CHICAGO -

Cars.com recently launched a new solution — Dealer Reviews — aimed at giving dealers the opportunity to drive their online reputations in the same place consumers are shopping for their next vehicle.

During the beta period, site officials indicated more than 67 percent of their dealer customers opted in, prompting Cars.com to insist these dealers now have a head start in building their volume of online reviews and turning satisfied customers into advocates.

The site reiterated Dealer Reviews and other customer feedback sites can help drive additional traffic to the store, particularly when integrated into the sales process. Cars.com contends that involving everyone at the dealership in soliciting feedback can often result in a higher review volume that trends in a positive direction.

Cars.com’s dealer training manager Jack Simmons recommends the following tips as his top five recommendations for acquiring reviews:

—Ask. The simple act of asking is the most important factor in driving review volume, according to Simmons.

“Mine your CRM databases, make Dealer Reviews part of your ‘thank you’ emails following the sale and cultivate a culture at your store that rewards asking for customer feedback,” he suggested.

“Some dealerships are even offering their customers the chance to win big prizes for filling out reviews on Cars.com,” Simmons added.

—Use negative reviews to your advantage. Simmons acknowledged that it’s difficult to please 100 percent of the customer base.

“Negative reviews happen, and in fact, they present the opportunity for you to publicly make a situation right, showing future customers how much you care about their satisfaction and the integrity of your process,” he pointed out.

“Quickly resolve as many issues as possible and commit to soliciting more positive reviews to offset the negative one,” Simmons suggested.

—Arm dealership staff with knowledge and reward success. Cars.com stressed that it offers resources to help dealers train staff in building review volume, “making it easy to incorporate everyone at your store into the process.”

Simmons recommended that dealers show one of the sessions from the site’s Reputation Management Lab during an upcoming sales meeting.

“Encourage your staff to check out our interactive PDF and ensure everyone is following the Checklist for Success,” he emphasized.

“Our most successful dealers are celebrating good reviews in their sales meetings, and many are even offering spiffs and other incentives to their salespeople to build positive review volume,” Simmons added.

—Use the point-of-sale marketing materials Cars.com provides. The site believes inserting one of its review widgets into a dealership email signature or customizing one of Cars.com’s flyer templates can makes it easier to engage customers without generating extra work.

Simmons noted these tools are available in My Dealer Center or through a dealer’s Cars.com sales representative.

—Get good reviews in as many places as possible. Because Dealer Reviews are accessible to customers right where they’re doing their shopping, Simmons thinks it’s important to build review volume on the Cars.com site.

“That said, having good volume across all review sites ensures that all potential customers researching your store get the right impression,” Simmons explained.

“This is particularly true with Google’s recent announcement that Places will no longer pull reviews from third-party sites into its search results,” he warned. “If you find you have a good bank of review volume on one site but are lagging on another, try running a month-long promotion with your sales staff and focus on one specific site. The next month, focus on another, and so on until your review volume is more uniform across sites.”

Simmons is going to be part of another Webinar as a part of Cars.com’s Reputation Management Lab. He intends to share more strategies to build review volume and drive positive word of mouth online.

This Webinar will be on Friday. Dealers can register for it at this website.