Here at Wired Networks, we’ve partnered with several auto dealerships over the years. As telecom providers, we fully understand the importance of always‑available customer communication, internet availability, and access to back‑end DMS systems.
While each dealership is unique, every business needs to remain available to their customers 24/7/365. The automotive industry has been the de facto standard of how a customer should (and shouldn’t) be treated for decades.
Just the other day, one of our team members noticed a Lexus dealership outside of San Antonio, Texas that was nicer than most world‑famous lodges. The facility’s exterior sets the stage for the kind of customer service one might expect. Clearly, the dealership wants the customer’s experience to be first-class right from the start.
As a company mission, we have a similar philosophy:
To provide a highly‑available network with a 99.99% uptime guarantee and fantastically‑responsive sales and support staff.
This mission may seem simple to most businesses. But in our industry, customer service is an area that has always been lacking.
If we want to emulate the successful auto dealer’s model on how to treat customers, which is built on personal relationships and being responsive to questions, then our customers should expect that same level of support from us.
How the Automotive and Telecom Industries Are Similar
Here’s a quick car analogy:
Just as it’s not so easy to build a car from the ground up, putting all its various systems and parts in place to ensure that it runs 100% of the time, it’s also challenging to build a failover network that has a predictable outcome of 99.99% uptime.
However, like that car, once the system is engineered, built, and tweaked, it’s very repeatable and can be customized to fit the customer’s exact needs and preferences.
Most people don’t know exactly how their car runs, and likewise most businesses don’t understand how their network runs. Frankly, a lot of people don’t really care how they work, but they expect both to always be able to do their job.
Is Network Downtime Costing Your Car Dealership?
If your dealership’s network goes down, even for just a few minutes, you might not be able to sell a car to a customer. Downtime also sets the stage in your customer’s mind for questioning your reliability and professional appearance — not to mention it puts a damper on their customer experience at your dealership.
For example, what if your finance department can’t print a contract, or your parts department can’t find inventory? Or worst case, what if you lose a call or can’t respond to an email because the network is down?
This opens up the opportunity for the customer to lose interest or choose the competition instead.
In an industry built on responsiveness and relationships, your people in sales, finance, parts, etc. at your dealership require constant, on-demand support from your telecom partners to deliver the best customer experience possible.
Even if you can’t have a top-notch $10 million dollar facility, you should at least be able to ensure that your customers have a similar experience. It’s your job as an auto dealer to find technology partners who can help you provide the best level of service to customers.
And it’s our job to deliver these solutions.
The good news is the technology exists right now to enable your team and provide the best customer experience possible. At Wired Networks, we remove 99.99% of all downtime problems (and we fix the rest) by using two different, redundant connections to fail between.
Let us make your dealership look like a fast, polished machine, allowing your team to be more effective and productive, your DMS to no longer be plagued by network issues, and your customers to feel like they’re getting the million dollar treatment.
How could a fast, reliable network solution shape the way your customers see your dealership? Contact us for the answer. In the meantime, use our free tool to calculate how much network downtime is costing your dealership.
