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I forgot to mention, I was in our Homenet account a few days ago and I noticed this section for the first time. Curious if any of you guys are utilizing this in your homenet feeds. It's on the General Tab. It wouldn't be hard to send them (Homenet) a CSV daily with your website VDP URL's and they could map it for you! Once it's mapped, they could syndicate it out to pretty much any vendor you like!

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Rick, it has been quiet. Wtf.



I also jumped back into Reputation Management. Our dealer just won DealerRater dealer of the year and their customer satisfaction award. We are using DealerRater LotShot to garner most of the reviews on the sales side and I just implemented Dominion's PRIME to help manage the reviews and go after more service reviews. Been testing out the new DealerRater Connections feature as well. It's off to a slow start but has potential.

Jeff-Can you tell me about your experience with LotShot and PRIME? I developed some software that provides similar services. We have mainly been within real estate, insurance, hotels, medical, and auto repair shops. We work with a few dealerships but not too many. What are the more important features and services you use or wish were available? Thanks.
 
I forgot to mention, I was in our Homenet account a few days ago and I noticed this section for the first time. Curious if any of you guys are utilizing this in your homenet feeds. It's on the General Tab. It wouldn't be hard to send them (Homenet) a CSV daily with your website VDP URL's and they could map it for you! Once it's mapped, they could syndicate it out to pretty much any vendor you like!

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Yeah, you could.
 
I am working on a new mobile application for service writers that will allow them to do a better job of communicating with customers. They can text, email call or send videos and pictures. Each service writer gets their own text enabled call tracking number. We will take a lot of those calls that get bounced around with the operator and send them directly to the service writer. We also tap in to the DMS the stuff we're doing with that info is amazing. The ringless voicemail feature is going to be epic. I can't wait to release this later this month! Talk Options is already a great product and it's about to get better! Oh and you should also see our review tool, it's helping dealers get more service reviews, and it's automated so you don't have to pester service writers to ask for them.
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And I plan to be more active on here this year. Been away too long!
 

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...Our dealer just won DealerRater dealer of the year and their customer satisfaction award. We are using DealerRater LotShot to garner most of the reviews on the sales side...

I know this is basic stuff... but too often we need to get back to basics. The stuff that really moves the needle. We can report ourselves to death and sign up for the latest analytics tool and overkill ourselves with a ton of data, but what good is it most times?
@Jeff Kershner, as you know, DealerRater became part of the Cars.com family last year. I had quite a bit of learning ahead of me to get up-to-speed on the new acquisition. One of the first things I learned is that my perception of DealerRater as a stand-alone website was horribly outdated. It has become more of a 'Review Engine' driving positive sentiment and credibility out across many of the top platforms. That evolution, combined with the introduction of LotShot, a technology-driven process for gathering reviews, was an eye-opener for me.
 
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@Jeff Kershner, as you know, DealerRater became part of the Cars.com family last year. I had quite a bit of learning ahead of me to get up-to-speed on the new acquisition. One of the first things I learned is that my perception of DealerRater as a stand-alone website was horribly outdated. It has become more of a 'Review Engine' driving positive sentiment and credibility out across many of the top platforms. That evolution, combined with the introduction of LotShot, a technology-driven process for gathering reviews, was an eye-opener for me.

I absolutely love LotShot. There's something else about DealerRater that I absolutely love that I've been talking about and emphasizing for years... when used to its full capabilities, it WILL help change the culture of your dealership.

Shame on any dealership that places a "bad review" filter between the solicited experience and the customer. It's weak and nothing more than gaming the "system".

I could go on and on about this...

Ed, we should write a joint article around this for blog.
 
Frankly, I'd rather be deploying / white-labeling something like https://findface.pro/en/face-recognition-for-customer-analytics.html = Online-style analytics for your offline customers. It's just a matter of time before face recognition / biometric data (offline) compliments / connects with digital (online). I don't see any of that going on inside dealerships or on the lot and it's obviously very valuable.
 
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Frankly, I'd rather be deploying / white-labeling something like https://findface.pro/en/face-recognition-for-customer-analytics.html = Online-style analytics for your offline customers. It's just a matter of time before face recognition / biometric data (offline) compliments / connects with digital (online). I don't see any of that going on inside dealerships or on the lot and it's obviously very valuable.

Dang @Alexander Lau !!! LOL!!! Biometric data!! Dude... Thats crazy!!

 
Some of you guys will get this. Some of you won't. Some of you will see it and keep scrolling. For those of you who do get it, It's pretty cool with the right set up!!

PHP:
<?php

csvToJson("yourInventoryCSVfile.csv");
// php function to convert csv to json format
function csvToJson($fname) {
    // open csv file
    if (!($fp = fopen($fname, 'r'))) {
        die("Can't open file...");
    }
    
    //read csv headers
    $key = fgetcsv($fp,"1024",",");
    
    // parse csv rows into array
    $json = array();
        while ($row = fgetcsv($fp,"1024",",")) {
        $json[] = array_combine($key, $row);
    }
    
    // release file handle
    fclose($fp);
    
        //write to json file in same dir. Change the filename below to whatever you like! 
    $fp2 = fopen('yourJSONfile.json', 'w');
    fwrite($fp2, json_encode($json));
    fclose($fp2);
    
    // encode array to json
    return json_encode($json);
}
?>

Now get with your inventory provider and have them to FTP your inventory file to the directory this PHP file sits in. Go into your server and set up a Cron Job to run on a schedule and now all your inventory will be sitting in a JSON formatted file that you can access via scripts on your website!! I know it's kinda old school but... It works!! Ol ya, I forgot one thing. You need to set up CORS to access it.

Create a htaccess file and put it in the same directory! This will do the trick:
Header set Access-Control-Allow-Origin "*"

You can make it URL specific for access if you want.
 
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