NEW YORK -

One of Honda’s leading certified pre-owned dealers —  New York’s Paragon Honda — is making moves it says are to keep up with evolving customer expectations.

In partnership with its marketing agency Team Velocity, the dealership worked with Google to develop a service and maintenance app that aims to remove friction from the service bays.

To accomplish the goal of relieving pain points in the service department, the dealership took a three-step approach.  

First, Paragon Honda knew to truly tackle the pain-points involved in vehicle service, they needed to provide a 24-hour service for their clients that can’t afford to not have their vehicle for more than one day. The new service allows customer to request to have his or her vehicle picked up, serviced and returned within 24 hours. This also means the customer doesn’t even have to go into the dealership to get their car serviced.

Secondly, Paragon Honda tested new technology to make it simpler for customers to schedule service and maintenance, becoming the first dealer to build an app for the Google Assistant. Soon, Paragon Honda customers will be able to schedule service such as routine maintenance, oil changes and tire rotations using their voice through Google Assistant.

For example, a Paragon customer can use Google Assistant to connect them to the Paragon Honda app that can then help them book an appointment for a car service.

The third wheel of their effort to improve customer satisfaction in the service bay includes optimizing marketing and measurement. Paragon Honda ramped up its investment in search optimization in an effort to be one of the first results for searches like “Honda oil change” and Honda maintenance” in the New York market. The dealership contributes the strategy to growing its service repair orders by five times in the last 12 months.

 In a recent Think with Google article, Brian Benstock, general manager and vice president of Paragon Honda, said, "Our customers want to live their lives. They don't have the time to drive out to the dealership, drop off their car, and wait for it to be serviced. Technology has changed their expectations, and we knew we needed to change our approach to service and marketing in order to meet those.”