You’ve seen reviews. You know, those things that let customers relive their shoppingexperience at your dealership, online, for countless potential customers to read. Well, it turns out a greater percentage of your prospective sales and service customers are deciding whether or not to do business at your dealership (or your competitor’s) based on these reviews.

Often, we find it difficult to look objectively at our own reviews. We may know the details behind the negative ones and discount them:

“Oh, that customer was unreasonable.”

“That one is lying.”

“We don’t even know who that one is.”

But these potential customers don’t know each review’s backstory. I’m not suggesting you find ways to publicly address each review. Instead, consider printing out the first few pages of your online reviews and your competitors’. Then, find someone who can objectively look at each dealer and decide, based on what they read, where they’d buy or service their car. Maybe your objective reader will say they’d go to your dealership for sales, but to your competitor for service.

This is the start of your reputation management roadmap.

This is the objective viewpoint you’ll need on your own dealership before you can go any further. You’ll want to see where you’re gaining positive and negative reviews, because negative reviews drive down your other departments. As a top priority, you’ll need to stop the bleeding in these underperforming areas.

Dealer Reputation Management Tip #1: On which sites do customers review your dealership?

This is a pretty simple and common list, including Yelp, Dealerrater, Yahoo, City Search, Google, Yellow Pages, and so on. Different regions seem to prefer certain resources. My friends on the east coast, for instance, tell me Dealerrater is bigger than Yelp. But here on the west coast, Yelp is huge. My dad lives in Long Beach, CA, and he surprised me recentlywhen he asked for help bringing his flat-screen TV to a repair guy. He told me he’d found the repairman through great reviews on the Yellow Pages online directory. I asked him if he’d ever been on Yelp, but he had no idea what that was. So, you may want to make a fewdemographic considerations regarding review sites.

You know your market. If you aren’t entirely sure, consider my tip from an earlier article: give your customers a marketing survey while they’re waiting for finance. You may also want to send a quick email survey to your existing service customers.

Tip #1: Create a spreadsheet listing each review source. Include your review count and star rating as well as that of your competitors. Update this spreadsheet monthly.

Dealer Reputation Management Tip #2:

Take control of your dealership reviews.

To help your branding efforts, you need to claim each of your online business review pages. Yours may have originally been created by a user – so update it with business hours and pictures. Two years ago, one local dealer’s Yelp profile featured a picture of two shirtless men, holding beers, leaning on an old rusted car. So when the dealer called me for a dealer trade, I told them this had been their profile picture for two months. They replied, “Are you going to do the trade or not?” They may have seemed to think I was trying to insult them, but I hope they’ve somehow learned the lesson: Claim and update your business listings.

Tip #2: Assign unique 800 numbers to each of your claimed business listings in order to track source and call volume. Include this in your spreadsheet.

Dealer Reputation Management Tip #3:

How NOT to manage your dealer’s reputation

A friend of mine was called into his GM’s office a few months ago. The GM slid a piece of paper across his big desk.

“You know what this is?”

“No,” my friend replied.

“These are email accounts I’ve set up. I want you to create a Yelp account for each one and write positive reviews for our dealership. And keep this between us.”

He called me, mortified at the idea – and also to check whether anyone was hiring. I explained that the fake positive reviews won’t hold up, and that it’s a complete waste of time.Yelp would know to filter them out. Not only that, they’ll seem fake to readers right away. They’ll also lessen the credibility of whatever positive reviews they’d actually managed to muster up. 

After more pressure from above, my friend had no choice but to press on. And now, Yelp has indeed filtered out every one of those fake reviews. Now, the dealership has more filtered reviews than unfiltered ones. Worse yet, the suspiciously positive reviews were written in a three-day period, by users who’d created their accounts on the same day. This sort of activity leaves a permanent scar on dealerships for years to come – much longer than this GM is likely to last.

This response to online dealer reviews isn’t unique. In fact, I’ve personally heard all of the following in dealership meetings:

“Our way of dealing with Yelp reviews is to not let anyone know about them.”

“Why can’t we create our own accounts and write fake reviews?”

“The last dealer where I worked paid some kid to create and manage accounts, and even wrote bad reviews for their competitors. Why can’t we do the same thing?”

“Let’s threaten to sue people who write bad reviews so they’ll delete them.”

Tip #3: Say you’re a GM, surrounded by management staff as they suggest the above-mentioned ideas. Perhaps the next step in your dealer’s reputation management roadmap should include personnel changes. If you want your reviews to improve, your management team must care about the customer experience. Their beliefs and attitudes will reflect all the way down to the troops on the ground – and these are the ones most in touch with your customers.

Dealer Reputation Management Tip #4:

Improving your dealer review count and rating.

Let’s face it. Many customers write reviews because they are either exceptionally unhappy or their expectations were exceeded in every possible way. So, many of your reviews will either be the worst possible or the best possible rating.

One untapped source of reviews is the customer base whose experience went just as expected. If you went to a restaurant and your experience was “as-expected,” would you go out of your way to write a review? Not much has inspired you to let the world know. But by increasing the review volume from this large piece of your customer base, you lessen the impact of negative reviews. People generally understand that not everyone is going to be happy. But it will cost you dearly if the occasional unhappy experience looks like the norm at your dealership. Make sure that’s not the case at yours.

Tip #4: Many review sites offer display materials you can purchase for your service or sales waiting area. Remind idle customers in your waiting area about these sites. Make sure your wi-fi network doesn’t block access to these sites. Create materials and follow-up emails asking your customers to review your dealership.

Dealing with negative reviews

You can improve a negative review. No, seriously. Try reaching out to the customer to find out what happened, and collect ideas to rectify the situation. Apologize to the customer and offer to help. I’ve seen many dealers do this and often a one-star review will become a five-star review in the update. These types of reviews really stand out and are clearly authentic.

Obsess over your dealer reputation.

I’ve rarely sat in a Friday meeting where the GM or GSM failed to mention their Customer Satisfaction Index – but how about including your dealer’s online reputation status in these meetings, too? Not just occasionally, but in every meeting. This tells your staff that reputation is important to you and to the dealership.

See a roadmap forming here? It’s not about a one-time incident. There’s no quick fix, no skipping ahead in line. It’s about implementing a culture that seeks to improve the customer experience every single day in every way possible. This effort translates directly to an online reputation that stands out head over heels above your competitors, and it translates to your dealership’s revenue. And, it’s all at no cost to you. No need for an online management rep to step into your office with a big binder, asking for more money to give you more leads.

The customers you gain through your dealership’s reputation will come in with a higher degree of trust than those who don’t. This type of customer is most akin to a referral. And in any economy – especially today’s – your ability to capture referral business is critical. Your dealership’s reputation management plan should be customized. For that reason, as much as I would like to, I can’t give you a project plan. I believe, in order for maximum effect, your planshould come from within. It’s the dealership that needs to change before the reviews will change.