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If you’re like most folks these days, you LOVE text messaging. It’s ridiculously easy … tremendously time-saving … and often make-or-break invaluable, especially if you have to communicate with someone immediately.

You may be wondering: Why are they talking about “text messaging” when the title of this blog refers to an “SMS Feature”? Answer: Because they’re basically the same thing. And adding an SMS (Short Message Service) feature to your communications and marketing arsenal can make your autoshop a genuine “star” in terms of customer satisfaction and your year-in-year-out profitability.

Here are 5 reasons why:

• SMS is Lightning Fast … Using an SMS feature to—for example—let your customer know his or her auto-repair is complete or that you’re offering special savings on a service—you’ll deliver your message in a heartbeat. The average time elapsed from send to receive for a text message is less than 7 seconds.
• The Platform is Incredibly Flexible … You can send specific messages to highly targeted individuals or groups … send general messages to your entire customer list … or anything in between. A great SMS feature makes it very easy to customize your text message campaigns to the needs of your customers.
• Your SMS Text Will Be Opened and Read … Compared to email communications, SMS messages have a super-high open rate. Research shows that virtually EVERY SMS message is opened—whereas only a fraction of emails are. When your customer hears that trill or buzz in his or her pocket, they’re just like you—they read the message.
• You Enjoy a High Follow-Through Rate … Research ALSO shows that SMS results in an extremely high rate of action or follow-through on the part of the customer. No matter what you are asking your customer to do—anything from picking up their car to taking advantage of a Special Discount—they are most likely to do it if the communication was an SMS text message.
• You Position Yourself as Being at the Forefront of Your Industry … In the past few years, a huge number of your customers have substantially moved away from email and from social-media platforms such as Facebook—and have turned, instead, to text messaging. This gives you a wide-open opportunity to show your customers you are keeping up with today’s cutting-edge technology by texting. It also enhances your autoshop’s dealership service and customer service … gives your shop a major head start in attracting the next generation of customers … and gives you a great way to create an attention-getting buzz locally.

No matter how you look at it, an SMS feature—such as the one you can get from Auto Bookings Online—delivers a huge advantage to those who understand that outstanding customer communication leads to outstanding customer cultivation.

And that’s a good prescription for long-term autoshop success.

Auto Bookings Online is an online tool specifically designed to help auto-repair shops maximize profitability through better-managed customer bookings.