What's the Best Video Tool for My Service Department?
If you’ve made the decision to start using video in your service department, you’ve made a great decision. Video has a ton of use cases from showing customers what they can expect once they arrive, vehicle in-take videos, multi-point inspections, and quick personalized thank you notes. Customers need to see to believe to approve.
There are a lot of video software platforms available for your dealership’s service department, but which one is the right one for you? Let’s break down your options.
Your first option for helping people to see their needed repairs is to walk them back to their car. This is “free”, but this means:
1) customers have to stick around the whole time
2) it’s not the safest idea to have customers wandering around your service bays.
Another option for using video in your service department is to have techs use their own phone. This costs you nothing out-of-pocket but is bad idea because:
1) there’s no tracking or reporting
2) it’s eating up phone storage
3) customers can’t approve or deny the recommended services
4) you can’t tell when someone has watched the video
5) it’s hard to edit
6) it’s not TCPA compliant.
Please, don’t do this.
A common approach is to use the video tool included in your DMS tool or services suite. The benefit is that you’ve got all-in-one functionality, but this will definitely be your most expensive solution.
Also, video inside these platforms is just one small piece of everything they do, which means they can lag in features and functionality, and can be cumbersome to operate, leading to lower adoption and usage from your team.
The final approach is stand-alone video platforms designed specifically for automotive that are easy for any tech to use, affordable, filter out shop noise automatically, and allow customers to approve work directly from their phone. They typically integrate with your DMS, but are not full-service-do-everything-in-your-service-department-platforms, as they’re not intended to be.
If you’re still on the fence about video (and according to JD Power over 70% of dealerships still aren’t sending photos or videos for repairs), we can help you navigate the alternatives.