If only two-thirds of your customers feel satisfied with their experience, you have a long way to go. That’s an important lesson to draw from a new survey that looks at the state of the car buying industry.
Kelly Blue Book reports that 68 percent of buyers “pronounced themselves satisfied, compared to 60 percent nine years ago.” That figure, from the Drivers of Car Shopping Satisfaction survey (conducted by KBB’s parent company Cox Automotive), may sound like good news at first. And yes, it at least shows a trend in the right direction. But the rate of improvement is far too slow. It boils down to an increase of less than one percentage point per year.
To be fair, the automotive sector faces big, complex challenges — ongoing problems with inventory, rapidly changing customer expectations, new competition from sellers across the country willing to deliver cars to competitive markets, and more. All sorts of factors create new pressures that weren’t around, or weren’t as prevalent, nine years ago.
But there is good news. One of the most powerful determinants of satisfaction for car buyers — often the single most powerful of all — is communication. And fortunately, that is something businesses can generally control.
Don’t Let Your Communication Fall Short
The J.D. Power 2025 U.S. Customer Service Index (CSI) Study found that “communication shortfalls” are dragging down customer satisfaction. “Among the 10 most influential key performance indicators measured in the study, four are communication-related,” the company said. Those include “completely focusing on customer needs; keeping the customer informed of service status; service advisor immediately meeting with customer upon arrival; and contacting the customer after service to ensure satisfaction.”
It’s important to note that those factors come at different stages in the customer journey. Improving CX, the customer experience, requires a holistic solution that covers every stage.
I’ve seen what a challenge this can be. With so many moving parts to keep track of, hardworking automotive employees can’t possibly remember every customer’s most pertinent information at each touchpoint. That’s why solving this involves new technology.
The Power of a UCXM
AI technologies are game changers for just about every industry. So far, most car dealerships have not determined how to take advantage of them.
A survey from Lotlinx this year found that only 21 percent of dealers are using AI for customer relationships management and lead scoring, and “the majority are not capitalizing on these tools to improve customer engagement or operational efficiency.”
What dealerships need is a single system that tracks each customer at every stage. And the entire organization should operate within this system — from sales to service, finance, legal, business development and more. With this kind of unified customer experience management (UCXM) platform in place, everyone can see and update the same customer records in real time. The platform wraps in communications that take place on every platform — websites, apps, texts, phone calls (which are automatically transcribed), in-person visits, and more.
When the system is well designed, it also uses natural language processing to pull up key insights about each customer, including preferences, concerns, past experiences and a lot more. It can also automatically provide customers with updates about the status of deliveries or repairs. And it can remind AI or human agents to reach out to customers directly.
AI Can Boost Customer Satisfaction
IBM recently discussed the importance of this kind of technology for the automotive sector. It extolled the importance of car dealerships consolidating data “from various sources, resulting in a 360 view of each customer and shopper.”
Working with dealers, I’ve seen how transformative these can be, whether used by regional dealerships or international brands. To function well, they need as much information as possible — not only about the customer, but also about available stock, shipments, and more. So, it’s essential to end data silos and ensure your UCXM is given access to a wide array of records. All this can be done without sacrificing privacy or security.
In business, nothing is more important than delivering excellent CX. The Leader’s Guide to CX Trends in 2025, a study from Nextiva, found that 96 percent of CX leaders say their company leaders now recognize that the customer experience is a key driver of business outcomes.
One of the most important outcomes is having satisfied customers. Businesses that embrace technology to make this happen will speed ahead of the competition.
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