Even in 2019, the phone is not dead.

While smartphones have become smarter and smarter, they are still being used to make actual phone calls – and consumers are calling auto dealerships as a part of the buying process.

In the brand new Automotive Inbound Call Data Report, CallSource analyzed over 106 million phone calls to auto dealers over a 4-year span. The report illustrates how vital inbound phone calls are to the automotive industry, and delivers key takeaways for dealers to keep in mind when prioritizing phone calls.

Take a look below for 10 of the most important stats from this study, or view the whole report in its entirety here.

The phone is paramount to auto dealers

1. 1. Over half (54%) of all inbound calls to automotive dealerships are revenue-winning opportunities.
2. 2. One in four leads calling a dealership is for sales – 75% of prospects calling in are for Fixed Ops.

Make all calls to the Sales department count

1. 3. Only about half (51%) of your sales calls in 2018 were viable leads.
2. 4. 80% of inbound sales opportunities are being missed.
3. 5. Less than a quarter of all sales opportunities (20%) are actual confirmed appointments.

Fixed Ops generate the majority of inbound call leads

1. 6. About ¾ of all inbound prospect calls to dealerships are for Fixed Ops.
2. 7. An average of 40% of calls to Fixed Ops have resulted in an appointment since 2015.
3. 8. 60% of Fixed Ops calls are missed opportunities – no appointment set.
4. 9. Appointment conversion rates to Fixed Ops have increased from 35% in 2015 to 52% in 2018.
5. 10. Almost 90% of parts calls don’t result in an appointment.

Service calls and appointments are increasing year-over-year

1. 11. Over half (58%) of calls to the Service department in 2018 resulted in an appointment set.
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4. 12. Dealers are able to convert more calls to the Service department into appointments than they can in Sales and Parts combined.
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6. 13. Service appointments have been increasing since 2015, but 40% of prospective service appointments are still booking with the competition.

Improve your inbound phone performance

Numbers don’t lie – the phone is vital to automotive dealers. It is imperative for dealerships to track phone calls and implement changes for performance increases.

Check out the full automotive report here to view the above stats and for advice to help your dealership improve.

What is your service department’s appointment conversion rate?

If you didn’t already know, your Service Department is becoming increasingly important to your business. Calls to Fixed Ops have been steadily increasing year over year - just take a look at CallSource and NADA’s data that illustrates this.

It is obvious that to have the most phone calls answered and followed up with properly and with the right skill set, a Business Development Center (BDC) is required at your dealership.

But what if a BDC isn’t in the budget right now, or you’re having a difficult time hiring qualified help? Here are some tips to get you through this time until you can dedicate money and training time to having a full-on BDC at your dealership for your Service Department.

1. Move Your Receptionist’s Desk to the Service Department Area

Not only does the Service Department receive numerous inbound calls – but many of these calls also go unanswered. Not that I need to point it out to you, but this is counter-intuitive to your dealership’s success.

How do you solve this issue when your service advisors may be too busy to answer the phone?

One resolution is to move your receptionist back to the Service Department. Why? Well, with the receptionist back in the Service area, he or she can see the action around them and can see if the service advisor or manager is free or busy. This way, they can avoid instances where a transfer occurs, and no one is there to answer, leaving the caller to reach a voicemail that may not get returned.

2. Give Inbound Phone Handlers Service Appointment Scheduling Ability

Do your receptionists or inbound call takers have access to scheduling Service appointments? If not, you may want to reconsider.

Give your call takers the ability to schedule Service appointments - this way, your service advisor only has to take the calls that could generate revenue.

3. Train Your Service Department on Phone Skills

Maybe you have no choice but to have your service advisors answer inbound phone calls to set appointments. While it is not the worst thing ever (at least someone is answering the phone), keep in mind that data shows that 66% of service advisors fail to ask the customer for an appointment.

Make sure to change that statistic in your dealership!

By taking some time out of their schedule to make sure they are properly trained on inbound call techniques, you are guaranteed to increase some of their skills to ensure they are more equipped to set an appointment.

Make a loose call script for them to follow, or outlines important questions and place them near the phone as a reminder. If your service advisors are needed to answer calls, make sure they are doing so correctly!

An earlier version of this article was originally published by Digital Dealer Magazine and can be viewed here.

Successful dealerships know that their service department is imperative for creating customer loyalty and bringing in repeat customers and buyers. We’ve already touched upon the fact that service departments have been the highest growing in inbound prospect calls and appointments over the past few years—but today I want to give you some tips on ensuring that your service department is being as successful as it can be. It is vital to make sure that you are putting in the required effort to make the customer experience in your service department top-notch.

One way that dealerships find success in increasing their service department profit and efficiency is by incorporating a Business Development Center, or BDC. A BDC consists of a manager and customer service representatives responsible for being customers’ initial point of contact, and handling the first-touch of the client relationship and appointment setting duties, inbound and outbound.

A BDC is not one rep who becomes responsible for all of these duties. A BDC is not a receptionist who will answer and forward along calls to other departments or voicemails. A BDC doesn’t have the word “center” in its name for nothing. You need more than employee to actually have a real BDC.

It may seem extra responsibility and money for your dealership to add a Service BDC, but when 66% of service advisors fail to ask the customer for an appointment, what would being able to successfully convert those callers into appointments mean for your business? Service departments are typically busy, and those that have the skills to service a car don’t always necessarily have the customer service skill set to get customers into your dealership.

There is a lot more to inbound call handling than simply answering the phone and passing it along to the correct department, or asking the necessary information from the caller. We’ve touched upon the importance of good call handling many times already but it bears repeating. Just because someone is calling into your dealership, it does not mean that they have any special loyalty to you yet—and their first impression will be made as soon as that phone starts ringing.

So what happens if someone answers with a rushed, distracted tone, is unable to answer the caller’s questions, or, even worse—no one answers the phone in time and the caller is either endlessly looped around in a never-ending ring cycle or sent to voicemail?

I will tell you what will happen.

That caller probably isn’t going to put in the time and effort to try to endlessly call your dealership back. It has been found that 76% of people clearly develop a perception of a company’s level of customer service based on the initial phone call, and the amount of consumers who still leave voicemails for a company have been dropping 8-10% per year since 2008. An unknowledgeable or busy person answering the phone isn’t going to leave a good first impression for your service department, and calls to voicemail might as well be written off as lost leads as well.

This is where a Service BDC comes in to play.

You want your service department to be busy – that is a good thing. But when they are too busy to put the time and skills necessary into all of the inbound calls coming in (and the busier your service department gets, hopefully the more inbound calls you are receiving), you aren’t going to further your dealership’s success. And that is the point, right? You don’t want to stay complacent and not make any improvements year over year; you want to grow the business and increase your profits.

For the first quarter of 2017, CallSource found that 30% of inbound prospect calls are for the service department—compared to 13% in sales and 11% in parts. So, even if you may already have a Sales BDC incorporated into your dealership, there is also a clear need to include a Service BDC as well.

Think of all that your Service BDC employees would be responsible for.

• * Answer inbound calls
  * Answer all caller questions
  * Set service appointments
  * Outbound calling to confirm service appointments
  * Check on parts inventory
  * Order necessary inventory

* Convince caller to set an appointment with your dealership through value statements
* Customer follow-up

And the list goes on! All of these responsibilities will surely not be followed up on if you only have one person with all of these duties piled on, plus others that may take priority such as dealing with day-to-day, in person tasks. A BDC has the time to dedicate their best efforts to make the caller experience the best it can be, so that the customer will have a great impression of your business from the first ring all the way through to their actual appointment, and long after.

When setting goals for your dealership, no matter what time of year, you should be using specific data points from the past and looking at these trends to inform your future decisions. You want to make smart decisions to improve, and smart decisions don’t come from assumptions.

One thing that you may wonder when making these decisions is: in which department should you be investing more money? Where are there improvements to be made, and what areas of the business have been increasing? The good news is, things for auto dealers have been looking brighter since 2015.

According to CallSource’s analytics data, appointments set during the first quarter have been steadily increasing in all three departments: sales, service, and parts, since 2015. Below are CallSource’s findings for 2017’s first quarter, which was the best yet for dealerships.

• 10.5% of examined sales calls resulted in appointments; up 1.8 and 2.9 percentage points from 2016 and 2015 respectively.
• 9.6% of examined service calls resulted in appointments; up 2.9 and 5.1 percentage points from 2016 and 2015 respectively.
• 0.8% of examined parts calls resulted in appointments; up 0.5 percentage points from 2016 and 2015 equally.

Although appointments were up in all three departments, there is still one clear department that has been improving more than the others.

Inbound calls AND appointments for service lead the growth in inbound bookable prospects. 24.6% of bookable calls during 2017’s first quarter were for the service department – compared to 14.6% in 2015. To compare, sales appointments were at 12% this year, and 12.7% in 2015. So what may be the reasoning behind this increase in service departments capturing more appointments year over year?

Your dealership should be paying more attention to Fixed Operations!

Fixed Operations departments are the way to keep your new customers coming back and to guarantee that they’ll want to purchase from you again.  You know that competition between dealerships is never going away, especially when it comes to sales. Customers don’t yet have any loyalty to a particular dealership—they just want the best price and value for the car that they want.

National Automobile Dealers Association’s (NADA) 2016 data also coincides with CallSource’s findings—they found that while a percentage of dealerships’ total gross profits fell in vehicle sales departments, they have risen in service and parts.

Bottom line – you should be investing in your service department. Don’t try to cut costs simply because your sales may not be performing quite as high as you’d like. Throwing more money into sales initiatives isn’t the answer; those expenses can be better allocated to Fixed Operations. Look at the data before making these key decisions for the upcoming year.

References:

1. Based on CallSource call detail records of auto locations from January 2015 to March 2017 (excludes Auto-Media)

2. Auto locations where CallSource’s Leadscore product is active and there is at least 1 examined call (aka leadscored call)

3. Bookable Sales calls include calls where the Leadscore call type is “Sales” with and ECP result of “Appointment Set” or “Missed Opportunity”

4. Sales Appointments are calls where the Leadscore call type is “Sales” and the ECP result is “Appointment Set”