Computers, tablets, and smartphones are changing the way people interact with your dealership. They’re also changing the way your employees accomplish their work.

While no technology can fully replace the human touch employees can deliver, it can help them gather the right information to make the right decisions and better serve customers.

Let’s look at some of the areas of your dealership where investing in technology can help employees, not replace them:

1. Greeting Customers
   Customers are more likely to feel valued when the salesperson knows their name, what they’ve purchased, and when they’ve been to your store.

   But, without the helpful hand of technology, your current customers would always be strangers.

   Newer telephone tools for dealerships help employees identify current customers and their reason for calling. Having that caller information helps employees greet customers by name and direct customers to the right employee.

   For walk-ins, the same type of treatment is possible with advanced CRM technology. With just a customer name, the salesperson can tell if the guest is a new or repeat customer. For a repeat customer, the salesperson can see all past history with your dealership.

2. Appraising Trade-ins
   Appraisers need a lot of data to make a profitable decision about whether to retail or wholesale a trade and how much to offer the customer for the trade.

   Without today’s used vehicle management tools, an appraiser would spend several hours, perhaps an entire day, researching similar vehicle prices and looking through previous sales history to see how a particular vehicle has performed at your store.

   Appraisers would still be flipping through a paper manual to find book values. They would never know what’s going to be at auction until they arrived. Plus, they would never know confirmed vehicle history information.

   Now, technology compiles all of this data and more into easy, readable nuggets of information. Your appraiser can easily access the vehicle’s history, auction value, and retail value. Plus, the appraiser can quickly determine whether to retail or whole sale the vehicle.

3. Working the Service Drive
   Have you ever had a customer claim the vehicle was damaged while in the shop? Your service team knows the vehicle was like that when it arrived. But without proof, you have to shell out extra cash to cover repairs.

   Today, service advisors can use electronic service write-up tools to record pre-existing vehicle damage and get the customer to sign-off before service begins. Service advisors also can use these tools to present up-sell opportunities to the customer.

   In this case, technology helps service advisors work smarter and protects them and your dealership from false claims. It also supports the face-to-face interactions that build rapport and real value.

Bottom Line
An employee will always need to greet your customers, build a relationship, decipher data, and make a profitable decision.

With the help of technology, employees can work smarter and faster to deliver better results for your dealership and create a better experience for your customers.

Take advantage of the advanced tools and services available for dealerships, and let technology help, not replace, your employees.