In reviewing phone call operations at automotive dealerships through call tracking platforms and through personal experiences, I see that it takes far too long to finally reach and engage with the right person or department. In today’s online car research experience, quick response times are imperative in retaining interested prospects. Consumers are still slow to pick up digital retailing where they perform the entire car buying process online, and if you don’t get your call processes in order, you’re dropping the ball.

The problem most automotive dealerships have when it comes to their call operations isn’t only how long it takes for them to engage a shopper on the phone, but it is also the difficulty in reducing the amount of time it takes for them to follow-up on prospective leads.

It doesn’t matter if your display, video, search, social, or email campaigns are bringing in an abundant amount of leads into your system. What matters is that your dealership follows through right away. The key point that most auto dealerships are missing here is the fact that responding to leads as soon as possible and supplying them with the information they are looking for within an appropriate time frame of when they send in a lead form submission, make an inbound phone call, or respond to another call to action is crucial in moving them down the sales funnel.

I’ve spent hours listening to recorded phone conversations through platforms such as Car Wars, and it is unfortunate that even with these systems in place, car dealerships are still unable to adapt their business processes to maximize shopper engagement and most certainly aren’t utilizing the data they have amassed about the buyer to streamline the customer’s experience. In listening to these sales calls, even the best dealerships struggle with this problem today.

Other industries are benefiting from having robust call centers

At LeadROI, one of my previous startups, consumers were receiving calls within one minute of filling out a lead form from sites like NexTag or LowerMyBills.com. We helped our mortgage broker and credit union customers with automated lead distribution to the right person based on lead criteria, rerouted leads when a salesperson doesn’t respond fast enough, and even used predictive dialers so the loan officers didn’t have to press any buttons to dial. Compared to this, it seems like the dealership systems, even in some BDCs, are fairly primitive.

In fact, just look at your day-to-day lives. Customer service representatives at credit card companies including American Express know that you are calling about a recent transaction that got declined while you’re vacationing at some new city; health care organizations offer you digital care coordination to confirm health care appointments; and airlines (at least sometimes) know you’re probably pissed right now when you call. The point is that call centers in other industries are far more progressive and efficient compared to the automotive industry. And then dealers complain that they don’t sell enough cars.

BDC departments at your dealership should take note on how effective timely calls to new leads can be. The key takeaways for automotive dealerships are that other industries are streamlining customer service through call centers by 1) following up with leads as soon as they submit a form (and we’re talking in minutes), 2) utilizing accessible declared, inferred, or observed data to make the calls more personalized to each caller, 3) use more intelligent dynamic number insertions (DNI), robust routing of callers, eliminating repetitive messages like saying “this call may be recorded” three times at each transfer, 4) use more machine learning to improve operations using historical transcripts, and 5) analyze the data from the call systems to understand what’s really happening with leads and not what the salesperson is claiming.

So how can technology help auto dealerships optimize their BDC department?

For one, the data needs to be accurate. Through some of the current call tracking solutions used at dealerships, it seems like what number called is all that matters. It isn’t. If the user changes the context from a sales call to a service call, the reporting should reflect that. This disconnect is because the analytics platform, CRM, DNI and call tracking, and in-house phone systems do not speak to each other, leaving GMs and Sales Managers clueless as to what’s really happening on their phone lines.

Even when there are features to help dealerships update data that they discover from phone calls or from looking up information in their CRM, it just seems too hard and sales professionals at these dealerships don’t have the patience. Data should just be updated automatically in all systems everywhere so that no matter where you look, the information is updated and relevant. You shouldn’t have to look at a phone number again in any UI if that person has become identified – it should be the entire profile of that shopper or customer.

Furthermore, the website can play an important role in suggesting to the visitor the right number to call. We all know that one of the biggest problems for dealerships is that consumers call the sales line to get to service. Bombarding your consumer with too many numbers on your website can be confusing. I’d argue that you should use a generic number on the home page and route the user with IVR and then update the analytics according to that routing.

If the shopper has viewed VDPs or looked at specials, suggest the sales number. If the shopper has visited service coupons and other fixed-ops related services, suggest a different number. Using more intelligence in the DNI is critical. This would help the receptionists answering 100s of calls a day, the salespeople trying to close a deal, and even the business analysts in the back office.

Conclusion

Ultimately, the biggest solution to having an improved call center is to have all your systems integrated by using a system that can connect the dots between your CRM system, website, phone systems, and so on. The shoppers or customers that are calling you have already given you a wealth of information including their interests based on the cars they look at, the emails they’ve responded to, the ads they’ve interacted with and so much more. Everything you need to know about the current caller is there without you having to ask the caller what they are calling about – you just have to integrate everything together.

And while this sounds nearly impossible for an industry that is behind in utilizing state of the art technology to make their businesses more streamlined, it is imperative for dealerships to take the jump and improve their phone-related systems now. It doesn’t matter if your dealership website’s SEO puts you at the top of a Google search or if your marketing campaigns have a high click-through rate. If your dealership doesn’t have an optimized call center, you could potentially be losing sales.

In today’s automotive market, consumers are beginning most of their car buying journey online, with car buyers spending 59% of their time researching online (Autotrader) and an even greater share of traffic coming from mobile sites according to L2 Gartner. With car buyers spending more time online in comparison to visiting a dealership showroom, auto dealers can harness a substantial amount of shopper data to entice and retain car buyers with personalized retargeting messaging and offers.

The problem for the industry is that it is just not happening.

Amazon’s experience is a leading example of personalization

Personalization has seen a wide adoption as a marketing tactic; according to eMarketer, 90% of marketers report usage in some way. E-commerce and tech giant Amazon is leading the charge as seen on their homepage which is filled with personalization options including recently viewed items, new product recommendations (heard of AmazonBasics?) and even call-to-actions across all their product lines like Amazon Prime Video and Amazon Echo Dot.

Nearly everywhere you look from Best Buy to local affiliate sites for Verizon Wireless, it is clearly an overwhelmingly effective and in-demand approach. In fact, eMarketer says that 78% of consumers now expect this level of personalized experiences.

So what is taking auto dealerships so long to implement these concepts? Maybe their website vendors don’t make it easy because they have evolved into clunky content management systems (almost being forced to by OEM compliance and customer requests). Maybe all the vendors adding uncoordinated widgets and gadgets is being mistaken as personalization. Or, maybe it is just that dealerships find it hard to understand. But we need to face the facts – this is important and it needs to happen now.

Personalization sounds harder than it really is

Auto dealers are often unaware of the amount of accessible first-party data on their website that are readily available to use to customize the experience from one shopper to the next. Combining this data with the right combination of content management and marketing automation will drive better engagement and conversions from the car buyers by making it easier for them to find what they are looking for. There are endless possibilities with this type of personalization.

Let’s walk through some examples. Dealerships can add a shopper history widget that allows their visitors to quickly navigate back to their previously viewed and favorited VDPs and see additional recommendations based on that list. Automated emails in conjunction with a shopper history widget can help remind shoppers of their car buying journey with follow-up emails listing these previously viewed and favorited cars, prompting them to come back with customized offers.

Auto dealers can start implementing personalization today

Sure, there are some basic capabilities provided to you by your web vendor, but you need to demand more for the benefit of your shoppers. Start taking note of what you see as a consumer at the retailers you visit and imagine your website with similar functionality. And ask your vendors to see how they can help make this a reality. Doing so will allow your rooftop to connect better with the prospects and customers in a more purposeful and personalized way. The results from this type of experience aren’t immediate, but as you adapt your website and messaging, you will begin to see increased time-on-site, improved quality conversions and maximized ROI from your existing advertising spending.

Auto dealerships have been known to buy most of their media from the large platforms, namely Google and Facebook. According to the aggregate data of all our current active clients under our analytics program in May 2018, Google paid traffic accounted for 52.56% and Facebook paid traffic for 18.16%. At Orbee Auto, we’ve spent a significant amount of time with our customers educating them on the importance of broadening their reach – especially for retargeting their shoppers – to all available inventory on the web. If you have marked someone as interested with a cookie, why does it matter where they are when you want to show them an advertisement to come back to your website?

AT&T’s confirmed acquisition and planned integration of AppNexus into their advertising and analytics division signifies the telecommunication company’s plan to challenge Google and Facebook for digital ad dominance. The automotive industry is leading the way with digital and TV advertising, and with AT&T acquiring AppNexus, who was under fire for ad fraud last year, what will be the automotive industry’s implications in the digital advertising market?

Dealerships need to put real efforts to reach beyond Google and Facebook

While we see some traffic from outside the common walled gardens, these efforts are usually by third-party agencies or service providers, with the auto dealership themselves not actively seeking this inventory. Dealerships are uneducated about the potential, and with 43% of inventory available outside of Google and Facebook, that’s a big opportunity loss. For instance, we see traffic from Yahoo and Inktomi (a platform acquired by Yahoo in 2003), which is now Verizon Wireless. We see traffic from Bing. However, it’s not enough.

The “Open Internet” and the risks of buying media there

Many of our clients will recognize the relevance of this transaction because for months now, Orbee has been educating them about the “open internet” by using AT&T and Verizon as examples of the vastness of inventory available. It’s debatable if it is even “open” given the recent acquisitions of AppNexus by AT&T, AOL and Yahoo by Verizon Wireless, and even FreeWheel by Comcast and so on. In fact, some of these transactions are allowing these companies to become walled gardens themselves, especially since the Justice Department recently approved AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner, making it a behemoth of a telecom and media company.

The key point though is that the “open internet” is still immature in terms of tools for brand safety, verification and data management. AppNexus has been known to be riddled with bots, and it’s important to use filters, whitelists and blacklists and every other feature available in real-time auctions. Heck, I don’t even see people using dayparting and that’s ad serving 101. You must control what domains and apps you show ads in; you must optimize on impressions and clicks and actions depending on your goals; and you must watch this like a hawk.

Far too many times, we have calls with dealers red-flagging the very inventory managed by the exchange that AT&T just acquired. In May 2018, we have seen bot traffic as high as 86% for AppNexus IP addresses. To be clear, our reports show the bot traffic for the visitors that actually arrived from traffic sourced within this exchange. This only makes me wonder about the quality of the impressions behind these campaigns.

This is a boon for automotive dealerships who have the right tools

We have encouraged dealerships to gain more transparency over the traffic that their partners are generating and to own and almost hoard the first-party data that their websites are producing from this traffic. This is more important than ever before with the move by AT&T.

Dealerships can’t keep turning the blind eye and just wonder “did I sell more cars?” Your money is being wasted, your brand is being exposed and you’re not spending energy focused on the long-term cultivation of your shoppers whether they are in the market today or if they’ll buy a car in 3 months. It matters now.