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Here is an account from an anonymous car dealer who has had problems with their automotive online reputation. Through automotive reputation monitoring, they managed to solve their problems and see their sales improve.
A car dealer’s story
My auto dealership has been going pretty well, but ever since we started building a presence online, customers have begun to explore what we have to offer on websites and search results. We have a presence on review sites and social media, and we have been getting a few comments here and there.
I was told that at the beginning, we might not get comments at all, but if there were reviews, they would be the negative ones. People love to complain on social media or review sites. So when we got our first reviews, we had a smattering of compliments, but we got quite a few negative ones. I assigned one of my salespeople whom I knew was savvy online to take care of these reviews.
My first piece of advice to her when she was doing her automotive online reputation monitoring and review was to get used to dealing with negative comments. We all found that there are a few negative comments people leave out of malice. However, a good number of these comments were, it turns out, well-meaning. They wanted to see our business improve and they had feedback we found valuable. If there were malicious comments, we could check out their stories and see if there is any truth in what they say. Most of the time, anonymity makes it difficult. On the other hand, good reputation management will treat most negative feedback as something we will engage with in a polite and professional way. That was my second piece of advice.
So what did she end up doing? If she was not responding to social media or other online queries, she often did her automotive reputation monitoring and review. She watched out for online feedback, paying attention to the positive ones and seeing how these can be used to help us reward our best employees. When it came to negative reviews, she took the initiative to reach out to the reviewers and ask clarifying and follow-up questions politely. If she knew that the customers were in the right, after doing some research and review, she responded to their complaints with honesty and candor. Here are more helpful tips.
The results turned out to be good for us. As time went on and people saw how we responded to feedback, we got more interest in our dealership. This translated into people choosing us for their vehicle purchases. As we took the feedback people left online, both positive and negative, as challenges and opportunities for us to improve our business, we found that our online reputation improved. Automotive online reputation monitoring and review helped us gain more business in our area and beyond as customers saw that we were trustworthy partners in their car buying decision-making.
But do you remember what I told you at the beginning? One of my salespeople was handling this, which means she had no time to do her main job: SELL. That’s when I decided to partner with Digital Air Strike. The team monitors our dealership’s online reputation, responds to reviews, even surveys customers at a cost much less than even a summer intern!
If you are still hesitant about working on your online reputation, know that if you don’t pay attention, it will kill your business. Make the choice today to invest in online reputation monitoring and review. It helped our business grow, and it will help yours too.
