• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, 3 hours ago

Convergence, an automotive customer engagement platform, helps automotive dealerships engage customers through email and SMS technology.

The company provides a suite of offerings designed to “give dealers a way to improve retention and drive revenue even when staffing and labor are tight,” says Jim Daly, co-founder & chief operating officer of Convergence,” in a statement. 

Convergence has sent more than 3 million message and helped dealerships schedule over 2,000 service and sales appointments over the past 2 ½ years, it states.  

"We've helped dealerships, from single-point stores to multi-rooftop groups, re-engage thousands of customers who hadn't returned in months, scheduling hundreds of new service and sales appointments each month," Daly adds. "By combining personal attention with smart data, we give dealers a way to improve retention and drive revenue even when staffing and labor are tight."

According to Convergence, the suite of tools offers these benefits:

• All messaging managed in-house by trained agents. 
• Texting stack built and managed in-house.
• Full-lifecycle engagement, supporting sales, service, and variable recall workflows.
• Data-activation platform that allows dealerships to integrate DMS/CRM data and track interactions.

Clients say they are seeing improvements in engagement, retention, and sales performance with these tools.

“There are a lot of digital tools in the automotive sector. All claim to be better than the next, but few are unique,” says Chris Marino, general manager of BMW of Spokane. “ Convergence peels back the layers of what you can and can’t do in targeting customers and then precisely hones in and is able to reach customers in ways that will get them to respond, namely by text message.”