Ed Parkinson, director of dealer development at Contact at Once will deliver a consumer communication session at Automotive Management Live (AML).

Parkinson (pictured) will explore latest consumer communication trends when he leads the company’s best practice session at this year’s Automotive Management Live event at Birmingham NEC on November 9th.

The AML event will see Parkinson warn car dealers about their response rate to enquiries from social media messaging, a channel that he believes is fast becoming the “communication tool of choice”.

“Your vision should be to align the brand (dealership and its personnel) to the way 65 million Brits are connecting and communicating today,” said Parkinson.

“That's engagement through messaging, in a continuous and meaningful connected way.

“Dealers can achieve this by putting their brand on the same page and in the pocket of the consumer so that the dealer and its consumers can connect anytime, anywhere, anyway, through messaging.

“You can still have a conversation but diminish the need for voice, email, and forms; it will save everyone time.

“In fact, there has been a steady decrease in voice, email, and forms over recent years.

“Chat itself is now getting a bit dated and it too will decline over the next few years.

“With that said, consumer to dealership asynchronous messaging is on the rise.

“The tipping point for messaging is upon us, especially since Google, Facebook and Apple in the ios11 release are enabling consumer to dealer messaging functionality.”

“This communication is not about real-time or your lack of time.  The only time that matters is the customer’s time.

“If you are a dealer utilising ‘only’ a fully managed chat for your dealership website, ask yourself ‘why do we do it this way and are we meeting the expectations of our customers?’

“Don't make a conscious decision to limit your sales. Embrace the shift in digital engagement, embrace the disruption of being invited into your customer's conversation. That's the win-win.”

During this session Parkinson will challenge legacy dealership sales processes and structures along with old beliefs and will instead encourage dealers to use every sales resource possible to engage the customer.

“Allow your client care professionals to be heroes, to be able to deliver honest, direct, personalised help to consumers through messaging,” he said.

The sector’s leading suppliers will share their expertise whilst an extensive exhibition area will showcase latest products and services, an insight theatre sees speakers tackle F&I, used cars and new data regulations and dealers can attend a profit clinic.

Dealers and manufacturers can register online for free entry to Automotive Management Live.