VinSolutions Reviews & Insights

VinSolutions is our CRM - Customer Relations Manager. It is used in our sales department (the service uses a different platform). Vin is our go-to for interacting with customers, making notes, working leads, etc. All leads from all sources enter into VinSolutions and notify the proper employee/s to start communicating. We use it to email customers about everything and anything, we make notes and tasks for employees so as not to forget things. Essentially, VinSolutions is super important for the sales department. In Marketing, I also use VinSolutions to pull customer lists to be able to market to them in email campaigns.

It is well suited to customer communication - emails/calls/texts. It helps with all those. You are able to get personal by adding notes to remember in the future, or tasks to complete down the road. It keeps history, so no salesperson can argue who did want and who gets the credit. Essentially, it is the final word - if the employee doesn't record it in Vin - then it didn't happen and anyone can help a customer. Seems to be less appropriate for actual marketing-related activities (as mentioned with their campaign manager).

Our auto group uses VinSolutions as our CRM across 18 locations in 3 states. We use this software to manage lead and prospecting activity for our sales and service departments. It solves issues related to poor communication, follow up and integrated sales operations across many locations. For executives, VinSolutions offers enterprise level reporting, showroom activities and lead processes. For retail managers, the multiple activity views allow us to manage our processes and results no matter how the lead is generated or concludes. We track all phone, web, chat and visit activities.

VinSolutions is a very deep application that can do it all, if that's what you're looking for. It is well-suited for active lead management. The reporting functionality could use some drastic simplification.

VinSolutions is being used as a complete customer retention management tool by our sales force. They use it to log leads, keep track of sold vehicles, know when to follow up on clients who previously came in to look at vehicles, it tracks above line and below line gross plus and incentives on vehicles in inventory. When combined with the rest of the X timeline of products, it is immensely helpful.

It is extremely well suited for any sales atmosphere, particularly within the automotive industry, where you need a CRM that logs contacts, reminds of needed updates, and keeps track of sales and gross profit. Because of the cost involved, it would not make sense in a very small sized dealer, but any medium to large dealers would benefit from its use.