Service appraisals are a powerful tool often overlooked by car dealerships. Providing an exceptional sales experience and delivering a stellar service experience are necessary to building a strong reputation and keeping customers returning. But what if you started vehicle trade-in conversations from the service lane? Whether the customer is exploring their budget, their vehicle is currently in a positive equity position, or they are already shopping for their next car online, capturing their attention during a service appointment is a great way to help ensure they choose your dealership for their next vehicle.

Keep Customers Longer by Initiating Trade-In Conversations in the Service Drive

In-service vehicle appraisals allow your store to engage with customers while they’re already there for their service appointment, providing an opportunity to discuss potential trade-ins and future vehicle purchases before the competition. Your staff should do their research prior to the customer arriving, so they know who to target and can best advise each customer on their options. But these conversations also enable you to gather more information on customer needs and preferences. This information can be used to tailor future efforts by helping you provide more personalized recommendations later, increasing the likelihood of a successful sale.

Starting the Conversation: It’s All About the Free Vehicle Appraisal

While the customer is visiting for their service appointment, it’s important to first thank them for visiting for expert vehicle care. Then, you can provide a free, no-obligation vehicle appraisal from a Sales Advisor. To help break the ice and make this joint effort between sales and service simple, there are digital tools designed to initiate vehicle appraisal conversations. From welcome text messages offering a vehicle appraisal to alerts when a customer engages while in the service drive, these solutions can also help you identify key opportunities and provide lead details at a glance.

Catering to the Customer Journey and Building Used Inventory

Starting vehicle trade-in conversations from the service drive help create a seamless service-to-sales customer journey at your dealership. This does more than help guide them to you for repurchase—it helps you build more used inventory. And since these customers are in your service lane, it’s more likely you’ll have a better history on the vehicle. If you know it has been serviced frequently, for example, that could mean a higher-quality trade-in for your dealership.

Connecting Your Sales and Service Teams to Provide In-Service Vehicle Appraisals

Having easily accessible CRM data, proper training, and integrated technology can help make it easy to implement vehicle appraisals in the service drive. The Service Lane Appraiser tool from Affinitiv was designed to connect your sales and service teams, plus initiate welcoming and educated conversations that help you capture customers before they have a chance to shop elsewhere. For more information, contact us today.