Our latest guest blogger was inspired by recent events to talk about the importance of quality data for everyone involved in a car transaction. You can read the open letter to Auto Trader on the Car Dealer website here.

At CAP we believe a very important part of our job is to make our customers look good in the eyes of their customers too. That is one of the reasons we sell on quality, not price. It’s a fact that we could not invest the time, money and care that goes into CAP data products and sell them cheaply.  It’s also a fact that we want more than to simply win the deal – we want our customers to win from the deal too. We want them to be delighted with the return on their investment. The widely publicised problems that have stemmed from the decision by a major car sales platform to switch data supplier all relate to the negative impact on their customers. We understand that our own high quality partners – like Gforces – only do business with us because they know we are driven to help them provide a great customer experience.

Put simply, CAP customers know we’ve got their back.  We believe that is every bit as important as winning the sale.

 

The strife between a certain major classifieds site and some of its business users is not a trade secret, so it was illuminating to read an open letter to said organisation that we stumbled across. One of the major criticisms was with its vehicle valuations tool – particularly interesting to us bearing in mind that we firmly believe that offering online valuations to customers is a core component of the modern retail model.

We firmly believe in valuations because consumers want to know the cost to change. They want transparency and accuracy before they walk into a showroom. Fundamentally, they don’t want nasty surprises. For consumers, therefore, the valuations tool that the classified site is offering is a brilliant idea.

However, one of our core goals as a business is to make the internet profitable for car dealers. And whilst this doesn’t need to come at the expense of consumer experience, motor retailers are our focus. Tools like NetDirector CAP Valuations therefore have to work for our clients as business generators – delivering leads and opportunities for sales.

Curiosity killed the cat, so they say, and we were curious as to why the classifieds’ valuations tool was the target of such criticism. So we had a look.

Fundamentally, the problem with it is that it isn’t a business generating tool for the dealers advertising their cars; that is to say when someone performs a valuation, that lead isn’t delivered to a dealer whose stock profile is a match for the car being valued. I guess we could say that whilst motor retailing in this digital age is a fine balancing act between a consumer’s expectations for information and a dealer’s expectations of a profit, this particular valuations tool is weighted in the consumer’s favour. What’s more, if a consumer chooses to trade-in at a dealer, their idea of what their car is worth may be quite different to its ‘book’ value as the data used doesn’t come from industry-standard sources such as CAP.

This is why NetDirector CAP Valuations is different and why we believe it is the best tool of its kind available. Firstly, it sits on a retailer’s website – effectively it is ‘owned’ by that retailer and consumers will make a direct association. Secondly, all data is derived from CAP, the leaders in vehicle valuations, and it can be content managed so dealers can choose the cars they want to value and whether they want to uplift or reduce the valuations a consumer sees. Lastly, to use the system a consumer must enter their details – details which are passed on to the dealer providing the valuation.

We’re all for providing car buyers with the information they crave, but it has to be realistic and it has to work as effectively for dealers as it does buyers. Nowhere is this more important than when providing vehicle valuations. And whilst the integrity of the data is hugely important, so is delivering strong, qualified leads into dealers’ businesses.

Like we said, selling cars in the digital age is a balancing act between consumer desires and retailer needs. It should be weighted appropriately to strike this balance."