DealerRater, a CARS Inc. company and the world’s leading car dealer review website, recently announced two new features to its popular reputation management platform, which helps dealers grow their reputation by accelerating, automating and managing their review generation to share with an audience of millions. Social Referral is a new feature of the company’s core DealerRater Connections solution that allows dealers to earn more customers through the power of social media. In addition, a brand-new offering, AutoResponse, provides customized, real-time review responses to a dealer’s customer reviews to drive dealership efficiency and boost SEO. The new solutions were previewed at the 2020 National Automobile Dealers Association Show in Las Vegas from Feb. 14-17.

Social Referral invites dealerships’ happy customers to promote their experience to their social networks after they submit a review. The customer’s social post features the profile of the salesperson or service advisor they worked with and links back to that employee’s page on DealerRater. Dealers can set up a referral bonus program to further encourage consumers to promote their employees and track referral lead activity through the DealerRater platform.

“In the auto business, referrals drive not only the highest close rate among all types of leads, they also require less effort, less cost and have a higher gross. And in an age when everyone is sharing experiences and discovering businesses through social networks, Social Referral gives dealers a powerful opportunity to drive referrals directly from the people who trust their dealership most — their own employees and happy customers,” said Jamie Oldershaw, president of DealerRater. 

AutoResponse, another new solution to be unveiled at NADA, provides customized, real-time review responses to a dealer’s customer reviews, which helps build a dealer’s reputation, engage with customers and generate unique digital content for the dealership. This also helps increase a dealership’s SEO footprint on the sites that matter, including Google, Facebook, DealerRater and Cars.com. 

Recent research found that 97% of customers said they read responses to reviews — not just the reviews — when determining where to buy, and 71% of consumers are more likely to use a business that responds to reviews.¹

Oldershaw added, “Great customer experiences lead to repeat business, organic referrals and long-term relationships, which is why it is so important for dealerships to respond to every review — both positive and negative. But it can be a time-consuming effort. AutoResponse takes the guesswork out of managing review responses so that dealers can focus on selling and servicing more cars.”

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