Why Should Auto Dealers Focus on Their Online Reputation?

Reputation Staff Writer

A good online reputation management (ORM) platform encompasses all aspects of a dealership’s online presence — and can also be used as a key way for a dealership to improve their customer experience.

Not only can dealerships and OEMs learn a lot from information left on review and social sites, they can use it to improve their operations and increase revenue.

As part of a campaign alongside Automotive Management Online, Reputation.com visited Robins & Day’s Coventry head office to discuss how ORM impacts their business. Robins & Day are a 41-strong dealership group who are part of the PSA Group, headquartered in Coventry with a presence in England, Scotland and Wales.

We spoke with Robins & Day’s Marketing Manager, Harry Pennington, who began looking for an ORM solution in 2016. “I was challenged to improve our online reputation and the reviews that customers were giving us — not just Robins & Day as a dealer group, but our dealerships individually,” said Pennington.

Customers can leave feedback on a wide range of sites — search engines such as Google and Bing, social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, and industry-specific sources such as Cars.com. But Robins & Day’s biggest issue lay with Google My Business.

“We have over 40 dealerships and we had a limited amount of reviews,” said Pennington. “If someone has a poor experience, they’ll find a way to broadcast it. But if they have a good experience, they’re not necessarily going to leave a review. As a result, the great customer experience we provide wasn’t reflected accurately online.”

The right ORM platform encompasses the entire review landscape — including anywhere a customer might leave feedback. And, a trusted ORM provider offers guidance on all the various elements of managing online reputation.

Since implementing Reputation.com, Robins & Day have seen dramatic results:

  • 1.84m views of their business listings, generating 50.9k inbound calls in 2017, and 1.81m views generating 50.1k phone calls so far in 2018
  • Review volume has risen by over 2000%, from 161 in 2015, to 3,388 in 2017, and they’ve generated 2,570 so far in 2018
  • Review responses have increased by over 2250% between 2016-2018

Watch the full video with Robins & Day, produced alongside AM-Online, on Reputation.com’s YouTube channel.

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