How to customize your message to the customer

In mid-June, Joe Shaker, principal owner of Shaker Auto Group and co-founder of TruVideo, will give a talk at the CXAUTO Summit Series about something that has him excited for the future.

It's called "conversational commerce," a term coined in 2015 by former Uber executive Chris Messina.

It means merchants using technology to engage with customers in real time to help them purchase goods through messaging apps, chatbots and other automated tools. The goal is to balance personalization and efficiency for a better buying experience.

Shaker is convinced this approach can be used with great success in fixed ops. It ushers in an era beyond just sending a message. Instead, communication with customers will be asynchronous and customized to fit each user.

With these tools comes rich data. Service departments will be able to tell when a customer opens a text, how long they spend watching a video from a technician, when they move to the dealership website and how they convert.

"It's how, within messaging, you're able to provide personalized experience engagement," Shaker says.

Ninety-four percent of customers prefer texting as a way to communicate with businesses, Shaker says. For fixed ops departments, texting and video are a great combination, he says.

He gives an example of someone on hold for 90 seconds, an eternity to a customer, he says.

"But if I text you back in 4½ minutes ... you're cool with that, right? Because that's the way we work today," Shaker says. "So one of the things we have to think about is not just the video, but this asynchronous communication and how a customer can respond at their leisure."

Shaker believes texting and video are the best communication tools — not a multipoint inspection on a piece of paper.

"That's not the way to communicate," he says. "It's like a customer came in and asked us to play him a song — and we handed him the sheet music. Why don't we just play them the song?"