Widewail is now providing an option for dealers to connect up-to-date customer reviews to the team members who provided the service with its newly launched Customer Clarity.
Driving the news: Widewail, an automotive customer intelligence platform, announced the new option this week.
Customer Clarity will connect information from reviews to a dealership’s DMS and tie reviews to repair orders and sales.
The data is pulled from responses to private review requests and public reviews on Google and other platforms.
Connecting the dots: By using the information and the reviewer’s details together, Customer Clarity can match it straight to a particular repair order to identify all the employees involved in the particular service.
Widewail CEO Cuyler Owens noted this link will present opportunities for coaching and training with the staff attribution to improve overall performance.
“It’s a really big update. If you think about the way normally you would say, ‘Hey, this review is about this service director, advisor, or salesperson,’” Owens said. “What we find is about 7% of the reviews actually name or list an employee, which means you have 7% attribution to a review, and we are ramping that up to more than half of the time we’re able to identify the entire staff that’s associated with that review, so you can coach everyone.”
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Getting the most out of staff: In beta testing with six of Widewail's customers, Owens said it came up as a way to clearly communicate areas that need improvement.
It showed actual customer feedback instead of a manager speaking without evidence, Owens explained.
“It’s a big move forward in the ability to get the best out of your staff, and really work on a higher level of fidelity about what your customers really want and expect,” Owens said.
Vast amount of data: Customer Clarity will also provide reports on customer sentiments and match them to the local market to allow comparisons against competitors.
Owens said the company has a database of more than 20 million reviews and has created 25 consumer-sentiment categories to provide benchmark analysis for dealers.
The benchmarked data will be available continuously, without the delay of waiting for customer satisfaction scores.
“So that they can say, ‘Here’s where you’re winning, here’s where you’re losing, here’s an opportunity that you have especially in the market,’” Owens said. “It’s a nice opportunity to really update the way these decisions are made.”
Bottom line: Tracking reviews and presenting actionable ways to address issues can help dealers boost customer retention in a competitive fixed ops market and improve overall dealership performance.
“That’s super helpful in outlining for them exactly where and how they can improve and where and how they need to celebrate,” Owens noted.
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