From frustration to delight: How a roadside event can become a brand and relationship building opportunity for dealers.

Just over one in two drivers (and even more for battery electric vehicles) will experience a roadside event each year – from a flat tire, a dead battery, a lockout, or no fuel to a range of mechanical issues that require a tow. Roadside events can negatively impact brand satisfaction, but surprisingly having an event and using roadside coverage actually creates higher brand satisfaction. Drivers that used their auto roadside assistance are 35% more likely to buy the same vehicle brand.¹ The factors that can predict an event are drivetrain, miles driven, and vehicle age. Like most things people do infrequently, the details of the roadside assistance process are often forgotten. When a roadside event occurs, many drivers don’t use the app or phone number provided by the manufacturer for assistance. Instead, they will contact their dealer directly for help and this creates a new and valuable customer touchpoint.

Customer experience is becoming the driving factor in making a vehicle purchase – rather than only price – and dealers are being viewed as customer advocates and facilitators.^2,3 Historically, dealerships were the main resource for customers to research and buy vehicles. Today, much of this information is available online, and in some states, vehicle purchases can be made online.³ Both mean fewer touchpoints for the dealer.

Being an advocate and a facilitator is a key opportunity for dealers to elevate the experience for their customers by providing a modern, best-in-class experience while building brand affinity and a strong customer relationship. Agero provides dealers with a full suite of tools and resources to efficiently fulfill this evolving role as customer advocates and to directly support their customers, including the Swoop Dealer Portal and Blueprint. Here’s how.

Use Swoop to access the right tools to enhance the customer experience - from dispatching capabilities to live tracking of incoming vehicles, to actionable insights, and more.

Our Swoop platform provides dealers full transparency and real-time visibility into event and case details, including notifications for disabled vehicles en route to their location. This visibility enables dealers to prepare for their customer’s arrival and provide an elevated service experience.

With the Swoop Dealer Portal, dealers can:

• view scheduled, in-process, and completed events in real-time and see live tracking of incoming vehicles to improve service drive reception
• dispatch service on behalf of their customers to get them to the dealership, and ultimately back on the road, faster – providing the one-stop-shop experience that customers increasingly expect
• access all the details of every roadside job, from customer inputs to agent notes to provider pictures, providing full transparency to the entire staff

Use our network to support your business and your customers - our network can include your dealer preferred service providers and Branded mobile mechanics.

Our curated network of service providers was built to meet the demands and unpredictability of roadside. Using machine learning and AI of data on service provider performance, equipment, location, and more to determine the best provider for every job means our network has your customers covered in 100% of U.S. zip codes, 24/7/365. Our service providers have partnered with us for an average of seven and a half years and we support them with provider-friendly tools and technology, transparent performance management, and on-demand vehicle training materials so that they can deliver reliable, brand-building service.

But we don’t stop there. As a dealer, you may have a trusted provider that has serviced your dealership since the day it opened and has an intimate knowledge of your day-to-day and after-hours processes, including where to leave the vehicle and key. We can designate your preferred provider as the primary service provider and the first dispatch for your dealership. Learn more about our Dealer Preferred Local Service Provider program here.

When a tow can be avoided, branded mobile mechanics make a world of difference with service at the ready for in and out-of-warranty vehicles. In addition to driving revenue, mobile mechanics deliver a strong, brand-building customer experience. Mobile mechanics can repair many issues on site, saving the customer time and avoiding a tow, resulting in an average Net Promoter Score (NPS) lift of 9 points for battery replacement vs. jumpstarts⁴. We manage dealer mobile mechanic networks and offer all of the perks our service providers receive, from access to Swoop to on-demand vehicle training with Blueprint.

Blueprint, our in-depth self-service library, equips all service providers with vehicle-specific training, tips and tricks. With Swoop, links to vehicle-specific Blueprint content are automatically sent to the service provider at the time of dispatch. This ensures optimal care of vehicles during service events and aids in getting the job completed safely and as quickly and efficiently as possible. With new EV models launching and EV adoption increasing, vehicle-specific content is especially important as the differences associated with EVs can be confusing and challenging for providers. Usage data helps us tailor the right training cadence and materials for specific technicians, dealerships, or markets.

Empower your dealers to own the customer experience and create strong driver relationships.

Dealer engagement and the dealer experience are critical in the overall success of roadside assistance programs and in building customer trust and loyalty. Swoop provides dealers with full visibility into all disabled vehicles en route to their location as well as actionable insights and the right tools to enhance the customer experience. By empowering dealers to create enhanced customer experiences, they will ultimately build strong driver relationships. Learn more about how Agero can help empower and engage dealers here.

Sources:

¹Agero 2023 research data

²https://www.automotiveworld.com/articles/retail-is-increasingly-about-experience-over-cost/

³https://www.automotiveworld.com/articles/the-pandemic-changed-the-vehicle-business-but-dealers-are-here-to-stay/

⁴Agero 2021 research data