SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — Roadster, a leader in commerce solutions for car buying and leasing, announced the rollout of its enhanced omnichannel commerce platform designed to help dealerships offer a more modernized and improved car buying experience, by holistically addressing every aspect of the sale.  Building upon its already successful in-store sales process, where Roadster’s Express Storefront empowers dealers to connect the dots between what the customers did at home and their in-store experience, the company will now introduce a suite of new remote selling products that will empower internet and BDC teams to guide customers further down the purchase funnel regardless of where they are.

Car shoppers don’t buy cars in a linear fashion and we can no longer treat them that way.

“The industry has been focused on plug and play digital retailing products as a way to improve and modernize car buying but in order to really improve the customer experience, we have to empower dealership personnel with solutions that make it easier to sell,” said Andy Moss, CEO of Roadster. “Car shoppers don’t buy cars in a linear fashion and we can no longer treat them that way. We are proud to be introducing the next generation of our digital sales platform at such a crucial time in the industry, when dealers need the most efficient and effective way to engage consumers and seamlessly walk them through the purchase process from start to finish.” 

As part of its new offering, Roadster will introduce Express Response, a lead response solution that allows the dealership to automatically respond to internet leads with intelligent and relevant information that encourages the customer to start the deal-making activity online.  Unlike legacy models, where consumers often get an inactionable auto-response to their lead submissions or where the dealership spends a significant amount of time sending detailed and individualized responses, Express Response increases customer engagement 24 hours a day by responding to all internet lead sources from one seamless platform. It empowers dealers to follow up on customer’s interest on any piece of new or used inventory, and respond directly with VIN specific information to help move customers down the purchase funnel faster. It improves transparency and consistency, providing customers with pricing that matches what appears on a dealer’s Express Store and links them directly to the appropriate VDP or SRP to ensure there are no surprises as they build the deal. 

Express Response also gives dealers the ability to control their brand voice, cadence and timing of their messages, as well as track response metrics, from open rates, click through rates, session length and actions taken to measure and ensure customer engagement and satisfaction remains paramount. It also provides dealerships with unique visibility into a customer’s first interaction with their dealership, which is something that many dealerships have been unable to track until now.

In early pilots with 43 rooftops and 12 dealer groups representing makes including Kia, Buick GMC, Nissan, Mazda, CDJR, Toyota, Hyundai, Honda, Acura, Lexus, Mercedes-Benz, Volvo, Porsche, BMW, Land Rover, Jaguar, VW, Audi, and Ford Lincoln, Express Response vastly improved engagement rates. Express Response’s open rate is at 65 percent, compared to an industry average of 12.6 percent, and its click through rate is at 22 percent versus the industry average of 1.2 percent.*

“Express Response has significantly increased our customer engagement,” said Greg Nalewaja, General Manager at Midlands Honda. “Not only are we able to immediately collect information from customers that otherwise would have taken four or five salespeople to gather, but our closing ratio is 16% because we can move our customers down the purchase funnel faster and more efficiently.”

In addition to Express Response, Roadster will begin to roll out its enhanced Express Storefront experience, which is designed to give sales agents the flexibility to start orders and push tasks to customers throughout the buying experience. Unlike current models where customers are forced to go through a very linear and rigid online process regardless of their situation and a sales agent is left either forcing them to take steps that don’t make sense or having to take them out of it entirely to better accommodate their customer’s needs, Roadster’s enhanced Express Storefront experience moves sales agents from being reactive to being proactive, encouraging them to push appropriate purchase tasks including showcasing F&I when starting an order for better visibility and transaction rates in whatever order makes sense to the customer, while providing them with visibility into all of the customer’s activity and various deals created in one place for ease of engagement and follow up. 

Customers are encouraged to complete as many or few of the steps of the transaction online or in-person, including having the choice of completing forms in whatever order makes sense at checkout, or simply reserve the car with a deposit and finish the process in store. The enhanced Express Storefront experience, allows sales agents to prompt customers when it is time to complete tasks together, including complete a credit app or trade in, request a deposit, ask for additional documentation and more. With remote sales gaining in popularity due to COVID-19, Roadster’s restructured selling experience provides dealers with the opportunity to save the customer and their sales team time by guiding customers through as much of the purchase process as possible before they come into the showroom.

Adding to its offering, the company will also roll out Express Store Live, powered by Live Person, providing dealerships with an efficient and digitized way to build relationships with their customers, even when their customer is at home. With Express Store Live, dealerships will have access to video conferencing and screen sharing capabilities to answer questions that their online buyer may have at any step of the process.

In addition, Roadster’s commerce platform will also integrate with Equity Mining Tools like Auto Alert to provide dealers with the ability to surface up the exact VIN that might be right for their current customers and give them the ability to reserve or purchase that vehicle from the comfort of home.

For more information on accessing Roadster’s omnichannel commerce platform, please visit www.Roadster.com

*attributed to Campaign Monitor, “Ultimate Email Marketing Benchmarks for 2020: By Industry and Day”, 2020 article

Read: Winners of 2020 Dealers’ Choice Awards Announced