Have you ever stopped a moment and ask yourself:
What communication channels with your customers are truly serving your dealership's potential?
Because the fact is, the once-effective traditional communication methods may no longer align with today’s consumer expectations.
Phone calls, while still crucial and valuable in your operations, simply aren't the most efficient way to engage everyone.
Think about your own schedule:
Between meetings, customer interactions, and daily tasks, how many calls do you miss? Yet, a text message almost always captures your attention.
If this reflects your own communication preferences, don’t you think your customers might share the same preference?
This simple reality offers your dealership a remarkable opportunity to leverage a dealership texting software in ways that increase both profit margins and customer lifetime value (CLV).
The real question isn't whether your dealership should use texting—it’s why you haven't fully embraced it yet.
The evidence overwhelmingly favors a hybrid approach—one that intelligently combines traditional phone calls with strategic text messaging.
SMS and RCS messaging provide dealerships with critical advantages, like higher customer retention, increased service satisfaction, and elevated profitability.
Here’s how:
The numbers tell a compelling story about changing consumer preferences.
These numbers highlight an important shift in consumer expectations. Customers want transparent, on-the-go communications that fit their schedules. Here’s how texting helps:
Bonus: Even your internal teams benefit—parts, advisors, and technicians can swap text-based updates attached to ROs.
Modern texting platforms aren’t just about one-on-one communication. You can transform your marketing through targeted text campaigns.
Instead of generic mass emails, SMS campaigns allow you to target customers based on service history, vehicle type, and mileage—creating relevance that cannot be matched.
Fact: Some Kimoby users book 40–50 extra service appointments per campaign with automated text reminders.
Increasingly, OEMs require dealerships to adopt texting solutions for maintenance reminders and recall alerts. Beyond meeting OEM standards, these timely texts keep your brand top-of-mind while adding revenue.
How might automated text follow-ups transform your CSI scores? Well, they allow you to identify and resolve negative issues before official surveys reach customers. It gives your dealership the chance to intervene and build trust while improving how customers rate their experience.
The impact on appointment scheduling can be dramatic. Targeted text campaigns consistently bring more vehicles into your service bays, bringing vehicles into your service drive that might otherwise have gone elsewhere. Beyond simply increasing appointment volume, centralized texting platforms reduce system-switching inefficiencies and open up new revenue streams.
While most automotive DMSs have text message features, they often lack the scope and ease-of-use needed for your service operations.
Kimoby is built specifically to address dealerships’ communication hurdles.It offers a comprehensive texting solution with features set directly targeting the factors that influence CLV and your dealership profitability.
Unlike systems that only allow texting for open repair orders, Kimoby enables you to converse with any customer in your database at any time.
This keeps relationships between service visits alive and creates opportunities for ongoing engagement. Your service advisors can directly interact with customers using your dealership’s phone number on Kimoby’s easy to use platform.
Kimoby’s internal chat feature revolutionizes how your departments interact. Technicians, advisors, and parts staff can collaborate seamlessly, with one-on-one chats that don’t interfere with general workflow. This breaks information silos and speeds up decision-making.
Rather than confusing customers with multiple contact numbers, Kimoby enables you to send all communications from your main dealership phone number. This creates a cohesive brand experience and prevents the fragmentation that occurs when customers receive messages from different departments using different numbers.
And since Kimoby is based around customers and not repair order, it’s easy to keep track of all text interactions with any customers.
Kimoby can be fully customized to reflect your dealership's branding. For multilingual markets, Kimoby's built-in translation features break down communication barriers, allowing you to serve diverse customer populations effectively.
Additional functionalities—like saved replies for consistent messaging, emoji support for a friendlier tone, and scheduled texting for off-hours—give you greater efficiency and personalization.
Perhaps most importantly, Kimoby integrates with leading DMS platforms. This automates follow-ups by pulling real-time data directly from your DMS. Repair orders opened or closed in CDK, Reynolds & Reynolds, or DealerTrack, for example, can trigger relevant communications—no manual input needed.
The automation features in Kimoby extend during the service relationship:
Kimoby's campaign transform how your dealership approach service outreach:
For example, one dealership using Kimoby booked 45 appointments from a single text campaign, netting over $35,000 in upsell revenue.
To bridge a fundamental trust gap many service departments are facing it’s important to show, not just tell.
With Kimoby, when technicians discover issues, they can instantly send photos or videos directly to the customers' phone, making abstract recommendations concrete.
While it takes your team minimal extra effort, customers perceive it as outstanding service, shifting their perspective from skepticism to trust.
Kimoby's videos combined with campaigns typically yield around a 10x return on investment, with some dealerships reporting upsells of around $40,000 from a single campaign.
Kimoby Pay brings another game-changer: send estimates and invoices straight to a customer’s phone. Instead of awkward phone calls discussing costs, customers can view and settle payments on their own terms.
This real-time payment feature makes your operations smoother and lessens the front-counter load.
By adopting Kimoby’s texting platform, your dealership can:
Book a free demo today to discover how Kimoby can empower your dealership to thrive in modern automotive service.
Citation
[1] DriveSure Releases 2023 Dealership Service Retention Report