Shouldn’t Your Online Reputation Be Accurate?

For the last year I have watched all of the industry blogs, trade magazines and networks describing the best way to manage your reputation. If you Google car dealer reputation management the results are staggering. Pages and pages of different opinions on the appropriate way to make sure all of your good reviews show up. Then, there are the manipulation tricks to cherry pick and post only good reviews and appear in the top spots on search engines.

Uhmm, excuse me, but do we as automotive professionals  actually think that our prospective customers and previous customers are gullible enough to think we are telling the whole story? Especially if they have had problems at a particular car dealership and all that is available is customer testimonials explaining how great that car dealership is; I certainly hope not. Customers and prospects are much more comfortable seeing the bad along with the good and they also want to see what the dealer or the sales person did to fix it the issue.  That is one of the many areas addressed directly by Dealer Report Cards

If your reputation is not important to you and you do not care about customers and prospects, then you need to leave the car business. You are part of the problem that makes us less popular than visiting the dentist. The professionals at automotive dealerships on the pavement and in the service and parts departments deserve to be recognized for their hard work.

They have thick skin and are not afraid to address their mistakes then take the proper steps to correct them. They would rather have the whole story displayed and yes, the customers that are just taking advantage of them need to be exposed as well. We all know they exist and can seriously damage an individual as well as a dealer’s reputation. Wouldn’t it be nice to have someone yell foul on those individuals? Dealer Report Cards will do that too.

The main reason I started this crusade and made the decision to get involved with Dealer Repot Cards is because everybody screams ” help the dealers” and we should. But more importantly, does it makes more sense to provide online tools for these professionals so it’s easier for customers to find them? Without employees and customers car dealers will not exist.

I have firsthand experience with being reviewed by an angry customer and after the dust settled it was funny how I got excellent marks in every category on Toyota’s survey. But after four years my customers’ negative review, where he called me a liar, is still coming up in various web searches fed by the posting on Dealer Rater. When I requested they remove my name from the title and leave the review as it stood I was told they would check into it. Funny, now that I am an owner of a company that competes with them, it is being indexed with changes made to it. Of course, I kept a copy of the original for my records.

Dealer Report Cards assists auto retail professionals, the customers and the dealer by letting the truth shine through. We will do our very best to give you the tools you need to show your good reputation and  automate your social media marketing efforts while allowing you to react with your various streams like you should. We have other features and functionality that you will learn about as we go, but pitching dealers’ snake oil is not part of the plan.

Kim Clouse
Dealer Report Cards.com