As I have been working with dealer group leaders and members of the vendor community, it has become clear that the role the CRM has traditionally played in dealership communications is changing.
The CRM was once the gatekeeper of permission-based communications but since CRMs have not evolved, we need another sheriff in town.
This article was inspired by conversations which I have been having with Jim Kosobucki, CDP Architect and Manager from the Morgan Automotive Group, and David Steinberg, CEO of Foureyes.
Reflecting on the past
For years, dealers have utilized the CRM as their primary platform for customer communications. Consumers can opt-in to email, SMS, or phone calls and request for certain communication channels to be blocked. This works well as long as ALL communications flow through the CRM.
When dealers first started using chatbots with their CRM (i.e., Conversica), the learning curve was steep. The chatbot would often over-communicate or confuse consumers. The consumer submitted one lead form and three people from the dealership are trying to strike up a conversation. This still happens today so what happens when AI vertical agents start propagating for sales, service, and F&I?
But dealers just don’t use their CRM.
They hire third-party companies to send out emails, text messages, and direct mail pieces. These vendors may attempt to get the opt-out list from the CRM, but many just grab data from the DMS or CRM.
Dealers have allowed for potential conflicts to arise because, in the past, the fines have been small.
Looking forward
As dealers create their own centralized data hub for customer data and interactions, some logical questions should arise:
- When a customer opts out of email or SMS messaging in the CRM, how do those flags propagate to all the other vendors who access customer data on behalf of the dealer?
- What are the rules for opt-out management and what use cases can override the consumers requests (i.e., recall alerts)?
- As CRM platforms utilize AI to communicate with consumers on behalf of the dealer, how can dealers coordinate messages and content with other AI agents who may be working directly with consumers based on data in the CDP?
- How do marketing automation vendors (dealers have more than one) working with dealers respect the opt-in/opt-out preferences and avoid conflicting offers to consumers?
I believe that a centralized data and communication governance platform will need to be created to make sure that dealers avoid fines and have a consistent message to their customers. David Steinberg and I have started to solve this problem, but we will need a larger group of automotive technology leaders to have a scalable solution.
Yes, dealer groups can attempt to build their own privacy management platform, but it will always be limited to integrations and API functionality. I hope we can gather some leaders together to make something which can benefit the entire automotive community.
