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GM Reputation Management "Required"

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Eley Duke

Eley Duke

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Nov 30, 2009
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Eley
#1
GM dealers that were on the Oct 25th SFE WebEx learned that GM is requiring all dealers enrolled in the SFE program to be in reputation management. So far the only info is that the program will cost dealers $300-$500 monthly! This will be done through emails surveying all new and CPO purchases, as well as warranty and customer pay service work. Customers are then invited to post on the dealers iMR (Cobalt) website, Google+ Local, Yelp or other sites. There will be notifications and a dealer dashboard. Vendors will not be announced till Nov 15th.

So this brings up several questions.

  1. Who are the approved vendors?
  2. Who is the dashboard vendor? - Below is a screen shot of the supposed dashboard.
  3. The cost compared to current reputation management solutions!
  4. How will this impact all the reviews you might already have worked hard for?

GM RM Dashboard.jpg

What are your thoughts?

Eley
 
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Dominion DMS
#2
Re: GM Rep Management "Required"

Dislike when brands require certain things, hopefully it's not vendor-specific for you guys. Not a GM dealer, but I can see their reasoning behind this, very good way to promote the brand in a better spotlight! Thanks for sharing, I wonder if any other brands will hop on this, and make it a requirement anytime soon..
 
#3
Re: GM Rep Management "Required"


Cobalt
DigitalAirstrike
NakedLime

Those will be your 3 choices form what I hear. I just don't understand the thinking at GM behind making a dealer (independent business) force choose a vendor to do business with. Whatever happened to the free market... and letting the best product/solution sell itself based on its own results or values.

Cost appears to be less... but the "GM Packages" that these vendors will be offering are a watered down version of their whole packages... my thinking is that they will be trying to up-sell the dealers.

Should not affect anything that you have already done on the major review sites - facebook marketing - yelp - and others... as most of these programs can "plug-in" and build on what you already have. Or, for the dealers that have nothing.... build it from scratch.
 
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#4
Re: GM Rep Management "Required"

kcar said:
Dislike when brands require certain things, hopefully it's not vendor-specific for you guys. Not a GM dealer, but I can see their reasoning behind this, very good way to promote the brand in a better spotlight! Thanks for sharing, I wonder if any other brands will hop on this, and make it a requirement anytime soon..
Click to expand...

I agree, I don't like when it's required, but I understand they want their dealers to have good reputations online. Ford doesn't require it, but they do offer a program through Digital Air Strike as well. Is a simplified version of the DAS tool.
 
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#8
Re: GM Rep Management "Required"

ajholland said:
Ford doesn't require it, but they do offer a program through Digital Air Strike as well.
Click to expand...

Aaron, there is a Ford dealer, in this market, that has the worst reviews that I have ever seen. If accurate, some of these suggest illegal activity. They are unable to write fake reviews fast enough to get their scores up. They have three times as many reviews and any other Ford store in the market. For a staff page, on their website, they just need to take a picture of that wall in the Post Office.
I am usually against the factory getting involved in the retail area but this store got it's Sales and Service Agreement long before the internet. At some point, Ford has the right to protect it's image.
 
#10
Re: GM Rep Management "Required"

ddavis said:
Aaron, there is a Ford dealer, in this market, that has the worst reviews that I have ever seen. If accurate, some of these suggest illegal activity. They are unable to write fake reviews fast enough to get their scores up. They have three times as many reviews and any other Ford store in the market. For a staff page, on their website, they just need to take a picture of that wall in the Post Office.
I am usually against the factory getting involved in the retail area but this store got it's Sales and Service Agreement long before the internet. At some point, Ford has the right to protect it's image.
Click to expand...


I agree, dealers may view this as the manufacturer getting involved in their business, but manufacturers are protecting their brand. I haven't seen any numbers, but maybe the GM dealers on a national level are struggling so GM felt they needed to require it.
 


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