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Dealers increasingly eager for enquiry data

“Having access to pre-sale activity is important for them” – Matt Darby, AutoPlay
Posted on 23 October, 2020
Dealers increasingly eager for enquiry data

Dealers have been desperate for extra details about consumer enquiry levels as they try to better understand how the Covid-19 pandemic is affecting the vehicle industry.

AutoPlay has responded by providing clients with increasingly extensive market reports about pre-sales activity.

The company, part of the Marque Group, delivers a lead-management tool to about 80 per cent of New Zealand’s franchised dealerships and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

Matt Darby, national product and operations manager, says dealerships were trying to get to grips with what was happening in the car market as businesses moved through the different alert levels this year. They were particularly keen to see if trading trends were particular to them or reflected in the whole industry.

“Dealers see what’s happening with the stats in sales, but having access to pre-sale activity is important for them,” explains Darby, pictured. 

“We did work around our market-level reports so customers could see key performance indicators over three or four months in test drives, appraisals and log-ins to systems.

“The big brands are hanging out to see what’s happening with pre-sale activity.”

AutoPlay, like other companies in the automotive industry, has also rolled out a number of innovations in response to Covid-19 to help car sales continue.

It has added digital signature systems, electronic visitor books and tools that can trace customers, employees and vehicle cleaning to its management platform since the pandemic began. 

“Once businesses were able to open sales departments, the need to be more contactless was evident,” says Darby. “Some of the contactless developments are things we’re looking to invest in more in the future because there seems to be a demand for that from dealerships.”

The ability for customers to digitally sign documents, such as for test drives, was one of the areas AutoPlay focused on early in the pandemic. The company created a system that sends customers an SMS that allows them to sign forms on their own devices rather than having to use those one belonging to a dealership.  

Darby notes that with smartphones being commonplace nowadays, it has made sense to tap into that technology to improve the pre-sales process.

“It has been a challenging time for dealers and the least we can do is provide them with tools to help with leads they get and maximise them because sales volumes have definitely gone down,” he says.

You can read more about how automotive businesses have adapted their operations to cope with the coronavirus pandemic in the October edition of Autofile magazine.