By Nathan Cooper
Automotive aftersales teams play a critical role in ensuring customer retention and revenues in an automotive retailer. Achieving a key KPI of 100% aftersales absorption allows more freedom within sales teams to build a range of flexible deals for customers, while still ensuring that all overheads are covered.
However, many of these teams are missing out on significant revenue opportunities by not using automotive analytics for decision-making. Automotive analytics can provide valuable insights into customer behaviour, vehicle performance and service operations, which can help dealerships and service centres optimise their service offerings, improve customer satisfaction and increase revenue.
How can automotive analytics make a difference?
One of the main ways that automotive analytics can help dealerships and service centres increase revenue is by identifying customer behaviour, for example what times of day are best to contact a customer to maximise conversion, or monitoring individual technician or service advisor performance when it comes to staff reviews.
By having quick and simple access to the data through a business intelligence platform, you can easily see trends in customer behaviour, what products and services customers are most likely to purchase and which key products and services you need to focus on to hit your target.
For example, data we see shows that customers are more likely to convert into a service booking on a Monday (30% conversion) compared to any other day of the week – with Thursday afternoons being the lowest converting time (20% conversion). By seeing this data and the trends, you can plan when and how to resource your teams accordingly.
How can it support my team’s individual performance?
Automotive analytics can also help dealerships and service centres optimise their service operations, leading to increased efficiency and productivity. By analysing data on technician performance or advisor performance, automotive analytics can identify areas for improvement and provide insights on how to streamline operations – from productivity, utilisation and efficiency to jobs booked and completed. Using the right automotive analytic tools can support better decisions and help with training needs in the future. This can lead to reduced service times, lower costs and increased revenue for the dealership or service centre.
It also saves time for management; by having pre-set dashboards in place, we see service managers saving on average 20 minutes per staff review in preparation time alone. Time that can be spent on other operations and supporting better customer outcomes.
What is the impact on my customer?
Finally, automotive analytics can help dealerships and service centres improve customer satisfaction, which can lead to increased revenue through repeat business and positive referrals. By analysing data on customer feedback and sentiment, automotive analytics can identify areas for improvement in service quality and customer experience. This can lead to increased loyalty and repeat business, as well as positive word-of-mouth referrals, which can drive new business.
In conclusion, automotive aftersales teams are missing out on significant revenue opportunities by not using automotive analytics for decision-making. By leveraging data insights to identify upselling and cross-selling opportunities, optimise service operations and improve customer satisfaction, dealerships and service centres can increase revenue and drive long-term success in the competitive automotive aftersales market.
To find out more about how REALinsights can support your business and aftersales teams, contact us today.
