Meeting the ZEV Targets in 2024

Recently, there has been a lot of industry discussion around the Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandate and the implications for OEMs who do not meet the targets. We understand the challenge facing OEMs and their retail networks to deliver on the target and avoid fines and the team across CitNOW Group has been putting some thought into how we can help retailers promote BEVs and close more customers.

Building customer confidence, robust processes, and quality data can deliver a compelling support proposition. This is first of a series of articles showcasing ideas and support CitNOW Group can provide.

Building customer confidence in BEVs

According to one of the UK’s most recognisable car sales websites, there is plenty of consumer interest in BEVs, but this is not yet converting into sales. Similarly, another prominent site suggests that buyers take over a week longer to research a BEV purchase than an ICE car before making a buying decision. Potential buyers, it appears, need that extra time to find the information they need to address the emotional and logical information they need to move from interest to action.

It is where virtual, retailer branded sales support can help bridge the confidence gap, helping their customers, themselves and their OEM partners.

Utilising video

It is easy to forget the rapid learning curve that a new BEV owner faces. Many centre on charging, but even a simple ‘how do I know when my car has started because there is no sound’ represents an opportunity to help. Walk in those people’s shoes, some of whom may be too embarrassed by the simplicity of their knowledge gap, and address their concerns in carefully considered, personable videos. With CitNOW’s proven video capability, creating a professional-looking and compelling video is easy.

Personal videos

If you are already familiar with CitNOW Sales in your showroom, you will know the power of video to deliver detailed and accessible information. Utilise CitNOW Sales to respond to enquiries and spend some time addressing some of the most common concerns surrounding BEVs whilst presenting the vehicle they are interested in. Consider the language you use, keeping it jargon free and simple will significantly enhance the customer experience and help them to feel more comfortable with this new power train. We have some excellent video tips available.

Video purpose

CitNOW Sales includes the ability to create different video purposes. Create a video purpose specific to BEVs and you could benefit from an email template that focuses on addressing the benefits of a BEV and dispels some of the myths.

CitNOW Sales also offers the ability to utilise the pre- or post-roll of the video – essentially the automatically applied beginning or end to a personalised video. This can be an effective option when communicating with a customer on a brand-new model you don’t yet have in stock by stitching together brand images to keep the anticipation of the model fresh and visual with the customer.

In summary

By adding this level of educational content and reassurance to video, retailers can make themselves stand out from the crowd, position themselves as subject experts, reduce customer concerns, building compelling value in their knowledge, empathy and ethos, and most importantly trust.

Next in this ZEV retailer and OEM support series will be the how sales and enquiry management can be used as a sales toolkit to help retailers embrace the ZEV challenge positively.

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Enhancing Customer Engagement & Retailer Efficiency

In the run-up to this year’s National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) Convention in Las Vegas, S&P Global’s event preview noted that ‘First party customer engagement is now marketing’s biggest competitive arena,’ at CitNOW Group, we agree. However, we believe better customer engagement can be linked and enhanced with improvements in efficiency.

Sales and marketing processes centred on meeting customers’ needs can be a win-win for retailers and customers.

Creating compelling online impressions efficiently 

New research by ICDP has added some additional insights to the well-established recognition that most people start their car buying journey online.

According to ICDP’s research, over 55% of car buyers decided on their chosen make and model before visiting a showroom, and less than 15% changed their mind subsequently. The confidence and precision that car buyers can achieve in their decision-making, courtesy of digital tools, is significant. While there is no single route to how initial engagement occurs, three common factors dominate the awareness stage;

• Which vehicles to consider
• Affordability including part-exchange value
• Retailer choice

For the customer, this stage is all about research; for the retailer, it is about ensuring they can meet the customer’s research needs and provide a compelling, positive experience. In today’s multi-channel environment, it is also about optimising visibility to the customer, which, in CitNOW Group’s case, means as well as providing effective, engaging communication channels and innovative technology, seamless integrations with manufacturers and third-party integrations with sales platforms such as Auto Trader are key.

A primary customer requirement when searching for a car online is imagery. Research published last year found that 90% of buyers expect detailed images of the vehicle they hope to buy. It isn’t just the existence or volume of images (no less than 20, according to Auto Trader) that matters; the image quality plays a vital role in their decision and negotiation tactics.

The importance of quality makes a difference in photography and video, and not every retailer has the time, location or sometimes weather to get those ideal images, or spend the time doing it. Auto Imaging, from CitNOW Group, helps retailers to take the perfect portfolio of internal and external images with AI-driven quality control that allows the person taking a photograph to easily get it right; automatic background replacement (aBGR) and full retailer branding are other compelling parts of the package.  Some Auto Imaging customers have seen a more than 50% decrease of days in stock after utilising its aBGR feature.  

Given that 97% of people say the quality of images makes a difference in their car buying decision, Auto Imaging is proving to be indispensable to many UK retailers; add in that images can be uploaded onto car sales aggregators immediately with automated workflows, which require less human intervention, and the net result is a better customer experience and more efficient internal process.  

Take the dealership to the customer digitally

Once the customer has initially engaged it’s about transforming their experience and building a rapport with them immediately. CitNOW Sales, enables the sales team to record personalised videos to take the vehicle to the interested customer before setting foot inside the dealership. Designed for use by sales executives, it provides an easy-to-use way to shoot, edit and send personalised retailer-branded videos of a car, van or motorbike in response to a customer enquiry.

In addition to the capabilities of the CitNOW Sales application itself, there is a potential efficiency gain to be made through it’s integrations. CitNOW’s partnership with Salesforce, for example, enables CitNOW Sales video functionality and reporting to be accessible from within Salesforce Automotive Cloud while its integration with Dealerweb Showroom aids retailers to streamline the management of their customer data, enhancing the customer journey and improving conversion rates. Both ensure information about customer engagement, from initial enquiries to video watch notifications and historical activity, are shared enabling a more efficient lead and sales management process.

The importance of the online experience

Curating the customer’s awareness, consideration and decision-making journey online, CitNOW Group’s sales management product, Dealerweb Showroom, continues to prove its value.

Dealerweb Showroom was conceived with sales management efficiency at its core. It is a central hub for all sales operations with its easy-to-use, intuitive interface enabling sales departments to manage leads, create and build customer offers more effectively.

The platform also benefits from integrations with other CitNOW Group products, such as CitNOW Sales and CitNOW Appraise, and many other well-regarded automotive suppliers, including, lead generators, the major DMS platforms, F&I providers, and compliance and marketing experts. By bringing multiple technologies together, retailers can facilitate the customer’s awareness stage, lead them through the subsequent consideration and final decision-making stages in a structured manner that creates a positive customer journey, whilst internally reducing the potential for errors and creating a more efficient sales operation.

Built in reporting means Sales Managers can have their finger on the pulse of every part of their sales pipeline in a few short clicks. Add RTC Insights into the mix and you can analyse all your dealership data at the click of a button.

Don’t overlook the partexchange opportunity

A final best practice thought for this post – the part exchange opportunity.

According to recent research from ICDP, 45% of people would prefer a part-exchange process that is entirely online and through a simple email link to a customer; CitNOW Appraise is the ideal tool. It enables the customer to video their car following an easy-to-use guided journey. It allows the customer to feel engaged and in control and can be confident that they have brought their current car to life for a retailer to appraise and value.

Since the value of a part exchange is often such a central lever to the car buying process, this simple and practical application is a perfect trust and relationship builder. It can also be a double win; access to quality stock and a compelling reason for a customer to go from online to instore!

In a motor retailing world where engagement and efficiency matter increasingly, there are a number of ways in which technology can beneficial. Explore how CitNOW Group’s ecosystem of solutions can help you.

Red and Amber Work - the Open Goal Opportunity 

From missed red work alone, dealers are losing £170K pa income per dealer rooftop  – let’s change that.

70% of retailers believe that their aftersales teams could be missing out on £170k pa of red work revenue. 

As retailers start the year, the positive takeaway is that an open goal opportunity is available to many in the industry. The crucial next step is to convert more identified aftersales opportunities from theoretical chance to actual income. 

Understanding the current reality of red and amber work performance at a dealer level starts with data. The perfect step is to benchmark performances against our extensive data bank collected from dealers of all sizes and locations. Data from our RTC Insights team is helping a growing number of dealers understand their current performance levels, which means they can identify gaps between poor, average, or best-in-class. The simple task of identifying the gaps is the starting point for improvement.  

At AM Live in November, we shared some best practice areas for red work that can help form the basis for improvement because they are designed to contribute to addressing performance gaps. These include some or all the following;  

• Monitor team and individual performance consistently – individual and benchmarking of performance is an effective way of identifying best practices and training needs. 
• Identifying the best time to contact customers – capturing customers’ preferred contact methods and times is a highly effective way of improving engagement and response levels.
• Track technician utilisation – this can ensure time is optimised and helps to ensure the right skills are allocated to the right job. 
• Taking time on each eVHC to identify safety issues accurately is a duty of care to the customer. Our analysis reveals that the sweet spot for eVHCs identifying work is 16 minutes. Spending less time meant less work identified; however, spending more time yielded no additional benefit. 
• Using video, such as CitNOW Workshop, to reveal the safety work identified to each customer brings concerns to life; crucially, it also helps cultivate a transparent connection centred upon care.  
• Analysing declined red work to understand why identified safety work was not undertaken for the customer. It is important to stress that recording the reason given by the customer accurately is essential. 
• Assessing the time spent per vehicle on the tasks identified – it is an excellent way of finding marginal productivity gains.

Across these opportunities for improvement, the CitNOW Group ecosystem has tools and expertise that can help. 

From our experience, getting these basics right consistently is a critical success factor in creating value for the customer that converts the opportunity into reality. How eVHCs are undertaken creates an authentic picture and customer care that can make all the difference. Accuracy of reporting, supported by video and considered dialogue, is critical. 

At its heart is a simple ethos – promoting customer safety and convenience.  

A New Year can often be the platform for a personal and professional reboot, an opportunity to be the best version of ourselves. If you are keen to realise the potential of a £170K increase in turnover simply by enabling your business to be more productive, we should be talking. 

We can help and would be delighted to have the opportunity to make a positive impact.  

To find out more about how CitNOW Group can support you in the year ahead, contact us today.