Autotraders email not working??

[Tony F 38]

As everyone is now aware, email enquiries now arrive through dealer portal the past few weeks (crap system). The usual rubbish plus the odd sensible one. We reply to all of them. However, today we have discovered that our replies are not making it back to the customer. Is anyone experiencing the same problem or is it just a glitch applicable to us??

You can try this out for yourselves. If you find a couple of your own cars on AT, as a customer would, and send a couple of email enquiries in to your own dealership, (use a different return email than your business one). You will find that you receive the enquiry no problem. Then reply back and check if the 'customer' (yourself in this case) has received the dealers reply to the original enquiry.

Tony

[EPV 631]

I just ring the customer. Even if they prefer to be emailed. In my opinion anyone seriously wanting a car will know they will have to speak to another human at some point. 

[justina3 518]

4 hours ago, EPV said:

I just ring the customer. Even if they prefer to be emailed. In my opinion anyone seriously wanting a car will know they will have to speak to another human at some point. 

I kind of differ from that point of view, a lot of customers these days just want as little interaction as possible, the facebookers even more so, we do quite well out of them sold two this week to youngsters who in turn sent there parents down to buy the cars for them. 

The times they are a changing.

 

[EPV 631]

14 minutes ago, justina3 said:

I kind of differ from that point of view, a lot of customers these days just want as little interaction as possible, the facebookers even more so, we do quite well out of them sold two this week to youngsters who in turn sent there parents down to buy the cars for them. 

The times they are a changing.

 

Probably for your stock profile I expect, I tend to sell saloons and estates to family types. I agree though you have to adapt but i’d rather have a 3 minute conversation with someone than a 3 day one. 

[justina3 518]

Guess that’s where I am lucky my 18 year old son runs the Facebook side of stuff and he is fluent in text babble 

[Dave2302 387]

15 hours ago, justina3 said:

Guess that’s where I am lucky my 18 year old son runs the Facebook side of stuff and he is fluent in text babble 

LOL, know what you mean, someone texts me, I read it twice then reply covering all bases, around 3 minutes.....................

Any one of our youngsters, phone goes ping, 3 seconds later thumb nails go clatter clatter clatter on screen, done !! 15 seconds tops 

[Tony F 38]

On 7/21/2018 at 11:24 AM, Tony F said:

As everyone is now aware, email enquiries now arrive through dealer portal the past few weeks (crap system). The usual rubbish plus the odd sensible one. We reply to all of them. However, today we have discovered that our replies are not making it back to the customer. Is anyone experiencing the same problem or is it just a glitch applicable to us??

Hi everyone.

Just a bit of info for those of you guys that do reply to emails enquiries using the A/T portal. A lot of the dealers replies using portal can and will end up in the customers spam folder, especially hotmail and gmail accounts. Spoke with A/T today and this is what we discovered. To try and avoid this it might be best to cut and paste a reply direct to customer, completely bypassing the portal system. I hope this may help a few of you as things have been very quiet, and no one wants to miss out on potential deals.

Tony