2013 saw the inaugural Edmunds.com 5 Star Premier Dealer Awards handed out to over 90 dealerships across the nation. This award outstrips other industry recognitions for one simple reason, Edmunds.com has high consumer recognition.

It’s one thing to get a dealership award from a dealership organization that means nothing to your up, it’s another for the up to recognize who issued your award as a place they go to get reliable information.

The way the Internet is changing how you rate

The Internet has become the premier place for consumers to research a car before buying. They aren’t just looking at sales and car reviews; they are reading reviews of the dealerships too.

People are more inclined to believe what they read in a review on the Internet than to believe what someone local says about your business.

Part of the reason for this stems from the Internet still being a mostly print form of communication. And the other part of the reason is the Internet holds the appeal of self-discovery.

By reading a review online, customers feel as if they have done the work to discover a piece of a hidden truth that then gives them the feeling of being well informed.

You can’t argue out an up that thinks they know better than you, but you can do a lot to make sure you have more say in what they are learning.

Increase your customer satisfaction

The awards review process is based less on your reported CSI then the gathered customer reviews of your business on the site. This means that the information reported is going to have a more in-depth review of how your customer rates you, and the cars you sell.

If you are reselling trade-ins then making sure you have a tight protocol in place for qualifying a car for your inventory is essential. Use recognized industry standards as much as possible.

It is also essential that you maximize your response to customer problems not just between you and the customer in question, but use social media to your advantage.

The more publically you can be viewed as responsive and caring, the better you will be reviewed by customers even if they have an out of the norm bad experience with you. To mitigate your risk, get into branding and learn what it takes to generate social proof to enhance your reviews.

Customer satisfaction has become equally about how they feel about you as their experience in doing business with you.

Eligibility

To be eligible to win the Edmunds.com 5 Star Premier Dealer Award you have to be both a member of their Premier Dealership program and have logged at least 20 customer reviews within a two year period. The review period dates backwards from January 2013.

Once you are registered, you need to make sure to promote that customers can post their reviews to Edmunds. The one thing you don’t want to get involved with is paying for reviews.

The industry is getting savvy to spotting false reviews and even playing around with that is less like playing with fire than deciding to take a dip in napalm.