Bad data costing dealerships time and money

Dealers are wasting time and missing out on potential revenue due to bad data such as incorrect customer details, according to new research.

Data experts Auto Data Solutions (ADS) has found that more than half of customer records within dealerships are wrong or out of date.

This means retailers are sending countless communications each year to the wrong people, at the wrong time and wrong addresses, missing out on opportunities to generate revenue from legitimate customers.

ADS analysed the databases of several major dealer groups and found that in one group’s database, 74.1% of 424,000 customer records was inaccurate, with 112,550 customers no longer even owning the car.

Bad data

Jon Sheard, operations director of ADS, said: “There are many reasons why dealers often fail to grasp the nettle of cleansing their customer databases. These range from simply not realising how poor their records are, to difficulties in re-importing a fully accurate customer database into their DMS without expert help, or mistakenly believing that they can only perform the data cleansing themselves.”

He continued: “Our analysis reveals a lot of low-hanging fruit available simply by knowing the basics, such as where people live, whether they still have the car and when its MOT is due. Research consistently demonstrates that if the right customers are contacted at a relevant moment a significant proportion of them will book service work or begin a conversation about changing their car.

“But that’s not possible if you’ve lost track of them. By allowing customers to drift away, while wasting time and money sending communications to incorrect addresses or to customers who have moved on to another dealer, countless opportunities are missed every day.”