Keeping clients loyal is essential to maintaining a successful business. There are a lot of auto shops and dealerships out there, and every one of them is fighting for your customers’ business. Simple, personal, and consistent messaging is one of the best ways to build customer loyalty. Asking customers for their feedback lets them know that you value their needs and their customer experience.

By automating your service messages in order to provide personalized automotive campaigns for each customer, you ensure that your customers keep coming back for service. By keeping a close eye on your customer feedback, you learn about your customers’ issues, complaints and questions before they take them to a public review site.

Keep Customers Up to Date with Personalized Service Messages

Service marketing, contacting a customer to suggest a service that their vehicle needs, is highly effective. Automate the service notification, appointment, and reminder process. When each customer comes in to the shop, enter the date and their mileage into your system as usual. Your automated solution takes this information and uses it to send out personalized service messages to each customer based on their individual vehicle needs.

All you have to do is create a series of generic service messages with recommendations based on various amounts of mileages. The solution decides which message to send to each customer based on your pre-set mileage specifications.

You also keep track of the condition of each client’s vehicle. By entering this information into your system, you can bring customers back in with personally targeted service messages. If customers decline service while they are in for their initial appointment, they will receive reminder notices that their tires are worn or they need an oil change.

These messages cater to each customer’s personal needs and keep customers coming back in for service. Rather than having to call every customer yourself to remind them of all their dates and individual appointments, the process is all automated.

Gain Direct Feedback from Your Customers

Before your customers have a chance to take their opinions and experiences public (through online reviews), seize the opportunity to hear their feedback directly. It’s always better to ask the customer what they liked and did not like right away than to hear negative feedback later on, especially in a public space like a review site. When you have an easy way to learn about customer issues right away, you can deal with them just as quickly.

Set up a quick automated survey so you can immediately learn how to improve your customer experience. Surveys are very simple to create and they are a highly effective way of gathering customer information. Often customers don’t have the time to talk about customer service issues in person or can’t think of any suggestions while they are in the shop.

After each customer’s visit, an automated survey is sent out to the customer to gather information about their experience. Customers can select answers from a scale or can write in their own answers. Keep your survey short and to the point so customers don’t lose interest. Many shops even offer an incentive, such as a coupon on the customer’s next service, to entice customers to complete the survey.

All information collected through your customer surveys is automatically sent back to your marketing automation solution. Use all this feedback information to optimize your customer service. Address any problems before customers go public with them. By listening to customers’ comments and making suggested changes, you improve your business and boost customer satisfaction. When customers have their complaints addressed right away, it shows a high level of commitment to great service.

Promote Your Positive Reviews

At the end of your automated survey, include a text box where customers can leave comments. Ask customers to check a box if they want to provide you with consent to use their comments publicly. When you get a great comment, share it on your social media pages and your website.

Real customer reviews build trust, confidence and loyalty. It always makes your message stronger when it comes right from your customers’ mouths. Also, customer comments may include positive aspects about your business that you have never even thought about promoting.

Social media posting is a very simple process to automate. Once you create a series of messages and schedule them to go out, you don’t have to waste time manually posting messages all the time.

Try Various Automated Marketing Solutions

Many marketing automation solutions offer a limited free trial. By trying different solutions for yourself, you can see which one is right for your needs. Look for solutions that enable you to provide each customer with personalized messages based on their vehicle needs. The best automated solutions include many different automotive marketing and communication tools in one. An all-in-one solution simplifies your customer communication process and saves your staff a lot of time.

Build loyalty with personalized messages and follow up your in-person service with simple surveys. By providing a more personal level of customer care, you ensure that your customers have the best possible experience at your shop or dealership.