Redefining Customer Experiences For Auto Dealerships

Moshe Pourad, Co-founder, 26 Motors

How has technology helped shape the car-buying experience?

Technology has helped shape the car-buying experience by making it paperless, which is one of the best things to happen in the industry. It speeds up the car buying process by at least an hour of customer wait time. It allows for a digital copy of contracts, statements and more, which enables you to digitally send all paperwork to the appropriate party. This is extremely helpful when it comes to sending paperwork to the bank, their finance managers, and the consumer. It helps streamline the process from the sales manager down to the salesman.

Electronic paperwork also helps prevent fraud. It does not fully protect it, but it plays an astronomical role in preventing it. Additionally, electronic documents give our customers peace of mind because they know it is a secure one-on-one website that only 26 Motors can access. Their contracts can't go anywhere as opposed to a piece of paper. Lastly, customers love having electronic copies of documents because they can always keep them handy for reference.

Have you seen a shift in more wholesale auto dealerships using technology?

Yes and no. There are many wholesale auto dealerships operating off the old-school guidelines and practices. But the industry is constantly coming up with newer websites for wholesale auto dealerships. While some newer technology platforms are taking off and have become extremely popular in the industry, other platforms are a learning curve for car dealers.

"Technology has helped shape the car-buying experience by making it paperless, which is one of the best things to happen in the industry”

In this industry, it is tough to launch new platforms because dealers are so used to one or two major wholesale websites that they know in and out and have used for decades. The tech is too advanced for many experienced wholesale auto dealers, and they can't keep up with it.

What type of business software, inventory management, or interactive technology does 26 Motors use?

We use Dealertrack on a daily basis. Dealertrack is a software and technology service that provides dealer management systems offering data access, navigation, and digital retailing tools.

It's very user-friendly and does 90 percent of your dealer tasks for you. It does everything from accounting and electronic contracting to deal with the banks, paying off cars on trade-ins, and even inventory management. In addition, it gives you payoff amounts and everything at a click of the finger. 

How might interactive technology help improve the customer's car-buying experience?

When selling a car, you used to manually crunch the numbers to see what the customer can afford and what car you could offer them in their price range. Due to all the math and adjustments required to make the customer happy, the average time it would take from when they walked in until they left with the keys in their hands averaged five to six hours. 

Interactive technology makes the car buying process efficient and faster. Platforms like Dealertrack eliminate the back and forth between sales managers and finance managers for cost approvals because they do everything for you. Additionally, it gives customers a ballpark idea of what they will have to pay right off the bat, compared to the past when customers had to wait an hour to see somebody and talk to them about the vehicle, they were interested in. As a result, interactive technologies have reduced the average car-buying time to two hours.

Do you have any predictions for how the landscape might change due to technology in the future?

Consumers want more visibility and transparency. However, with all the new technology, we have lost the component of the in-person buying experience. Everything is done online and accessible at the click of a finger, but we are losing the value of the experience. You wouldn't buy a house online without seeing it; that should also hold true for a vehicle.