Dealerlogix Primed to Boost GM Dealers’ Service Lane Revenues

Dealers for General Motors’ stable of automotive brands now have another tool to compete against independent repair shops: Dealerlogix, a cloud-based customer communication platform.  

Dealerlogix reports that participation in GM’s Service Lane Tool Program has been approved.

“We help dealers remain competitive against the dealer across the street or against shops across the street,” Euwart Anderson, general manager of Vehlo Dealerships, tells WardsAuto.

Vehlo is an umbrella company that offers a suite of dealership service lane solutions, including Dealerlogix.

Dealers will be able to use co-op funds from GM to pay for Dealerlogix services.

“GM allocates funds for incentives for dealers to maximize revenue and profitability by using best-in-class systems and partners,” Anderson says. “We are now added to that list.”

The Dealerlogix platform facilitates online appointment scheduling, repair order writeups, e-approval of digital multi-point inspections, texting and mobile bill pay all through a customer’s mobile phone.

It passed a rigorous evaluation process, including testing to ensure the software works independently and with dealerships’ Dealer Management Systems, Anderson says.

Dealerlogix can now be integrated into a dealership’s back-office systems so information that is required to be reported to GM is held in the cloud for the manufacturer, he says. “That benefits the dealer with ease of access and time.”  

Competing Against Independent Shops

Nearly half of GM’s some 4,000 dealerships already use other Vehlo products, Anderson says. That includes e-Advisor, a scan tool that plugs into a vehicle’s On-Board Diagnostics (OBD) system to generate a vehicle report in seconds to speed up service lane check-in.

That positions Vehlo “really well” to offer those dealers Dealerlogix, too, Anderson says.

“It is a big growth opportunity for us from a revenue growth perspective,” he says.

But it also helps dealers generate more service lane revenue by improving customer communication, boosting customer engagement and retention and improving customer satisfaction scores, Anderson says.  

That is key to competing against independent repair shops, which studies show are increasingly favored over dealership service departments.  

“A dealer’s No.1 problem is to fight off competition post-warranty,” Anderson says.

Cox Automotive’s “Under the Hood: Opportunities and Challenges in the Service Industry” found that 31% of respondents in 2023 said dealerships were their preferred service providers compared to 33% who said general repair shops were.  It is the first year dealerships were not No.1, Cox says.  

The 2023 survey involved 2,493 consumers who visited at least one service center in the previous 12 months.

And customers in the J.D. Power 2024 Aftermarket Index Study (ASI) found independent repair shops easier to do business with than dealership service departments. The ASI Study involved 10,264 owners, and data was collected online from January through March.

Dealerlogix can smooth consumers’ service lane experiences by streamlining “everything from the appointment set online with the customer all the way through to post payment and customer engagement on an ongoing basis,” Anderson says.