SAN RAMON, Calif. — Ken Garff Automotive Group has selected MediaTrac’s UltraCare Preventive Maintenance solution to help grow its service revenue and boost customer retention.

The UltraCare Preventive Maintenance solution can be administered and sold in the F&I and service departments.

“From the results UltraCare has shown us, this will be a great customer retention tool. It should increase customer visit frequency and our overall vehicle service contract effectiveness, while providing more value for our customers,” said Danny Cox, corporate F&I director at Ken Garff Automotive Group. “I’m very excited and look forward to the results I am certain we will soon enjoy.”

The dealer group began as a single-car dealership in downtown Salt Lake City in 1932, and now has more than 35 new- and used-vehicle locations throughout the U.S.

MediaTrac, a marketing technology company, introduced the UltraCare program eight months ago and has since enrolled more than 200 individual dealerships. While current industry statistics indicate that roughly one in five customers return to the dealership for service, UltraCare plan holders are visiting their servicing dealers at a rate of 72 percent. Customers that return to the dealership to redeem their plan elements also purchase incremental retail service about 90 percent of the time. In addition to the increased visit frequency, UltraCare plan holders are averaging incremental retail service up-sell of $128 per visit.

According to MediaTrac, a dealer who writes 1,500 repair orders a month can easily sell 150-200 maintenance policies just by asking the customer. In the F&I department, it takes a 500 to 600 unit store to generate the same 200 maintenance policies.

“Our dealer clients have made UltraCare a new revenue source for the service department as more and more plans are sold in the service lane when compared to the F&I department. 

Customers are more likely to purchase a maintenance plan in service when they don’t have competing F&I products to consider and the loan to value issue is gone,” said Michael Gorun, managing partner at MediaTrac.

UltraCare’s Web-based technology allows auto dealerships to create, manage and market their own branded, in-house prepaid maintenance program while holding all of the program revenue and managing the net service costs to the customer. What makes this attractive to the retail customer is that the dealer can offer a more robust, value-driven plan that customers purchase with higher frequency than those administered through an independent third-party provider.