I have been working with auto dealers in New Jersey, evangelizing the importance of proactively managing their online reputations. Today, over 70 percent of consumers rely on the Internet to assist with their purchase of a new or pre-owned car.  In addition to learning about specific cars, there features, performance, reliability and cost, consumers are also checking out the reputation of the car dealers too.

Although the average car buying experience has increased considerably in the last decade, there is still “room for improvement” at many dealers.  Consumers, particularly women, are using online dealer reputations to avoid dealers that use high pressure and deceptive sales practices.

So it is critical that auto dealers be aware of what is being said about them online. But equally important is the matter of presenting a balanced reputation.

There are many online sites that allow consumer to post reviews. The common ones are Google Places, Yelp, Yahoo! Local, InsiderPages, MerchantCircle. In the automotive space there are sites like DealerRater and Edmunds that focus specifically on auto dealers.

The credibility of a dealers’ online reputation increases with the volume of reviews, the number of sites where reviews can be found and the consistency of the average rating. But, when a dealer has great reviews on a single site, particularly if it is a “paid site” where they have a “Certified” status and have consistently lower reviews on other sites, it sends up a BIG RED flag.  Consumers are not stupid and when they see this kind of disparity, their trust in you will naturally decrease as they question the integrity of your reputation.

And it is hard to hide. A basic Google search for auto dealers with in your area will typically uncover blatant abuses. The resulting Google map links ratings from multiple sites.

Auto Dealer search results on google and consumer reivews.

Consumers can click on the reviews to read the review and go the review site and see all of your reviews posted on each particular site.

So the basic lessons are, treat customers in the fashion that you want them to perceive your dealership and cultivate a consistent online reputation across many sites. Doing both well, will attract more prospects and enable you to convert more of them to customers.

Andrew Ward

Chief Trust Officer

Trust FX

For the last two weeks I have been calling on new car dealers in Central New Jersey and have a few observations.

My first observation is that the auto industry has done a very good job in the area of deploying Internet technology. Every new car dealer that I have met has a good website. They all provide useful links to help educate prospects about the various models, their features and options. Most of them have put their inventories online. So if you are looking for a particular car you can find a local dealer that has it without having to do a lot of driving or spending hours on hold, using the phone. So I would give car dealers a “B+” for the quality of their websites and I would give the industry an “A” for its near ubiquitous adoption of Internet technology. Only Realtors provide a similar quality and quantity of information that enables such a high degree of consumer self service.

My second observation is that for as advanced as most auto dealers are in deploying Internet technology they, seem to be totally unaware of the value of online reputations. Given the volume and value of information that today’s car buyers have access to, most consumers have a good idea of what they want to buy and what they are willing to pay for it. Talk about stiff competition. New Jersey consumers typically have 5 or more choices of where to buy a given car, all less than an hour drive away. So aside from inventory, customer experience is a key competitive differentiator.

But it is totally the norm for dealerships with expensive show rooms, great web sites and oceans of inventory to have an online reputation that consist of fewer than 10 reviews of which 50% – 80% are negative. Now I am talking about dealers that sell literally hundreds of cars every month and their online reputation’s over the last 3 to 4 years has like 7 reviews. Are you kidding me? Consumer reviews have the greatest impact on attracting new prospects and influencing purchase decisions than any other form of advertising.

So why are the online reputations of car dealers lagging so far behind e-commerce sites? Well I think that there are basically two reasons.

First deals with ease. With an online purchase the rating form is often presented at the time of purchase, so it is easy for customers to give a review while the purchase is fresh in mind. With the purchase or lease of a new car, you have a paper based transaction. To capture feedback requires customers to go online long after the purchase is made and who has time for that.

The second reason is the lack of an incentive for customers to do so. Unhappy customers are willing to spend hours and write volumes about their dissatisfied for just to dissuade future customers from making the same mistake. But those customers who are happy with their new cars and who are satisfied with their purchase experience are very content to enjoy their new car and forget the dealer as soon as they are out of sight.

Trust FX offers car dealers a simple solution that addresses both of these issues. First dealers give each customer a unique Trust FX key at the time of sale that provides simple instruction on how to give feedback which makes it easy. Our solution also enables dealers to give and incentive to compensate customer for their time. Incentives can typically take of the form of a service discount which encourages customers to return to the dealer for service. This also encourages loyalty and drives incremental revenues. It’s important to note that coupons are given to every customer regardless if their feedback is positive or negative.

Our service enables auto dealers to proactively manage their online reputations to drive superior businesses results and to monitor the quality of their customer’s experience.

Andrew Ward
Chief Trust Officer
Trust FX

People can and will say negative thinks about your business or practice and for any number of reasons. With literally thousands of free consumer review sites and millions of blogs, disgruntled or nefarious individuals as well as those with legitimate gripes have a huge platform to throw criticisms at your business and can do so with complete anonymity? Managing your online reputation is another cost of doing business that you must attend to.

Reputation management is increasingly important for local businesses as the large search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing actively look for consumer reviews on blogs and rating sites and include them in their search results. So, a negative comment placed on an obscure website or blog that you have never heard of can be linked prominently to your business unbeknownst to you. If your online reputation is silent except for a few negative reviews, this can have a very chilling effect on your largest and most efficient source of new leads.

According to a recent study by the Kelsey Group, 97 percent of people will go to the Internet to search for or research a product or local business before they make a purchase decision. The more important the purchase decision is, the more due diligence the average person is going to perform. The single largest influence on purchase decisions is consumer reviews. So creating a compelling online reputation from the voice of your customers needs to be a key plank in your marketing strategy of every local business.

It is virtually impossible to remove negative reviews from web sites and blogs even if you know they are there and it is a moving target. So your best defense is a good offense. If you have dozens or hundreds of authentic positive reviews across multiple rating sites this will mitigate the effect of errant negative reviews.

But how do you get your customers to give feedback? Well there are three things that must be put into place. First, it must be simple process. Second, their needs to be an incentive for their effort and lastly the reviews need to be authentic. Trust FX solves all three of these challenges in a very simple way. Using the Trust FX service, businesses give a unique “key” to each customer, client or patient at the time of sale or service delivery. The key has a message that invites your customers to help you serve them better by giving their anonymous feedback and provides instructions for giving feedback. It also includes an incentive from you for their efforts. Once a person gives feedback Trust FX serves your incentive to them which they can print out and use to buy additional services from you. Since a key is required to give feedback our system assures authenticity.

It has never been more important to manage your online reputation and it has never been easier to do so with Trust FX.

Andrew Ward
Chief Trust Officer
Trust FX