking sites.  Except AutoWall is not “social” and the members if they are not dealership employees, cannot communicate with one another but only with the employees who have served them.

So, if you want to know more about this revolution and if you want to join the “revolutionaries” that have dropped their bondages to conventional CRM, then contact us and see what you are missing.

We even give you an outstanding powerful CRM for only out of pocket charges with AutoWall!

Communication is usually defined as an exchange of thoughts and ideas between two or more people.  Here the emphasis is on the words two or more.  As a rule, most relational problems occur when one person does all the talking and the other is never given the opportunity to express themselves.  Marriages are often broken due to lack of “communication” where one is throwing words at another but never truly listening to what the other partner’s wants and needs are. In fact relationships are only successful if the feelings and opinions of both sides are heard and adhered to.  The most successful relationships follow the rule of when one member speaks the other “truly” listens.  Not just speak and then act like listening or just simply speak  with the assumption that after all you know what is good for the other and so what “you” have to offer must be the final solution.

This rule of communication does not only apply to a relationship between two people but that of businesses and their consumers as well.  It is well known that the most successful companies have a few required rules that they adhere to and one of the most important rule is to communicate with your clients and know what they want and how happy they truly are with your services and then form your products and services accordingly.  Secondly always have an eye to the future and what your consumers will want and how “they” will change.  Many major companies have met their demise in “shouting” their ideas at their customers assuming that what they are “shouting” is what the customer is “hearing” and of course reacting to and never stopping to evaluate their consumer base and communicate with them to truly know what they think of them.  GM is a glaring example of this one sided communication with the customer. They built what they thought was good for the customer.  They built what, they famously believed was, “what they did best” never wondering if what they built was what the consumer thought was “Best” for them.

The automobile dealerships of today are not run too differently.  We serve our customer, good naturedly, in the best way we think.  We put on a website that we and the OEM think is the best looking one and using our CRM we send out email templates that our customers “must” like.  Surly, the templates are engaging, beautiful and our customers must like them.  We do not stop and ask first does the customer get our beautiful email template in its entirety?  And if he does get it does he like the fact that we take the liberty to fill his mail box with our “stuff”?  What service do we really provide him other than the fact that we hope our template will stick and he will buy another car.  Have we ever stopped to think that is it possible that our fancy templates and its periodical appearance in his mail box might even anger him?  If we are asking him to buy from us what do we do in return for him to make his life easier that does not have a, so to speak, string attached?  What about our website?  It is after all our dealership in the World Wide Web but we do little to spruce it up and rebuild it.  Do we not fire our employees when a customer walks in the show room and goes unattended?  How many customers visit our virtual showroom and go “unattended” do we even know they came for a visit?

As an entrepreneur and a dealer you have survived the debacle of the last four years.  Why?  Mostly because dealers are ingenious and do look to the future even if they are grounded greatly by their OEM.  Do not assume that web site and CRM are taking care of your customer communication needs.  Remember nothing ever comes back from the customer in CRM or website they are one sided “communication” tools that will not satisfy the consumer of this century.    

Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning; we might not agree with them in their actions or the path they took in what they did but one thing is clear. They have initiated and sparked a strong debate concerning privacy and the rights of individuals to use the World Wide Web and their mobile devices without being watched. In an article posted by Jeffry Toobin in The New Yorker on line magazine on August 20th 2013, he indicates; "To be sure, Snowden has prompted an international discussion about surveillance".

For some, it is highly disconcerting that while searching innocently on the web for an item of interest someone is watching your tracks, where you are going and even where you might have been. Directed marketing based on historical web traffic is a vertical worth billions of dollars. However, the jury is still out on its validity and lawfulness. As dealers, much as any other solid entrepreneur, we need to get to know our clients and do all we can to retain them. But, this desire and information gathering should stop at the point at which the information gathered has little to do with selling a car or a service to our clients. As dealers we are blessed with large databases and by using this data properly and prudently there is a great deal of business to be had. However, we need to be cognizant of vendors we choose especially those providing us with customer tracking Java Script on our websites.

Chat companies and many other "marketing" companies supposedly track your customer’s movements before or after they entered your web assets and provide information concerning their web movements, but what other information they gather and where is that information directed? Do you have an agreement with them to assure compliance with privacy laws? If they collect that information while on your site, your company could be seen as the guilty party. Of course, you might be able to prove otherwise in a court of law, but privacy laws are constantly being re-written and evaluated. What will it cost you monetarily and reputation wise, while you are defending yourself?

There have been many good articles written recently on this matter. Some of this is good marketing; some crosses the line and that is a line that must not be crossed. Read the articles and make an informed decision. It’s your vendor; it’s your dealership. In short, first, partner with a web asset vendor that understands these nuances and brings them to your attention. Second, although you might not realize that a vendor you signed is posting Java Script on your website; your web asset partner should notify you of such. Remember, the World Wide Web is still not too different than the Wild Wild West. Protect your valued asset, your client base, as they are trusting you when they enter your domain.

So, you think you have a really cool website. You log-into it from your computer and it looks great. The flashy photos are there and you seem to be getting leads. But in reality this site could be costing you money, I mean far more than what you are paying your website provider. In order to measure the efficacy of your site, you must keep some fundamental factors in mind. They are as follows:

Take this short "efficacy test" score your site yourself and see where you land.

You want a printed copy?

Then Click Here to Contact Us and we will forward the test to you.

Want your site to look THIS GOOD? Call us today!

Designed in responsive web-design, cycleWALL is the only patent-pending interactive customer community specifically tailored to motorcycle dealers and their customers, offering a comprehensive owner portal, marketing campaigns, proactive reputation management, and accompanying CRM. It takes the concept of social, and turns it on its head, to produce quantifiable results. Improve the ROI of your digital marketing spend with cycleWALL today.

More Features

• Payment Buddy
  Our Payment Buddy offering takes your prospect's key terms - like rate, down payment, and term, and applies them to all inventory search results, showing payments, while generating a lead.
• PayWALL
  Automotive service is one of the few places where a customer still has to come to dealership and in many cases still stand in front of a cashier at the end of a busy day to pay and pick up vehicle.  This makes for bad experience even if the service department has done their job expertly.  So, why not reduce employee cost, and improve customer experience by allowing them to pay on line.  This seamless easy to use system take little to install literally requires no employee training and best yet it's reasonable to buy.
  Contact Us for Installation
• SEO/SEM
  The WALL, by design, addresses SEO, putting you in a leadership position where your organic marketing is concerned. From News & Updates, to inventory, we’ve got you covered.
• Client Stress Early Warning System
  A key feature of the WALL is proactive automated Reputation Management services. Each transaction - sales or service - polls the consumer - to secure their feedback. If satisfied, they are directed to the appropriate review sites to complete their rating. If dissatisfied, the dealership is notified immediately thru the WALL, and the negative feedback goes straight where it needs to be - to dealership senior management, for handling, as opposed to the web. Our clients have excellent online reputations - and use their dissatisfied messages, to improve their businesses. Contact Us to learn how the WALL can take you to 4.5 - 5.0 like it has for existing WALL clients. At no additional charge.

Awards and Certifications

Certified Retailer Website provider by Infiniti!

Honda certification completed!

Certified with most OEM!

Mrs. Saphura Long hosted a workshop titled "Generating Revenue From Your Current Customer Database" at the 14th Digital Dealer conference in Orlando.

MBUSA has certified autoWALL - the First Customer Interactive Community Tool or "Social CRM" for lead delivery to their Mercedes-Benz dealers!

Gratis Technologies' autoWALL was honored with the Innovation Award at Digital Dealer 2013.

Running an auto dealership in today’s world is a complex proposition.  There are many disparate departments.  There is the DMS that was developed years ago and requires a great deal of babysitting, knowledge and care and as this is the age of Internet and fast communication there are many other  software’s and complex tools that require attention and proper usage.  OF course any business with large constituent customers and employees has to deal with a complex environment.  This is the age of information and the user that can best manage to lasso this wild beast, tame it and use it is the winner.  There are many parameters that come into play in such a complex business world but one of the most important one has to do with the ability of the leader to truly instill a process or decision made at his company.  It is not necessarily the perfection of the tool, or the beauty of the process that matters, but the rigid requirement of adhering to those processes under all circumstances.

I have had the honor of running companies as well as being a mother.  Yes at times a daunting task, but the motherhood side has taught me a very important lesson.  That is your employees are not too different than your children.  You as a leader tend to care for your employees as your relatives and learn to bond with them and care for them and become attached to them, may be not quite as fiercely as your immediate family but pretty similarly.   I have caught myself becoming resentful of a client who directly attacked one of my employees even if possibly he was right.  IT takes great self control to question someone we see and work with everyday.  That is why some of the worst embezzlements and crimes are performed by those very close to the victim.  We tend to bend the rules when it comes to someone we care for be it our kids or employees and if we are the president and CEO that “employee” might be someone of high level who could really damage our company knowing or unknowingly if he made a serious mistake.

As a mother, I learned that certain rules could not be broken.  That means the rule cannot EVER be broken, not may be or sometime but EVER.  This is to the benefit of the child and the whole family.  And, if a child broke that rule, he or she has to realize the repercussions were serious.  As an example when kids started to drive, they were told that drinking and driving don’t mix and if you do drink and drive and you are lucky to survive it without harm to you or another person your car will be parked.  This rule was cast in stone and had no buts or ifs about it.  Now, this is a serious rule but there are many processes in business that if not followed properly could have similar devastating effects.

As dealers, we buy solid good tools and products and of course mandate training for these tools but when it comes to attending the training and being held responsible we allow our mangers to do as they please.  The “well we don’t do things like that here” is very often heard when training dealership personnel.  The fact that may be their lack of success so far has had to do with the fact that “they did not do things” the right way does not occur to these employees and of course usually no one of higher management is there to assure adherence.    And as I said above who do we listen to?  Our darling employees who will bad mouth the product and the process until for the millionth time they have again gotten the dealer to cancel yet another tool as “being not worthy”, buggy or just not good enough for their  esteemed business.

I had always believed that long contracts are a bad idea as they bind people to requirements that are not fair.  But now, I believe that in today’s automotive world they might be the only way that a complex tool, training or process can get foothold before getting tossed because of the employees lack of desire to learn and the management’s lack of capability to hold them accountable to processes and training.  Jim Zeigler, had written an article about this same issue in the Dealer Magazine, dated January 17, 2011.  He indicates that he will not train at a dealership unless the dealer principal agrees to force the mangers to adhere to the training processes and take it seriously( http://www.fi-magazine.com/Blog/On-the-Point/Story/2012/01/Training-the-Manager.aspx ).  I  agree with him greatly in this mandate.  Unfortunately in this business the employees are transient, but it seems that the management feels that solid processes and tools can be too.  There is nothing more damaging to a business than this attitude.  Think of a family’s chance of survival if every member followed the rules when they wished bad mouthed new plans and responsibilities and did as they liked.  Can such a family survive and thrive?  This is not too different than a businesses’ chance of survival with the same type of attitude.

A Chattanooga entrepreneur who has spent about 18 years focused on customer relationship management (CRM) software believes she’s found the proverbial “secret sauce” with her new start-up.

The entrepreneur is Saphura Long, her new start-up is named Gratis Tech, and its latest product is called autoWALL™. With a name like that, it is obviously focused on the automotive sector, but Long clearly believes her two-way CRM product has implications for a number of businesses that need to establish and maintain a strong relationship with customers or clients.

In a recent interview with teknovation.biz, Long described her earlier work in CRM and how that experience inspired her new company.

Long was born in Iran where her father was an Admiral in the country’s Navy. The family immigrated to the U.S. after Ayatollah Khomeini came into power. She earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and a master’s in nuclear physics. Along the way, she worked for Combustion Engineering in Chattanooga before starting her nearly two-decade journey in customer relationship management in 1994.

As the spouse of Nelson Long, a multi-franchise automobile dealer in Chattanooga, she understood the importance of maintaining a solid relationship with customers. Long also has gained valuable insights into the technology products and services available to dealers.

She founded her first company, ReckonUp CRM Solutions, in the mid-1990s. With the emergence of the Internet, Long re-designed the company’s initial products to be what she describes as a “web-based, comprehensive, enterprise-level tool.”

In 2007, she sold the company, which had 500 dealership users, to izmocars and became the latter’s Vice President of CRM, a position she held until the end of 2010.

“For the years and years that I was providing a CRM, I could not understand why (automotive) dealerships failed in using the tool,” she said, adding that she knows that “dealerships spend a good deal of time on reputation management.”

Long ultimately decided that conventional CRMs, including the one she developed a decade ago, provided a “one-directional monolog which means that you are not building a relationship with the customer.” In her view, dealerships were simply “pushing” information to people.

So, at the beginning of 2011, Long started an 18-month journey to develop a two-way CRM product that is marketed under the autoWALL™ brand. Just as she had focused on the web a decade before, Long closely observed the emerging impact that social media was having on individuals and incorporated many of its strengths into her new CRM package.

The keys for her latest endeavor are its two-way, secure communications platform that provides value for both the dealership and the customer, and the control that the customer has.

“We hand customers the key to their own profile,” Long explained. “The customer is in the driver’s seat of the relationship.”

If I had a dime for every time I have heard a dealer or manager or dealership employee say “I hate this CRM”; I would be a billionaire by now!

For sixteen years we were one of the leading CRM providers to the automotive vertical and worked hard to make our clients happy with a state of the art CRM.

We spent a great deal of effort on research and upgrade to try and decipher what was the cause of discontent in the CRM world. The revolving door exists today with all CRM. It wasn’t until the creation of social networking that we finally came up with the primary reason dealers struggle with CRM.

And that is although the “C” stands for “Customer” there is no real interaction or true dialogue with the customer through the CRM. Communication is always a one directional monologue outward from dealer to customer. Dealerships talk “at” their customers rather than with them. Also, people within the dealership put “stuff” in the CRM, and I call it stuff, as data would indicate something measurable and of value and there is little of value there. Then they try to use the “stuff” for communication and email is always the venue of delivery. So, the stuff is inaccurate and includes much duplicates and the email as a mode of communication that requires further reference is almost obsolete, both result in failure. The dealer, rightly expects results from this whale that he has installed and all he hears is that the “whale can’t swim” and he gets more and more frustrated and of course as always the employees blame the CRM and as we all like our employees and tend to listen to them the dealer cancels the contract and installs yet another CRM and the vicious cycle keeps going on and on.

Is this the fault of the CRM producing companies; no not at all, is it the fault of dealership employees no not them either. What is the source of this lack of results and who is to blame? The answer as stated above is deeply embedded in the whole idea of using CRM in the automotive world in its present form. The automotive consumer actually, as a rule, likes and wants to be in contact with “their” dealer. This is evidenced by the fact that many “OEM” run dealerships trying to be more “Dell” like where the dealer/stock holder decision maker is no longer present have not succeeded. The “Ford Retail Network or FRN”; (Ford Motor Company Case Study written by Jason Austin, Denine Rood and Jeanne Sands) launched in 2000 where Ford bought the dealerships from the local dealers and tried to operate them as a whole is a great example of above. Here the OEM bought the dealerships to try and test best business practices and reduce cost. This was a testing ground for OEM operated dealerships. The result was so poor that Ford ultimately sold those dealerships back to individual dealers. Many dealer groups are cognoscente of this fact and make great efforts to personalize their interaction with customer.

So, the consumer wants to and likes to be able to communicate with dealership employees and likes to feel that there is a place or a person where “the buck actually does stop”. However, as dealerships are run today to “communicate” with dealership employees by the customer is extremely difficult, especially in an emergency case. Imagine a customer who has had their car just serviced and is driving down the street and has an issue with the same car. What is his recourse? Call the dealership and get the same service advisor? We all know how that will turn out! The customer has nowhere to go to be able to seamlessly and easily communicate with the dealership people. He gets angry and posts not so nice reviews. All along the dealer thinks he is managing his customer remember he just bought a CRM, why is this customer angry? So, another problem with CRM is that it has really nothing to do with customer other than just being a repository of data, or better put “stuff”.

It is also highly functional and requires an aggressive knowledge of software usage, not usually available in a dealership employee which is expected to use this tool. The management also has little time and know how to manage this thing so the “M” also fails and the outcome of no “C” and no “M” is no “R”. Meaning lack of customer engagement and lack of subsequent management leads to no relationship with the very valuable customer and hence no value gained from using this cumbersome device.

Proving return on investment on CRM is right up there analogous to proving exactly what is causing the global warming. Is it all CO2 caused by humans or the earth is going through a cycle of its own?

June 7, 2012

AIADA’s 6th Annual Auto International Industry Summit held late last month in Washington, D.C. was a hit, reports AIADA Chairman Ray Mungenast. He writes in his latest blog post that he can’t stop thinking about a common theme he heard from nearly ALL of the Summit’s speakers: The 2012 election will be a game changer. This week, in Wisconsin, we got a preview of how the election might shake out. Voters there sided with Republican Governor Scott Walker in a recall election just 18 months into his first term. The voters’ choice to support Walker and actually EXPAND his margin of victory from 2010 is heartening. But the fact that a recall, an exceedingly rare event in American politics, occurred at all shows that unions aren’t afraid to spend big this election cycle. To make sure that good sense wins out nationwide in November, dealers MUST get involved. That means joining AIADA’s grassroots network, donating to AFIT-PAC, meeting with your legislators at your dealership, and supporting the candidates who best represent our interests. But the most important thing you can do is pretty simple: vote. And work to make sure your employees have the time to vote and access to a balloting station. Read the rest of Mungenast’s latest column on the importance of November’s elections here.

Every day brings some new bit of information — or hype — about social business. If you actively follow the social space, it's easy to get caught in the never-ending stream. If you don't, you may find all the talk about social overwhelming. So it's useful to step back, gain some perspective and see the bigger picture.

And it is a big picture. Communication revolutions like this have happened before, but you have to go back to Gutenberg in 1450 to find one as significant. Before Gutenberg's printing press, monks laboriously produced written manuscripts and few people could read. The printing press changed all that, ushering in an era of mass communication.

The combination of the Internet, social media, and mobile devices ushers in an era of mass collaboration. These new technologies allow anyone to connect to anyone and everyone, at any time — and there are already signs that the relationships we have with ourselves, with each other, and with our institutions are changing in response.

We are still early in this social revolution, so exactly how these changes play out is yet to be determined. But the general outline is coming into view along six trajectories. As you read each one, ask yourself how well they apply to your organization or work. Your answers will tell you more about where you are in the social revolution than how many likes you have on Facebook or followers on Twitter.

1. Media: From Audience to Community

The first shift relates to media and the evolution of audience to community. For five hundred years, we have lived in a world of broadcast media. We are accustomed to thinking about media as a channel to distribute a message to an audience. But as "one-to-many" becomes "many-to-many," our audiences become communities. Audiences once passive, anonymous, and isolated are suddenly active, empowered, and connected. You aren't giving a lecture anymore; you are hosting a dinner party. Your success is determined by how well you connect people together and keep the conversation going.

Running an auto dealership in today’s world is a complex proposition.  There are many disparate departments.  There is the DMS that was developed years ago and requires a great deal of babysitting, knowledge and care and as this is the age of Internet and fast communication there are many other  software’s and complex tools that require attention and proper usage.  OF course any business with large constituent customers and employees has to deal with a complex environment.  This is the age of information and the user that can best manage to lasso this wild beast, tame it and use it is the winner.  There are many parameters that come into play in such a complex business world but one of the most important one has to do with the ability of the leader to truly instill a process or decision made at his company.  It is not necessarily the perfection of the tool, or the beauty of the process that matters, but the rigid requirement of adhering to those processes under all circumstances.

I have had the honor of running companies as well as being a mother.  Yes at times a daunting task, but the motherhood side has taught me a very important lesson.  That is your employees are not too different than your children.  You as a leader tend to care for your employees as your relatives and learn to bond with them and care for them and become attached to them, may be not quite as fiercely as your immediate family but pretty similarly.   I have caught myself becoming resentful of a client who directly attacked one of my employees even if possibly he was right.  IT takes great self control to question someone we see and work with everyday.  That is why some of the worst embezzlements and crimes are performed by those very close to the victim.  We tend to bend the rules when it comes to someone we care for be it our kids or employees and if we are the president and CEO that “employee” might be someone of high level who could really damage our company knowing or unknowingly if he made a serious mistake.

As a mother, I learned that certain rules could not be broken.  That means the rule cannot EVER be broken, not may be or sometime but EVER.  This is to the benefit of the child and the whole family.  And, if a child broke that rule, he or she has to realize the repercussions were serious.  As an example when kids started to drive, they were told that drinking and driving don’t mix and if you do drink and drive and you are lucky to survive it without harm to you or another person your car will be parked.  This rule was cast in stone and had no buts or ifs about it.  Now, this is a serious rule but there are many processes in business that if not followed properly could have similar devastating effects.

As dealers, we buy solid good tools and products and of course mandate training for these tools but when it comes to attending the training and being held responsible we allow our mangers to do as they please.  The “well we don’t do things like that here” is very often heard when training dealership personnel.  The fact that may be their lack of success so far has had to do with the fact that “they did not do things” the right way does not occur to these employees and of course usually no one of higher management is there to assure adherence.    And as I said above who do we listen to?  Our darling employees who will bad mouth the product and the process until for the millionth time they have again gotten the dealer to cancel yet another tool as “being not worthy”, buggy or just not good enough for their  esteemed business.

I had always believed that long contracts are a bad idea as they bind people to requirements that are not fair.  But now, I believe that in today’s automotive world they might be the only way that a complex tool, training or process can get foothold before getting tossed because of the employees lack of desire to learn and the management’s lack of capability to hold them accountable to processes and training.  Jim Zeigler, had written an article about this same issue in the Dealer Magazine, date January 2012.  He indicates that he will not train at a dealership unless the dealer principal agrees to force the mangers to adhere to the training processes and take it seriously Article: Training the Manager.  I  agree with him greatly in this mandate.  Unfortunately in this business the employees are transient, but it seems that the management feels that solid processes and tools can be too.  There is nothing more damaging to a business than this attitude.  Think of a family’s chance of survival if every member followed the rules when they wished bad mouthed new plans and responsibilities and did as they liked.  Can such a family survive and thrive?  This is not too different than a businesses’ chance of survival with the same type of attitude.

Communication is usually defined as an exchange of thoughts and ideas between two or more people. Here the emphasis is on the words two or more. As a rule, most relational problems occur when one person does all the talking and the other is never given the opportunity to express themselves. Marriages are often broken due to lack of “communication” where one is throwing words at another but never truly listening to what the other partner’s wants and needs are. In fact relationships are only successful if the feelings and opinions of both sides are heard and adhered to. The most successful relationships follow the rule of when one member speaks the other “truly” listens. Not just speak and then act like listening or just simply speak with the assumption that after all you know what is good for the other and so what “you” have to offer must be the final solution.

This rule of communication does not only apply to a relationship between two people but that of businesses and their consumers as well. It is well known that the most successful companies have a few required rules that they adhere to and one of the most important rule is to communicate with your clients and know what they want and how happy they truly are with your services and then form your products and services accordingly. Secondly always have an eye to the future and what your consumers will want and how “they” will change. Many major companies have met their demise in “shouting” their ideas at their customers assuming that what they are “shouting” is what the customer is “hearing” and of course reacting to and never stopping to evaluate their consumer base and communicate with them to truly know what they think of them. GM is a glaring example of this one sided communication with the customer. They built what they thought was good for the customer. They built what, they famously believed was, “what they did best” never wondering if what they built was what the consumer thought was “Best” for them.

The automobile dealerships of today are not run too differently. We serve our customer, good naturedly, in the best way we think. We put on a website that we and the OEM think is the best looking one and using our CRM we send out email templates that our customers “must” like. Surly, the templates are engaging, beautiful and our customers must like them. We do not stop and ask first does the customer get our beautiful email template in its entirety? And if he does get it does he like the fact that we take the liberty to fill his mail box with our “stuff”? What service do we really provide him other than the fact that we hope our template will stick and he will buy another car. Have we ever stopped to think that is it possible that our fancy templates and its periodical appearance in his mail box might even anger him? If we are asking him to buy from us what do we do in return for him to make his life easier that does not have a, so to speak, string attached? What about our website? It is after all our dealership in the World Wide Web but we do little to spruce it up and rebuild it. Do we not fire our employees when a customer walks in the show room and goes unattended? How many customers visit our virtual showroom and go “unattended” do we even know they came for a visit?

As an entrepreneur and a dealer you have survived the debacle of the last four years. Why? Mostly because dealers are ingenious and do look to the future even if they are grounded greatly by their OEM. Do not assume that web site and CRM are taking care of your customer communication needs. Remember nothing ever comes back from the customer in CRM or website they are one sided “communication” tools that will not satisfy the consumer of this century.

Dealership

So, in the last Blog we discussed the benefits of the Autowall to the dealership customer. In this Blog we will discuss the benefits to the dealership. First and foremost the dealership can communicate easily and seamlessly with their customer base directly. If they want the customer to see a special they do not have to email that customer they can just post that special on the wall for all to see or post it on specific profiles. No more sending extensive emails that get lost in the great World Wide Web and no one is sure if they are ever received or even seen. The Autowall is an application where the movement of the customer on the Wall is measurable and visible. Hence the dealer now can tell which advertisement is receiving more attention. Or which widgets tend to receive more clicks and therefore the dealer can measure customer trends and gain knowledge of customer interests and then tailor further advertising to match the interest.

Dealership data is also tremendously valuable, and few dealers know how to receive revenue from the valuable data base of their constituents. The concept of “Adds-On” dealer has been born to address this tremendous revenue generating opportunity. Here the dealership allows other service providers or retailers to post advertisements on his Wall, which is visible to his constituent customers and employees. For this great opportunity afforded that retailer the dealer can and should charge a fee. The revenue generated from this opportunity can easily offset the usage costs of the AutoWall and provide a nice stream of revenue. For a change here the dealer makes money as he uses a service rather than always paying for that service.

Lastly, most web sites designed for a dealership are static boring and never changing. Although the dealership pays monthly for these sites they are always the same. The web site of a dealership is their presence on the World Wide Web and many customers walk into those “doors” far before they do the physical dealership without anyone having any knowledge of such and just as many are turned away by the not useful difficult to maneuver web sites. The question I would like to ask is what is the rule when a customer walks into your dealership? Do you just allow him to roam around your dealership unattended? Try and find a car he likes by himself? And if he did not succeed do you just let him walk away unnoticed? If the answer to all of above is NO, then why are you letting this go on in your virtual dealership?

The Autowall lets you know who came on site, where they went, what they looked at and what was of interest to them. Would you not like to gain this knowledge, while you are also making money from your hard earned customer base just by their presence on the Wall? Another great advantage of the Autowall is its ability to store content. This content is not only relevant information for the customer on product safety, product use and other pertinent information, but also moves the Autowall higher and higher in the search engine optimization. The search engine crawlers of today are highly sensitive to words packed together just so that the site is elevated in the search results. However, true relevant content is the best and most effective way of promoting your presence on the World Wide Web.

Can you afford to be without this tool?

Customer

     This series will discuss what’s in it for each and every constituent using the AutoWall. The sign of a successful tool is one that every constituent benefits by using it. The most important user of any business is their customer base. We business holders have and should first and foremost focus on services and tools that benefit our clients. The constituent who benefits most from the usage of the AutoWall is the customer. How is that? That is what this blog aims to address. When communicating with clients as to one of the most aggravating issues when contacting their service provider be it an auto dealer or any other, most indicate finding and communicating with the right person within the company who can address their concern easily and in a timely manner is the number one issue. Some, of the most successful and funniest advertisements have to do with customer treatment when calling a company and trying to communicate with someone within the company. The customer could email someone at the dealership, but who is that person and when will they respond if the request is urgent? They can call the dealership but usually after a lengthy wait they end up leaving a message which will end in a pile and usually goes unanswered.

     So, the customer wants to communicate with their favorite salesman and they do not remember who that guy was? What do they do, call the dealership and ask who? And where does that call go. How about service advisors? Who was the guy they liked so well? How do you find again who that person was? And most importantly, if a service was performed on the customer’s car what was the nature of that reapir, how long ago was that? What is the next service? Supposing a customer just had their car serviced and he is driving the car and the car again has similar problems, how does the customer know exactly what was the service performed, what they paid for and what is their recourse if the service done did not address the need.

     The Autowall addresses exactly the problems portrayed here. The Autowall is a community networking tool for the auto industry through which the whole community can communicate with one another. Who is the community? All employees of the dealership, all prospects and all customers who have had any transactions with the company are members of the community. They each have their own profile. However, unlike the profiles of most familiar social networking tools that have to do with a “personal” profile, this is more about the vehicular profile. Meaning every member of the community has their vehicle list. This includes employees as in many cases they are also customers as well. This “profile” is only visible by those with “rights and privileges” to see it. No customer has a right to access the profile of another. All company members can access those customers to whom they are assigned. Which means the salesman can access “his own” customers the service advisors the same, but if this is a group dealership each dealership manger can access his own customers, but only “group mangers” can access all. On each profile, a user can load their own picture with a minimal description of themselves. But each user has a list of their won vehicles and all the repairs done to that vehicle in chronological order. Each user also has his own list of appointments and their “wish list” of any car they would like to have if that vehicle type entered the inventory. Needless to say total access to inventory is available to all.

The impetus for installing this tool is the following:

1. The technician who is the real actor diagnosing issues is seldom in a “live” communication with consumer
2. The “Vehicle Health Report”, better known as the Multipoint Inspection VHR, is usually completed after the fact and printed in paper form only
3. By the next time the customer comes back the Multipoint Inspection VHR is destroyed and very hard to reproduce causing a great deal of “well, we told you last time on the Multipoint Inspection VHR” comments which are non-productive
4. The present form of the Multipoint Inspection VHR has no actual pricing for customer to be able to make an informed decision.
5. Dealership loses revenue, customer is unhappy as car was not properly fixed! All in all a very unfortunate situation. Service department abandonment happens here.

How Does techWALL work?

1. Customer is received in service line; vehicle issues are diagnosed and vehicle is dispatched to technician.
2. Technician logs into techWALL locates customer initiates a “Vehicle Health Report”, Multipoint Inspection VHR
3. Once completed he submits the Multipoint Inspection VHR, which then the system forwards the technician completed Multipoint Inspection VHR to Parts department with an email notifying Parts of its existence
4. Parts prices the item chosen and clicks submit
5. The partially completed Multipoint Inspection VHR is then submitted to the original Service Advisor who is also notified of its completion
6. The advisor then completes labor cost on VRH and clicks submit
7. This complete Multipoint Inspection VHR with actual cost associated is communicated via techWALL to customer. A text or email also notifies customer of its existence.
8. Customer has rights to decline any item they wish. The system will re-price accordingly based on customer decision
9. Once customer clicks submit his decision is then communicated to the advisor who can take action accordingly
10. All items declined by customer are kept in the Multipoint Inspection VHR for future reference and kept as “declined” services
11. Once service is completed PayWALL will take over and communicate to customer the vehicle is ready and offers them the option to pay on line if they wish.

     

Automotive service is one of the few places where a customer still has to come to dealership and in many cases still stand in front of a cashier at the end of a busy day to pay and pick up vehicle.  This makes for a bad experience even if the service department has done their job expertly.  So, why not reduce employee cost, and improve customer experience by allowing them to pay on line?  This seamless, easy to use system takes little to install, literally requires no employee training and best yet it's reasonable to buy. Why PayWALL as a tool of choice for Service-Pay-Online:

1. The company developing the tool has over 20 years of experience developing enterprise level tools that address the needs of the automotive vertical such as CRM.

2. With all the technology available to the auto dealership of today, their consumer's have to still come to the dealership to pay service at the end of day

3. PayWALL allows the customer not only to pay but realize that their car is ready when it is

4. PayWALL can deliver the entire invoice to a mobile device

5. PayWALL is certified with most DMS with bi-directional interface

6. PayWALL allows a customer to use PayPal and other trusted payment partners' interfaces to pay using their own credit card for further security. In this way the consumer's credit card number is not visible to dealership employees

7. PayWALL delivers messages via text or post or email

8. PayWALL has agreement with PayPal that our clients get their funds automatically without having to ask

9. PayWALL provides the information on "paid" service directly to the accounting department and service department. No one has to pass data from one department to another

10. Using this system the dealership does not have to make a customer go through verification when they use another family member's credit card, as the driver can forward the payment request to the "authorized" card holder for payment.

11. A dealership can also use PayWALL for direct text marketing to their client base. A tremendous money maker!

12. PayWALL can be used to text marketing to "declined" services consumers reminding them of the importance of the service they have missed.

13. In short PayWALL is not only a customer satisfaction enhancement tool, it is also a very powerful marketing tool as well.

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Neighborhood word of mouth used to count a lot for dealerships. Now, as Volkswagen dealers are learning, it's much more about the stars, reports Automotive News. Volkswagen of America this year looked at the star ratings achieved by its 600 dealers on Google reviews and other web sites, said Charlie Taylor, VW's general manager of digital marketing. The results were eye-opening, Taylor said. VW found that dealers who attained an average score of four stars or better (out of five) on consumer reviews received 32 percent more traffic to their web sites from Google searches than those with two stars or fewer. "Star ratings have a profound effect on traffic," Taylor said. Dealers are learning new steps to monitor and boost their ratings, such as actively asking customers for reviews within 48 hours of a vehicle sale or service. When customers are fresh from the experience, they are most likely to write a positive review. Dealers are also finding that true reputation management requires constant attention. Bad consumer reviews posted on Google and elsewhere can turn off shoppers, who use the web more than ever to research vehicle purchases and services. For more on what internet ratings and reviews mean for today’s dealers, click here.

Hyundai Motor America CEO John Krafcik said his company expects U.S. auto sales to top 14 million units in 2012, raising its estimate by about half a million vehicles. "The market was stronger than we thought it would be in the first quarter," Krafcik said during a press event on Thursday. "We actually outsold our (own) sales plan." If the first quarter sales pace continued, automakers would sell about 14.5 million cars and trucks. But, reports The Detroit News, Krafcik, whose company has consistently outperformed the industry and wrested market share from its rivals, said that selling rate isn't sustainable. Krafcik said the strong results for January, February, and March were helped by mild weather and rising gasoline prices. "We haven't seen that much segment shifting – yet," Krafcik said, noting that vehicles of every size are getting better gas mileage these days. He said the weather has pulled ahead some sales that would have happened later in the year, which is why Hyundai predicts a cooling in the sales rate. "A lot of it depends on jobs and housing still, which continue to improve.” Read more about John Krafcik’s 2012 sales outlook here.

Auto purchases have exceeded a 14 million annual rate in each month this year, the strongest performance since early 2008. Government data show motor-vehicle output contributed half of the first quarter’s 2.2 percent economic growth. The resurgence – from assembly lines and dealerships to steelmakers, freight lines and loan providers – signals the U.S. is headed for lasting, robust growth, says Joseph Carson, director of global economic research at AllianceBernstein LP in New York. “We’re starting to see the spark in the auto sector that was missing initially” during the recovery from the recession, Carson told Bloomberg. “It tells you there’s a certain momentum. A whole host of areas could see the multiplier effect. We’re at the beginning of a very long and durable cycle.” Even if the industry’s rebound continues, sales haven’t returned to the pre-recession pace of 16.1 million in 2007, and its share of GDP is well below the record 4.8 percent in 1968. “We still have a ways to go, but there’s progress,” said George Magliano, senior principal economist at IHS Automotive in New York. For more on the auto industry’s impact on the economy, and the upcoming election, click here.