How is your car dealership or online buying experience adapting to the COVID-19 disruption?

Like everyone in the current 'situation', uncertainty is here to stay for a while unfortunately. It brings with it nothing but anxiety, fear and frustration for businesses, employees and of course customers - we have seen many people adapt in response.

In the UK before The Prime Minister's lockdown announcement, no doubt the dealership sales team were working right up until the very last moment to get handovers in for target? some things never change eh? well, maybe they do...

This is such a unprecedented time where we will see major shifts in how people do business from here onwards.

I'm hoping all of us in the motor industry (and all sectors) come out the other side of this stronger than ever, please keep your heads held high and positivity flowing, this is a time for unity. The automotive sector is a very resilient one and so are the people in it.

Please personal message me or comment on this what your dealership is doing differently to still serve customers during this time, i'm interested to know. 

On various social media outlets, automotive news and LinkedIn posts I have noticed dealerships, e-commerce providers, websites all trying to adapt quickly and provide contactless, online buying experiences.

I'm really interested to know what your dealership is doing differently, how is it working for you?

I'll end this note with an information share. I'm sure you already know the importance of ensuring your CDK Dealer Management System data is always kept up to date, especially with these new systems being put in place for consumers as workarounds.

At CDK, we offer a wide range of API integrations which provide approved partners to give both read and write access to your CDK DMS in order to create a connected experience. This in simple terms means data is synced between the products and applications you choose to implement into the dealership.

If you are a software/ website provider providing dealerships an e-commerce experience in these testing times, i'd recommend looking at our suite of API products to connect up the dots between the online experience and the dealership CDK Dealer Management System, this means the integration of software and online experiences are working behind the scenes for you!

For example, your dealership website may have a "reserve now" button; our 'Reserve Vehicle Inventory Items' product will take the vehicle off sale in your CDK DMS.

Perhaps you have a full e-commerce online buying process? The "Complete Vehicle Sales Order" API product will allow the website to push a fully completed sales order into the CDK DMS, making it ready to invoice.

You can find out more here https://www.cdkglobal.com/en-gb/partners/partners. Please contact our Partner teams in your region to find out more.

Stay safe, stay positive and use this time to come out the end of this even stronger!