Cars.com Dealer Reviews Will Be Going Live Spring of 2011

[Jeff Kershner]

Cars.com Introduces Dealer Reviews

Today, Cars.com announced they would be introducing Dealer Reviews come spring of 2011. This is a huge announcement in my opinion and one that will continue to change the landscape for dealerships. A customer will now not only find the vehicle they're interested in but at the same time decide if your dealership has the reputation they expect.

Cars.com is the first major 3rd party online inventory listings portal to dive into Dealership Reviews and with time, I'm sure we might see others jump on the wagon.

Boy, do we have our work cut out for us?

If you've been reading DealerRefresh, you understand the importance and already have a process down for managing your dealers online reputation. If you have yet to get on-board with online reputation management, you might want to consider now a good time to get on-board!


I was privileged to be part of a dealer panel during the Cars.com Sales Summit just a few weeks ago for the announcement of  Dealership Reviews.  I can attest that Cars.com is taking this this new service very serious. They took a great deal of time and resources to figure out how this fits into their service from a dealers and consumer perspective.

I'm personally truly excited about this new offering and believe it's a huge game changer.

How do you feel about Cars.com offering Dealership Review? - Speak up and share your thoughts and comments. We plan to have an exclusive interview with Cars.com in the next several days. Some of your comments will help round the interview.

"Dealer Reviews is an exciting new feature on Cars.com that allows you to use word-of-mouth marketing to accelerate sales. That's right, it puts the power of word-of-mouth marketing where shoppers can read your reviews and then quickly access your inventory. It also gives you the power to manage your reputation and advertising in one location. Visit dealers.cars.com/reviews to learn more before the spring beta launch."

 

[Brian Pasch (blog)]

I think it is a smart move by Cars.com to make their website more than just an inventory advertising portal. In theory, the site could gain credibility with consumers by having reviews integrated into the shopping experience.

It also opens up a discussion whether dealers who pay for inventory advertising want their advertising partners placing reviews on the vehicle detail pages.

Reviews are an element of the socialization of the Internet so like it or not, actions like the one Cars.com is taking, is adding more transparency to how car dealers operate and treat their customers.

Welcome to the world of the empowered consumer.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

It will no doubt be interesting to see how this plays out.

Will be a great benefit for dealers that understand and get on-board early.

 

[Jason (blog)]

Autotrader.com has already launched this in test markets. It will be going live in 3 weeks across the country.

 

[Stan Sher]

I have always thought that they would get into this. It will be great for some dealers and horrible for others.

 

[@axsnyder]

There are too many review sites.

 

[Kevin Frye]

One more place to worry about getting reviews posted and managing them... I wish they would just aggregate reviews from the current primary review sites and go from there. I am following about 12 review sites monthly now and this is one more. The truth is, folks primarily leave positive reviews when you proactively encourage them. If not, typically only the folks that are dissatisfied will go out of their way to leave a negative review. Therefore, as a dealer, I will now have to work at building positive reviews at one more site. I am a big fan of Cars.com, but have mixed feelings at this point...

 

[Jeff Kershner]

I hear ya Kevin. Another concern of mine is the fact that reviews on a portal like this could bring a different dynamic. Consumers will have the ability to review the dealership while activity shopping and not have to "seek out" a review site. Imagine: customer finds a vehicle of interest, calls the dealership and a sales person is perceived to be rude. Customer gets frustrated and decides to review their phone experience right there and then. It's un-typical to receive reviews like this on a site like DealerRater since the consumer is less likely to be in the shopping phase at that very moment. As I stated before, more work for us but the extra work will hopefully be more beneficial for your dealers. You already get it and know how to place a process around receiving and managing reviews. You will now have the opportunity to get these transparent reviews in front of more in market buyers.Yes, this will be more work for dealers. Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

 

[scott (blog)]

Interesting point. Taking your concern a little further, it seems likely that the reviews (particularly the negative reviews) would be more of the BDC and lead handling process rather than a review of the whole sales process. This could cut both ways: a good Internet dept (fast turnaround and good pricing strategy) could make a normally marginal dealer shine, while a weak Internet dept. could pull down a normally solid store.

 

[denooyerchevy]

Great, now there are about 15 websites that can push to our Google Place page.