The digital revolution is here to stay in automotive retail.
When researching and buying vehicles, consumers expect flexible digital experiences that allow them to transition to traditional sales models seamlessly at their discretion. Whether online, in-store, or both, consumers demand journeys of convenience, transparency, and personalization.
By better understanding shifting consumer behaviors, the various barriers dealers face, ideal omnichannel future states, and strategies for digital maturity, you’ll be better equipped to adapt to the innovations accelerating within the industry as it evolves.
The Challenges of Digital Transformation
Today’s consumers take a digital-first approach to research and shopping comparisons, including vehicles. Consumers now expect flexible omnichannel experiences that allow them to move seamlessly between online and in-store interactions. They expect convenience and personalization. There has been an acceleration of these digital-centric preferences in recent years, with more and more buyers seeking contactless purchasing and paperwork.
However, it’s not enough to just place a lead capture or digital retail experience on your website, leaving disjointed processes between online and in-store. This fragments the customer journey, requiring frustrating repetitions across channels. To deliver the experience consumers now expect, dealers and industry partners must digitally connect legacy processes into centralized, omnichannel journeys.
Updating journeys to fit the contemporary market means adopting retail technologies that unify online and in-store steps—from vehicle search to credit applications to F&I purchasing. Adapting so you are meeting customers’ digital-first expectations is now a business imperative for automotive retail success.
Essential Features for Digital Retail Success
As digital innovation becomes functionally mandatory, dealers and industry partners face an array of technology solution options. There are six key criteria when evaluating solutions:
Flexibility & Customization: Seek solutions that integrate with your existing technology stack and workflows. Opt for modular components and phased adoption. Select between platforms with APIs to customize experiences or turnkey plugins for ready implementation.
Omnichannel Functionality: Unifying online and in-store steps is essential. Ensure platforms provide centralized data and workflows across channels, with the ability to pick up customer journeys seamlessly across touchpoints.
F&I Inclusion: Dealers focus on more than just selling the car to in-store customers. F&I is a pivotal part of the process, so it should not be excluded online.
Consumer Journey Focus: Solutions should simplify and optimize the customer experience, guiding the consumer through intuitive key steps, from vehicle selection to credit applications to trade-ins and F&I purchasing. Minimize friction through thoughtful and tailored user experience design, leaving no surprises for the consumer later in the journey.
Scalability: With evolving automotive retail, solutions must be adaptive and extendable to handle changing demands. Seek trusted platforms dedicated to continually meeting evolving consumer expectations and delivering new capabilities.
Data & Analytics: Harnessing customer journey analytics is key for optimizing experiences and gaining actionable insights. Prioritize solutions that derive rich data to inform your team where a given consumer is in their journey, how they can help guide them down the funnel, and provide potential post-sale opportunities.
Security: With financial and personal data, stringent security and compliance are non-negotiable. Ensure your selected digital platform has rigorous data security and identity verification measures available.
By mapping options against these benchmarks, dealers and industry partners can zero in on optimized technologies tailored to their unique needs and capabilities. Focus on solutions that check all the boxes to meet rising consumer expectations and deliver a competitive advantage as automotive retail transforms.
Unlocking Value Through Digital Retail
Implementing the right digital retail solutions unlocks immense value for dealers and industry partners. You can increase sales and satisfaction by unifying consumer journeys across touchpoints.
Seamless omnichannel platforms can boost conversions by minimizing friction while optimizing workflows. Ensure that F&I Managers receive training on digital retail tools, allowing them to maintain a crucial role in the customer journey and stay actively involved in the point of sale.
Though transformation requires investment, the payoff makes the effort worthwhile. The potential gains of digital retail presence are vast for those with the vision to realize it.
Plotting the Course to Digital Maturity
Transitioning to digital is a journey—one that requires a strategic roadmap. By putting the customer journey first, dealers can align objectives and seek integrated solutions that break down data and siloed processes to unify experiences across channels.
Take an iterative approach—implement changes incrementally, starting with pilots to test and learn before going all-in. Invest in training your teams on new tech and processes, building a culture of constant optimization fueled by customer analytics and feedback loops.
Leverage technology partners who can provide guidance and support. But don’t delay in taking those critical first steps; with a phased approach, the path forward becomes clearer as digital maturity grows.
As old working methods evolve, there will be bumps in the road. But you can ease the journey by equipping teams with the knowledge and tools needed to navigate the transition. Dealers and industry partners able to chart a course today will continue driving ahead as the digital road stretches endlessly into the future.
Looking to the Future
The pace of change in automotive retail will only accelerate as consumer adoption of digital continues to grow.
Dealers and industry partners must focus on choosing flexible solutions that enable exceptional customer experiences across channels now and in the future. Though the road won’t always be smooth, the digital shift brings tremendous opportunities for those able and willing to lead the way.
By embracing innovation, automotive retailers can build capabilities that drive sustainable success through whatever twists and turns lie ahead.