This was the first thread I ever commented on here at DealerRefresh......thought it would come full circle if I posted here how we just became the first DealerRater.com Dealer to hit 1000 reviews!

http://www.dealerrater.com/dealer/Acton-Toyota-of...

DealerRater.com remains one of our best lead sources, providing "low in the sales funnel" customers every day.

I just purchased my mother-in-laws Toyota Camry which was being turned at lease end. She leased a 2009 Camry,her third one.Both of us were totally satisfied with the sales staff, business dept. and the whole mgmt. team.Freehold Toyta gets a five star rating straight across the board.I would recomend them to anyone thats wants to be treated like royalty which is a rareity in the car business. Keep up the good work!!!

I just purchased a 2009 VW Jetta at Volkswagen of Freehold. You couldn't ask for better service. The following are all rated 10's for their service,help,knowledge and friendliness, they make you feel like old friends.

ROBERT MORFFI JOHN LYNCH
JAMES LONZORA and BRIAN BAINUM
All rated EXCELLENT.

There is no doubt that these type of sites are growing in popularity. eBay founded a business based on "Feed Back"......

Almost 40% of AIU's are researching the "Dealers Reputation" prior to making a decision on where to shop. This is the future!!!! And It's here...

Does anyone out there buy anything on-line that has a Poor rating or Zero Feedback?

Put yourselves in a consumers shoes.... Who would you do business with?

I love my hyundaitucson and lisa klimaitiswas
very nice and friendly

I have been reading this interesting thread discussing the merits of and challenges with Dealer Rater/Review sites on this site and others. I have this concept for a Dealer/Consumer Social Networking Website and I am doing market research to get feedback on it. I would appreciate it if you could take 5 minutes to complete this survey re: the concept, especially if your are a Sales or Internet Sales Manager/Director or General Manager for a dealership: Click Here to take survey. Your participation in this survey is completely anonymous and your answers will be used for market research purposes only. We will not share this information with marketers or other companies. Your survey answers will help provide important feedback re: this concept. This is for an MBA Business Feasibility class. Again, your participation would be much appreciated. Thank you in advance for your time and participation.

What is interesting to me about this post is where it is coming from. If we look at JD Powers, they are the largest "ratings" company in the world. They rate everything. Dealer Rater is focused on one industry and is doing it very well.

I am a big fan of Dealer Rater and have encouraged many of my clients to sign up and leverage what it has to offer. It is my belief that online rating sites such at Dealer Rater are going to make a huge impact on the purchasing decisions of our consumers. Ask yourself what the best form of marketing is. It's word of mouth. Dealer Rater does just that. I recently purchased a TV. I was doing all sorts of research online. What swayed my decision were the blogs I read by other consumers. Not write ups by the manufacturers or one 3rd party that rates products, but those write ups by my peers who have experienced the product first hand. Next, I had to decide where to purchase it. I scanned the blogs and decided, after reading the reviews, where to go. And WOW! They were right! I had a great experience over all.

I think it's time. Dealer Rater is positioned well and is ready to make a huge impact.

We utilize our ratings on ebay and on dealerrater with our customers once we have established a rapport with them. Some times we use it to back up our service, and other times we've been able to bring in customers who got quotes that were lower from other dealers pointing out our good history and it's probably not worth trying to save $200 elsewhere in the long run.

For the most part, we use ebay to sell parts as our website doesn't get much search engine traffic, and adwords was getting to be a little too much money for our margins. It seems more of a culture thing at ebay for customers to leave feedback, however, when we ask our customers to rate us online, they are happy to. We have a testimonial section on our website, but it is just snippets of reviews customers left on dealerrater. If our website supported it, we would just frame it in!

As it is, customers can learn a lot about dealers online, but that also means dealers who know how to use it to their benefit will also see success in it. I suspect with the way it's growing, Amit, you'll see the number of reviews grow to what you might consider valuable enough, quickly. I just hope we have given ourselves enough of a lead. A bit of a chicken and the egg thing. We have 80 or so reviews on dealerrater and our competition is still in the 20s and 30s. I think that's enough to make an opinion on, but not near our 300+ ratings we have on ebay. A lot of our ebay reviews look like school grades (A+++, well ok, not MY school grades...) and don't provide much substance, but then again, we're selling parts on it, not cars so there's less to talk about process wise I guess. When it comes right down to it though, it's fairly easy to get customers to write a review if you just remind them to.

For bad reviews, when they come in and they will as no one's perfect, being able to answer to it quickly is the answer, especially if you can fix the problem before CSI, make right with the customer, and have them update their review. That might not always work, but you have to try.

Sorry, just saw the customer-rater.com idea, haha that would be a great parody site - or even a good learning tool for new sales people...if blocked to the general public of course!

OK, enough procrastinating Generation Kill is almost on,

Jamie

Having skimmed through these comments here I did not see any suggestions on the idea of the dealership website itself offering reviews and/or customer testimonials. I am surprised by that.

You can argue that it might bring in to question the validity of a customer rating/review but if third-party sites aren't cutting it then there must be a reason why customers are not compelled to utilize this.

Could also just be a socio-cultural thing too that requires more time.

Acton Toyota is clearly a great example of a dealership being proactive in its marketing and using whatever tools are out there. More dealers could and should do the same.

But it does not change my opinion that the average shopper going to DealerRater.com is unlikely to get enough information, because there just aren't enough ratings overall. For whatever reason, consumers will spend huge amounts of time on the vehicle research process and then move directly to buying without considering dealership ratings/reviews. Maybe we'll get there someday.

btw, Mitch's observations on his review limbo blog (mentioned earlier) are damning if true.

Having worked with Matt Lamoureux at Acton Toyota and being largely responsible for providing the customer experience Matt has promoted very successfully with Dealer Rater.com. I can say that these types of tools are like anything we use to sell cars. If you have the ability and knowledge to use something effectively than it becomes effective. I love being able to use DealerRater to back up the experience customers recieve at Acton Toyota. Our success with the program could not have come without first being a fully commited, progressive dealership with both our employees and customers interested in our success. However having customers "sell" this experience for us has become way more effective than paying customers to refer their friends and family, which by the way we have never done. I apologize if this is self promoting, I just thought I should chime in.

Joe,

You clearly are an Blog-Pro and have some great insite, but please don't be too hard on Dubis. I'm the President of CarFolks.com and have somewhat of a bias as well. Also I'm a semi-virgin blogger; 2nd time post'er on Jeff's site.

I think what Dubis was trying to do was simply "chime-in" with a different twist to the entire discussion related to rating dealers online. I DO believe ratings are here to stay and will only grow stronger. However, I also believe that if you look at every rating site out their including DealerRater, it looks like dealers are all pretty much horrible with 80% of folks who buy or service a car having a negative experience, yet we know for fact, most dealers have 80-90% positive experiences.

I always thought that consumers were seeking truth, and until the Name brands and smaller wantabee sites change their model, they will contine to be "DRDS" Dealer Rating Deception Sites.

Mark Boyd
www.markboyd.com

There is an enormous potential for a Dealer Rater brand to establish itself. So far, no one's got it figured out (like TripAdvisor.com does). You'd think that Edmunds or KBB would step it up, or, partner with Chip at DealerRater.com to speed the process. It seems like a no brainer to me (both parties win).

In the mean time....
SEO drives our industry, ergo Consumer Rating Sites.

Dealer sites and 3rd party classified players get good SEO ranks because GOOGs algo's makes it happen. My guess is Dealer Rater sites have a more difficult time getting hot local SERPs due to GOOG's engineers -lack of- assistance.

Results? Spotty Dealer Rater results.
GOOG could throw a switch any time and change all of the above.

just my $0.02
Joe

Have you guys heard that one of the industry leaders in online advertising and consumer research will be entering this arena soon? I also heard that they will be spending big bucks to drive people to their review site. Why would they? What's in it for them?

Mark,
I can tell this must be your 1st blog post, 'cuz only a noobie would post blatant self promotion.

"blah blah blaaa...CarFolks offers sales folks free microsites and they start hitting prime positions in the search engines within weeks...blah blah blaaa"

You gotta moderate the self promotion, it makes readers vomit. Remember, a good Doctor never let's his patient SEE THE KNIFE (you'll probably need help with this analogy)

C'mon, improve your game!
Joe
p.s. sorry, you asked for it.

The reality whether you like or dislike rating sites is that consumers will come more and more to rely on them for advice. You have covered a lot of them above that provide feedback for books, shoes, restaurants, travel, hotels, etc. More dealer rating sites are inevitable. Selling cars is getting more personal and online auto shoppers know that any dealer can meet or beat any legitimate price, so they are now looking for a dealer and a salesperson that can provide a great buying experience. CarFolks.com (a new Internet social network and rating site) provides a new take on things and builds on the foundation established by Dealer Rater but improves it by being a dealer advocate to help promote dealers who do the right thing every day. CarFolks offers sales folks free microsites and they start hitting prime positions in the search engines within weeks. No matter what rating site a dealer watches or participates in, every dealer needs to have a strategy and policy on how to manage their online reputation and determine how they want to encourage all their customers to provide feedback whether it is good, bad or ugly. Without that in place a good dealer will be blindsided by online negative feedback.

The thing about consumer opinion is that, when it's negative, it doesn't matter whether it's correct, or unwarranted, or out of date. Other consumers will value it because it's in our nature to heed negative opinion... especially when related to the automotive industry, where consumers are desperate to find out which dealers to avoid. They'll only get more important.

Can a brother get a shameless plug? ReviewLimbo.com is a blog I just started that focuses exclusively on the effects of consumer review sites on SEO, traditional marketing, and reputation management. I'll be addressing a lot of the issues Amit brings up here in the posts to come. Many of you here seem to already have an interest in maximizing your review exposure, and I suggest you stay tuned to the site to stay ahead of the curve. //end shameless plug

Chris
Your customer rater comment sure sounds like you think business would be easier without customers. I am skeptical that your dealership is really #1 with customers with an attitude like that. Just sayin

Just wanted to give an update to the "weird" experience with dealerrater.com. They have updated my request and we are now happy

How about CUSTOMER-RATER.com... this way we all can burn a customer or praise them!?

A Salesperson driven website where you can candidly write up a review on the customers... for salespeople only... this way we know where they've been, how they act up, what stupid money they want for that piece of crap they want to get rid of...what hot buttons need to be pushed...

As far as dealer ratings... we are #1 in the country for Sales satisfaction and Service (really)... so that's all I need to show my people, and what people write about me.... it's taken with a grain of salt.

Hi Oscar,

Sure...I am happy to explain.

Originally we chose to build our repuation on DealerRater because it was founded in 2002 as the first car dealer review website worldwide. In and of itself, being first to market is a tremendous competitive advantage; which may explain why DealerRater continues to generate a ton more traffic than any of its nearest competitors.

Nowadays, Acton Toyota is fully commited to DealerRater because:

1) DealerRater.com is the name brand in dealership history reports, and

2) DealerRater.com has been instrumental in significantly increasing Acton Toyota's business.

How's that old saying go? If it isn't broken...

Our new dealership has been open for almost two months now, and we have been a Dealerrater certified dealer over the last month and a half.

We feel it has given us additional credibility with respect to our online reputation, as well as a great link to send out to all of our existing prospects that have not purchased from us yet.

We just received our first lead from Dealerrater where the customer stated he had heard good things about us from a previous customer. We feel over time, that the amount of these leads will increase.

Andrew DiFeo
Hyundai of St. Augustine

Matt,

I appreciate your feedback. CS asked earlier why you do not change to another rating website to get the same effect there instead of just focusing on dealerrater. Could you give me your thoughts on that?

Thanks

I had a great time utilizing dealerrater until they stopped having a great time with my dealership. I found our dealership had "one" bad review floating out there. http://www.my3cents.com/showReview.cgi?id=30554, that was blasted to a couple of sites, but it was resolved. This happy customer now has a resolution to the situation, which is great, but i wanted to update dealerrater, and i started sending dealerrater links to my new solds to boast our experience ratings. After getting a mere four great experiences, which got us up to a 3.4 stars, I had a dealerrater rep call, they left a message, and now they never respond. Now my great experiences are also gone, weird, i thought, any thoughts anyone?

Hi Oscar,

Good question.

Most dealerships fail to take the initiative to request DealerRater reviews from their happy customers. Dealerships that do request DealerRater reviews from happy customers can quickly turn DealerRater into a competitive advantage.

At Acton Toyota I developed a process by which we requested DealerRater reviews from all our customers. Before long we had hundreds of reviews touting the benefits of doing business with our dealership.

Once we had built up a number of reviews and a very positive score, I inserted hyperlinks into all email correspondence to unsold prospects that directed these unsold prospects to the MA Toyota Dealer Directory page where they could read not only all the great things being said about Acton Toyota, but they could also read those not so great things being said about our competitors.

If you reside in a market where none of your competitors have leveraged DealerRater to increase market share, then I recommend you pounce on the opportunity before it's too late. The real secret is to be the first dealer in your market to accumulate a positive score based on a large number of reviews. Only once you've done that do you include the aforementioned hyperlink in your outgoing email correspondence.

Let’s face it: your competition is going to secret shop you. Don't reveal your hand until you've built up enough of a lead to sustain this competitive advantage. Do this and you’ll be amazed how much your market share will grow.