One of the earliest casualties of the digital age was the dollar bill. Not the value of the currency, but the actual, physical bank note that people used to carry in their wallets to pay for goods and services.
Once electronic transactions went fully mainstream, there was no going back. And, while cash is still somewhat prominent in a few industries, it’s becoming steadily less so in today’s dealership.
This might seem like just another disruption as the marketplace continues to evolve almost faster than anyone can track, but in fact, going cashless actually represents a golden opportunity for dealers – particularly in the service department.
How so? The answer can be summed up in two critical phrases: process efficiency and customer convenience.
Process Efficiency
The benefit of streamlining any dealership process is cost savings. Whether it’s reducing employee error or eliminating resource waste, process improvements add up to have a real impact on the dealership bottom line.
Consider the following scenarios in a cashless service department:
- Processing credit cards is faster than accepting cash. With credit, your customers get through the line quicker, so you can help more of them.
- Drawer over by $25.60? That’s no longer an issue.
- Drawer short by $25.60? Employees can’t pocket a credit card receipt like they can cash.
- The responsible cashier doesn’t have to spend time during his or her shift counting the drawer at the beginning and end to make sure it balances correctly. With no cash, your employee is ready for work as soon as he or she arrives.
- The less cash you accept, the less you have at the store. Less cash equals better security and can help reduce the likelihood of your business losing thousands of dollars to theft.
By introducing electronic payment methods while phasing out cash, you position your service department to save time and money as well as boost employee productivity.
Customer Convenience
The other primary benefit of going cashless is the positive impact it can have on your customers. When you prioritize the customer experience, whether by saving them time or offering them greater payment flexibility, increased loyalty and a boost to your dealership’s reputation follow.
Here are six ways to give customers better payment options:
- Think about how you pay your own bills. Do you go to the water department and hand over cash? Do you write a check, address an envelope, and then realize you’re out of stamps? Probably not. Like the majority of bill-paying adults, you probably pay online.
- When you email a customer their invoice, they have the power to review it and know exactly what they’re paying for. This works especially well for fleet customers. A business owner can receive an email with an invoice and pay the invoice before his employee even picks up the vehicle. This eliminates transposition errors for your cashier and long lines for your customers.
- Much like emailed invoices, text messages can be highly convenient. Your customers can check out their invoice before they arrive so there are no surprises. Customers can also securely store credit card information so they can use it for future payments.
- Near-field communication (NFC) payments allow two devices (a payment terminal and a smartphone) to talk to each other when they’re in close proximity. NFC is the technology that enables the payment via tapping the smartphone on the payment terminal. While this means a customer is still paying at the point of sale, it’s much faster and more secure than a cash payment.
- Implement Apple Pay and Google Pay. By 2021, mobile payments will hit $282 billion. By the following year, they’ll make up one-third of electronic payments in the U.S.
- Credit and debit cards have gotten some recent upgrades. New standards by Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and American Express mean that customers don’t have to sign for their payment at the terminal. This change will significantly decrease wait times for your customers.
These are just a few methods that can help your service department on the road to becoming cashless, but they also represent huge leaps forward in customer convenience and autonomy – good for both your bottom line and your reputation.
Conclusion
Ideally, you’ll leverage a solution that can offer each of these features embedded in your existing dealership management system (DMS).
By going cashless in the service department, you can streamline the way you do business while keeping the focus on the customer experience.
Make the decision today to go cashless and go all-in on digital payment options for your customers. The results will speak for themselves.
About the Author
Tim Eckert started at Reynolds and Reynolds as a Hardware Engineer in 1984. With over 34 years of experience, his other roles include managing hardware and software support teams and managing an array of product-life cycles. Currently, Tim is a Product Planning Manager responsible for ERA-IGNITE and POWER platforms, Business Office applications, Laser Printing solutions, Document Archiving solutions, Networking solutions, Hardware, and ReyPAY® payment processing.