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CASE STUDIES

Widewail Boosts Sloane Automotive Group's Regional Performance and Impresses OEMs with Standout Success

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PRODUCTS COMPANY INDUSTRY OBJECTIVES LOCATIONS

 

Invite_Logo-1@2x (1)

Invite

Engage_Logo@2x (1)

Engage

Engage Plus Icon

Engage Plus

Sloane Automotive Group

Automotive

Find a reputation management partner with the same dedication to customer service, get more reviews, and respond to feedback on review sites and social media.

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Finding the right vendor partner

The team at Philadelphia-based Sloane Automotive Group knows the value of good customer service. The family-owned and operated group runs its 7 dealerships with professionalism and integrity at front-of-mind.

Naturally, the team expects any vendor partner to have the same dedication to customer service.

Sloane Automotive partnered with Widewail because the team needed a new reputation management vendor. Their provider at the time was not as communicative or customer-service focused as the team would have liked.

Sloane’s Marketing Director, Topher Liddle, was searching for an active, communicative and attentive vendor partner. He wanted to work with a team that was more proactive in suggesting ideas and innovations than the previous provider had been.

Jake Barron, Marketing Director for Koons Auto Group at that time, recommended Widewail because his dealership group had seen success with the Widewail platform.

With the endorsement from another trusted dealership leader and offering a full suite of cutting-edge products, Widewail was the natural choice.

 

Solution

The Sloane group launched three of Widewail’s core reputation management products– Invite (review generation software), Engage (review response managed services), and Engage Plus (social platform monitoring)– across its 7 rooftops. From the onboarding process alone, Liddle was impressed.

 

Success from the Start

The contrast between working with Widewail and their previous provider became evident in the first moments of the new relationship. Liddle had canceled the original provider 6 weeks prior and hadn’t even heard a peep from the account manager. In the meantime, the Widewail team was responsive, personable and quick to get the onboarding process going.

As part of Engage Plus, Widewail helps businesses by seeding their Google Q&A with relevant questions. Liddle was impressed when, just an hour after sending over Sloane’s list of questions for the locations’ GBPs, the Widewail team posted and uploaded responses.

 

Excellent Managed Services

Widewail’s Engage and Engage Plus have been highly successful since launch. With a team of expert responders managing all reviews and social media comments across multiple platforms, the team at Sloane was freed up to concentrate on other aspects of their jobs.

In one year, the response team at Widewail composed 5,622 custom responses to reviews across Sloane dealerships.

A 5-star review for Sloane Toyota of Glenside:

sloane automotive five star review example

Widewail's response:

Sloane automotive review response example-2

The Widewail response incorporates keywords such as vehicle year, make and model, it is personalized by addressing Jamie directly and mentioning his daughter and it repeats the business name for an added SEO boost. 

 

Robust Reporting

Widewail’s proactive partnership with Sloane is exemplified by the app’s reporting capabilities. In the Widewail app, Sloane has access to unique reporting analytics derived from their review performance. Every review is tagged by topic for the Sloane team to learn what topics are driving positive reviews and where there are areas for improvement. 

Further, the Widewail reporting tools give Sloane access to data on individual representative performance. This helps managers understand which staff members are driving positive reviews and which tend to receive negative feedback. 

Liddle and the rest of his team appreciated this feature of Widewail as a leadership tool, saying the team “was remarking about the insights that you brought up through the reporting and is really impressed.”

 

Invite Success

Integrated with Sloane’s DMS, Widewails review generation product, Invite, automatically sends requests for reviews after any customer transactions. 

In one year, 7 Sloane rooftops received over 5,000 reviews which were primarily positive. 

The stats: 

  • 5,622 reviews generated
  • 4.7 average star rating
  • 7% negative sentiment, better than the automotive industry average of 10-12%

“Since starting with Widewail, our dealerships have been consistently called out by manufacturers for having great reviews and responses”

Topher Liddle, Marketing Director, Sloane Automotive Group

The OEMs Sloane represents–which include BMW, Audi, Toyota, Porsche and Honda–immediately noticed the dealership group’s improvement in review performance and were impressed.

"Since starting with Widewail, our dealerships have been consistently called out by manufacturers for having great reviews and responses," Liddle said. 

Widewail helps dealership groups like Sloane perform well as a dealership and boost the overall reputation of the brand, often to the satisfaction of their OEMs.

At the end of the day, Liddle is happy with his decision to partner with Widewail: “Signing up for Widewail was one of the best decisions I’ve made since I’ve been here.”

“Signing up for Widewail was one of the best decisions I’ve made since I’ve been here.”

Topher Liddle, Marketing Director, Sloane Automotive Group