Cars.com’s recently launched Dealer Reviews solution, developed to help dealers build on their online reputations in the locations where consumers are shopping for their next vehicle, has met with immense success. Site officials said that during the beta period, 67 percent and more of their dealer customers showed interest to get listed. 

These initial reports led Cars.com to insist that dealers focus on expanding their online reputation to give a boost to volume of online reviews; a move which could be instrumental in satisfied customers providing referrals.

Cars.com’s dealer training manager Jack Simmons said that reviews can be acquired in 5 ways. Simmons noted that “asking” is by far the most effective way of boosting review volume.

In a release, Simmons said, “Mine your CRM databases, make Dealer Reviews part of your ‘thank you’ emails following the sale and cultivate a culture at your store that rewards asking for customer feedback. Some dealerships are even offering their customers the chance to win big prizes for filling out reviews on Cars.com.”

The second option is to take negative reviews for what they are and try and improve on them. He does however acknowledge that pleasing all customers at all times is impossible for any business.  

Simmons said, “Negative reviews happen, and in fact, they present the opportunity for you to publicly make a situation right, showing future customers how much you care about their satisfaction and the integrity of your process. Quickly resolve as many issues as possible and commit to soliciting more positive reviews to offset the negative one.”

Simmons also adds that it is important for dealership staff to have requisite knowledge and that initiatives and effort should be appropriately rewarded. Keeping this in mind, Cars.com provides dealers with resources to help them train their staff in building review volume.

Simmons advises that in sales meetings dealers show one of the sessions from the site’s Reputation Management Lab.

“Encourage your staff to check out our interactive PDF and ensure everyone is following the Checklist for Success,” Simmons said. “Our most successful dealers are celebrating good reviews in their sales meetings, and many are even offering spiffs and other incentives to their salespeople to build positive review volume."

Cars.com offers several point-of-sale marketing materials such as the review widgets which can be used by dealers in their dealership email signature or Cars.com’s flyer templates which can be customized to engage customers.

He advises that dealers get as many good reviews in as many places as possible as these are accessible to customers at places where they might be shopping. He said that dealers should build review volume on the Cars.com site.

“That said, having good volume across all review sites ensures that all potential customers researching your store get the right impression,” Simmons added. “This is particularly true with Google’s (News - Alert) recent announcement that Places will no longer pull reviews from third-party sites into its search results. If you find you have a good bank of review volume on one site but are lagging on another, try running a month-long promotion with your sales staff and focus on one specific site. The next month, focus on another, and so on until your review volume is more uniform across sites.”

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