Dealers are missing crucial information in almost one third of their customer aftersales records, according to new research by Marketing Delivery.

Analysing data relating to over 50,000 vehicle visits to franchised dealer workshops across the UK during December 2016, Marketing Delivery found that 32% of the customer records lacked at least one key element necessary for securing future aftersales business.

Jeremy Evans, managing director of Marketing Delivery, said: “There’s room for improvement at all dealer groups when it comes to aftersales data quality. Even among the very best customer databases, our research suggests that 20% of records are lacking some pertinent aftersales data.”

Email addresses, mobile numbers, due dates for the next service and MOT expiry date were among the most common omissions.

Marketing Delivery found that all four key items of information were present in only 68% of customer records, with stark variation between dealer groups is stark.

The best performing dealer group had these four key details in place for 80% of its aftersales customers, while at the worst performing dealer group the proportion fell to just 53%.

The data field most likely to be missing is customer email address, absent in 17% of all the records evaluated. In the best performing dealer groups, this figure shrank to just 9% of records, but the proportion was as high as 33% for the worst performer. Regarding missing service dates, in the worst case it was 28%, and in the best it was only 1%.