Delivering a great customer experience in the F&I office starts before F&I begins. By completely understanding the customer’s needs and expectations and providing F&I eMenus and digital retail tools you can help educate your customers, reduce F&I pressure, increase sales, and get customers into their new vehicles faster. This year's SSI results also show that take rates for all F&I products are higher when using eMenus. This means dealers do not have to sell so much since customers are choosing to buy after learning about the F&I products without pressure.

Offering Digital Retail tools on your website and eMenus help expedite the F&I process while also increasing F&I sales.

Having digital retail tools available on dealership websites is more important than ever and will allow customers to do most, if not all, of the vehicle transaction online from the comfort of their own home. Dealers should enable customers to use digital retail tools as much as possible online, up through signing for the car.

Here are some best practices to speed up and improve the sales experience while in F&I:

1. Provide digital retailing tools on the dealership’s website, so customers can transact online.
2. Schedule an appointment to complete the transaction either at the dealership or the customer’s home with all documents ready to reduce the transaction time.
3. If at the dealership, introduce the Finance Manager early in the sales process.
4. Explain the purpose of the F&I meeting.
5. Set expectations on the time it may take in F&I.
6. Use eMenus to present F&I products that are most important to the customer.

Allowing for customers to view F&I options online and using eMenus will take pressure off the customer. And customers who educate themselves online without pressure are more apt to purchase more F&I products across the board.

The longer the F&I process takes, the less satisfied customers are. Make F&I fast and efficient by adopting Digital Retail tools that let customers do as much online as possible, including e-signing the paperwork. If the customer is coming in, prepare the paperwork in advance for a quick signature process. If there is a wait for F&I, use the time to go over the maintenance schedule and introduce the customer to the Service Manager while leveraging the Kia eDelivery Tool. Also, with the complexity of today’s vehicles, this is a great time to walk the customer through the Difficult to Understand (DTU) and Hard to Operate (HTO) features on their new vehicle – especially those specific features that are most important to your customer.

As the wait time allows, give customers a hands-on experience in operating and using some of the following features to ensure understanding and retention of the features and functions below. Refer the customer to the Kia Features & Functions YouTube^TM channel can also provide the customer the information they need about their new vehicle.

• USB/Device Ports
• Support for Apple CarPlay^® and Android Auto™
• Bluetooth^® connectivity and phone pairing
• Voice Recognition (VR)
• Climate controls, including auto defog
• Key fob
• Available Smart Power Liftgate™/Smart Power Trunk™
• Steering-wheel-mounted controls and personalizing cluster settings for Kia Drive Wise and other features
• Wireless phone charger
• Raising windshield wipers (wiper service mode)
• Idle, Stop and Go (ISG) system
• Drive Mode settings
• HomeLink^®
• How to charge their vehicle (if applicable)

By providing digital retail tools, explaining the F&I process, setting customer expectations, and using any time the customer might be waiting for F&I to communicate valuable information, you leave the customer with a satisfying overall sales experience.