Thoughts & Ideas

Auto Dealerships Review Monitoring and Reputation Management

Auto Dealerships Review MonitoringWhy Reputation Management and Review Monitoring for Your Auto Dealership?

Auto Dealerships succeed or fail based on customer satisfaction.  Did the purchaser like the sales person? Did they feel they were treated fairly?  Are they happy with the deal they received and the car they wound up purchasing?  Nothing will help a dealership grow, like good reviews from happy customers.  However, if a car purchaser is dissatisfied, for any reason, they are even more likely to write a review and, left unanswered, just a few negative reviews can slow business to a crawl.

Online reviews and ratings can tell you other things, like what sales person is doing the best job – or the worst.  What aspect of your dealership are customers happiest about? What aspect needs work?  A wealth of information regarding everything from the organization of your dealership and quality control to marketing is available by closely monitoring appropriate review, and rating websites.

Which Websites Are Most Important For Auto Dealership Review Monitoring?

DealerRater.com

According to the DealerRater website, this site is the global standard for car dealership reviews and research — and more than 14 million consumers are exposed to our reviewers’ content every month.

Edmunds.com

The well-known auto website, Edmunds.com offers car buyers a wealth of information regarding automobiles and auto purchasing.  This information includes ratings and reviews by individuals of car dealerships.

Cars.com

Dealer reviews enhance vehicle listings with verified customer feedback about a store’s sales and service departments, representing a free, powerful differentiator for a dealership’s inventory. And because Dealer Reviews are on Cars.com, dealerships can manage their reputation, and influence buying decisions right where consumers are shopping for their next vehicle.

Google Places

Businesses listed on Google Places and the accompanying reviews show up toward the top of the page on Google and Google Maps searches.  Auto Dealership reputation management needs to include Google Places.

Yelp

Yelp has about 100 million monthly unique visitors. Yelp offers businesses instant email notification of reviews.

When to Respond to Patron Reviews

If an auto dealership receives a negative review on any of these websites, someone in charge should respond to it within 48 hours.

How Does an Auto Dealership Keep Track of Reviews?

Keeping on top of what patrons are saying about you online can be a challenge.  How do you monitor all these review websites and protect your reputation?  You want to put yourself in a position to control, as much as possible, how you are perceived in all these “sharing” sites.

Here are some ideas on how to stay on top of and control your reputation online:

  • You can check these review sites yourself on a daily basis, but this can be time consuming and easy to forget.
  • Setting up a Google Alerts can be beneficial, however these do not always catch online comments and reviews.
  • Yelp offers businesses the free option of receiving e-mail notification every time a review is posted. You can sign up for this service and appoint someone on your existing staff to actively monitor these notifications.
  • We are offering a complete way of knowing what people are saying about you on the review websites completely free – FreeReviewMonitoring.com. Here, you can sign up to receive notifications each time your car dealership is mentioned on one of the important review websites.  By catching any negative reviews quickly, you can frequently change them into good reviews.  See our suggestions on how to respond to negative reviews.  You are showing that you care about your customers.

Online reviews and ratings have a huge effect on your auto dealership.  This new “word of mouth” cannot be ignored; instead you must harness and use it to nurture and grow your business and expand your happy client base.