As the summer comes to a close and the school year ramps up, your Service Department might be suffering from a decrease in traffic and revenue. In fact, you may be looking for some creative ideas to drive additional traffic and revenue to your Service Department this fall. Even if you aren’t suffering from a decrease in traffic and revenue, you might want to take advantage of these tips to fall into additional revenue by targeting overdue customers.
Define Overdue
First things first, you’ll need to determine which customers are overdue for vehicle maintenance. Sometimes this step can be difficult, since maintenance schedules differ from make to make and customer driving habits differ from driver to driver. Be sure to assess these factors when defining which customers are overdue for vehicle maintenance work.
Determine What Went Wrong
Typically customers who don’t return for service are either just bad at keeping up with vehicle maintenance or have had a bad experience at your dealership. If it’s the first reason, then communicating with them about the importance of vehicle maintenance and reminding them that they are overdue for service may be all it takes to drive them to your dealership. However, if it’s the latter, you may have more work to do. Think about including some wording around their experience during their last visit and recommending that they reach out to you if they have concerns about this experience. Some will ignore your email, but the customers who do respond will provide you an avenue to make things right and recapture a potentially lost customer.
Get Creative
In a world where consumers are being bombarded with marketing, your dealership has to find a way to stand out from your competition and the sea of marketers vying for their attention. This is where you need to get creative. Think about your marketing, how well does it stand out? Think about the channels of delivery you use, are they the right ones to reach your audience? Thank about the offers you use, are they competitively priced? These are all factors that will help you get noticed by customers.
If you’ve seen a decrease in service traffic and revenue, don’t worry. By targeting overdue customers, your dealership will fall into additional revenue.