Reputation Management: Software As A Service (Department)

Welcome back to Reputation Management! Here we reveal the underbelly of ordinary automotive retailers—places like car dealers and service shops—with fictional service tales inspired by real customer reviews. How do we make these stories seem like they could really happen? Because of my years of experience with a Fortune 500 automotive retailer as a—you guessed it—reputation manager. —Sajeev

The wild antics found in Social Media and, by extension, Reputation Management, has forever changed the world of automotive retailing. Though websites like Facebook, Yelp, and Google are far from the only disrupters in the industry you can lump these companies into a single category because they are all selling something on the cloud. Well, not a real cloud, but cloud computing.

The cloud is a network of servers connected to the Internet, performing tasks of almost any kind behind the scenes. And even if you aren’t on Facebook or TikTok, odds are it is helping you access all the photos from your phone, opening your work email, or even speaking to a customer service representative on the phone.

Clouds are everywhere, and they power the Software as a Service (SaaS) business model that’s so popular these days. For better or worse, SaaS frees us from needing to download software onto our computer’s hard drive. Aside from the troubling fact that now we own nothing, some industries could really use SaaS to improve their operations. One such valuable company caters to the automotive repair industry, offering SaaS to manage work orders, customer service, parts ordering, back office bookkeeping, and probably a few other operations I’ve overlooked.

This company is named GarageGuru, and my connection stems from a friendship with their founder, Salil Pandit. Tech startups generally start small and unassuming, and Pandit’s foray into SaaS software was no different. One day, he called me asking for an informal marketing consultation. I had no idea his company had progressed far enough to need my input, as it was still operating out of his European and exotic car repair shop.

I’ll get to our phone call in a moment, but we need to make it clear that GarageGuru indeed started several feet above his shop. This was pure brilliance, as the shop was not only GarageGuru’s landlord, but it was the fledgling company’s first customer. (And a very forgiving one at that!) But I expected nothing less than brilliance from Pandit, because a successful South Asian doctor who quit a promising career in vascular surgery to own and manage an automotive repair shop is clearly working on a vision that I’d never fathom.

And Pandit never ceases to amaze, but you could say the same thing about me. Back in 2009 and well before Reputation Management was a career, I used my contacts as a freelance automotive journalist to create and distribute one helluva press release to promote Pandit’s unquestionably amazing 5000 square-foot display at the Houston Auto Show.

It was just a few minutes of writing and sending to an email distribution list, but sometimes the smallest efforts have the largest impacts. My dabbling in PR was just that, but it remarkably netted him a front-page story in the automotive section of the Houston Chronicle. That space was normally reserved for OEM automotive manufacturers present at the show, so I considered our work a coup d’état of the highest order.

Let’s go back to the phone call that transpired a few years later: when GarageGuru needed a marketing audit from a trusted third party, I heeded the call. It felt like old hat, until it didn’t. I entered the shop I knew so well, walked up to the area formerly reserved for spare parts, and was shocked to receive a “tour” of the two-room office and the SaaS platform housed within.

We talked about everything, but focused on GarageGuru’s marketing funnel and their sales aspirations. All fine and dandy, but then a Google Review surfaced.

So the Reputation Manager sprang into action, but never forgot that mobile apps were a business expense of questionable utility at the time. Or so it seemed in my world of car dealerships, which thankfully never offered enough to keep customers hanging around for longer than a few months. (That was one cost I was glad to see disappear off our balance sheets.)

But GarageGuru isn’t just “another stupid icon on my phone,” and wasn’t likely to be purged when app culture hit the skids as the 2010s progressed. Advanced users will save time and money in a shop with a smartphone, especially when technicians lack the shelf space for a desktop computer, scanner, printer, etc.

“Sajeev, the app rollout has been challenging,” Pandit candidly remarked after reading the customer review. “My staff has built a fantastic SaaS platform for desktop computers, but subcontracting the mobile app to a third party was done more for a speedy timeline. Perhaps quality has suffered in the process.”

We are getting too deep into the weeds for this tale of Reputation Management, but rest assured, Pandit was nobody’s fool. In the early days of his repair shop business, he was forced to accept any job that came his way: complicated supercharger kits for Ferrari F430s, air suspension conversions for SUVs, and even a sweet kid with a 1988 Mercury Cougar in dire need of a new heater core (and a promising career in Reputation Management). The parts were sketchy and vendor support was pathetic, but Pandit made it work. Pushing software updates for a mobile app will be a cakewalk in comparison.

The only problem is we can’t tell the customer we have lit a fire under a vendor to fix the mobile app’s functionality. (But that’s exactly what happened.) Be it a desktop, an iPad, or a smartphone, the GarageGuru SaaS platform must always perform with perfect functionality and unquestionable reliability.

While Pandit’s conversation with the end user on Google was nothing like his conversation with this Reputation Manager, together we came up with a darn good reply. He pushed hard on crafting a response that highlighted the app’s latest updates, and he sold me on that angle after presenting a YouTube video as proof. I insisted he paste in the link to the video in the response, even if it isn’t clickable for the end user. Presenting the evidence proves you’ve got skin in the game and have no intentions of blowing off a customer.

It takes a lot of nerve to engage a customer, but it’s a whole ‘nother ball of wax when you can tell everyone something along the lines of, “The product is being continually refined, but don’t take our word for it, please check out this video for proof.”

There’s a right and a wrong way to treat the customer, and those who take Reputation Management seriously pick and choose their words wisely. This is a trade that can be learned, but a passion is required to persist. It’s needed to fight, no matter how taxing a job in customer service is on one’s soul. Software can be a service, and a darn good one to boot. But public relations knows no bounds.

The Reputation Manager will return…