How many sales dollars is your dealership losing from poor phone skills?

While it is true that the internet has taken up a large part of the consumer’s buying journey, the phone is still key in a prospect’s car buying process. Phone calls are still the initial point of contact with your dealership for 25% of all consumers.

During their discovery process, consumers will often call a car dealership looking for more information before stepping foot into the dealership. It is important that your dealership is prepared with experienced call handlers to not only answer all incoming calls, but also to get the caller to come into your dealership.

With that being said, knowing that the ultimate goal of a call handler is to book callers into an appointment, it is evident that auto dealerships are failing in this aspect.

How many of your leads are slipping away?

CallSource data shows that 71.88% of dealerships’ total bookable calls end up in a missed opportunity – meaning no appointment was booked. That’s almost ¾ of your inbound prospect calls!  

These aren’t people calling in for directions or for some unspecified reason – CallSource call analysts label calls into a bookable category only when it is evident from the phone conversation that there is an opportunity to set an appointment with the phone prospect.

When over 70% of these interested consumers aren’t verified to come into your dealership, how many leads are you letting slip away to your competition?

Improve your conversion rate, improve your ROI

Further, most of these missed opportunities are in your sales department. Almost 60% of total bookable calls are missed sales opportunities. Based on an average sale price of $2,200, that’s over $13,000 in missed sales for every 10 bookable calls your dealership receives.

What can you do to improve this missed opportunity rate? Well, improve phone skills and follow up with these possible lost leads, of course!

CallSource cannot only record calls and improve phone handler performance; we can also alert you within moments when a possible lead does not book an appointment with your dealership.

Reference:

http://press.autotrader.com/download/2016CarBuyerJourneyStudyBrochureFINAL.pdf
CallSource data based off of 3 million sampled and completed automotive phone calls over 2 years.

Phone calls are important for your business – and that’s why the phones need to be tracked.

Gone are the days where consumers simply drive by car dealerships and happen upon the one closest to them to choose a car to buy from. With the phone and internet at our fingertips, consumers do a lot of their own research before purchasing a vehicle. Yes, know this already but we can help—just keep reading.

In fact, research shows that 86 percent of car shoppers conduct online research before visiting a dealership. That research may include an outreach to your dealership via the phone to find out any remaining questions they probably have after doing hours of preliminary exploration on their own, as a quarter of all consumers use a phone call as their initial contact with the dealership.

If a consumer is calling your dealership, then your marketing has already done a great job – they’re reaching out to you! So now how much marketing dollars are you throwing down the drain by mishandling – or even worse – missing, these potential customers’ phone calls?

This is where call tracking comes to the rescue.

Below are 3 of the main reasons that your dealership should be utilizing call tracking (if you aren’t already).

1. Know which advertisements are driving the most phone calls

There are a myriad of places to advertise out there – and if you aren’t correctly attributing your leads back to the various ad sources, you cannot improve your marketing spend.

With call tracking, you can put more dollars into those advertising venues that are producing more calls and leads for your dealership, and invest less in underperforming ad sources.

2. Keep track of your missed calls

While it’s true that you should work on having zero missed calls– they happen. You need to be working to get the consumer’s business, not the other way around.

If someone is calling your dealership for a car or needs help from your service or parts department, you are potentially giving up that deal simply by missing their phone call. They aren’t going to wait for you forever – they’ll move onto the next dealership for their needs if you don’t answer, or get back to them, quickly.

With call tracking, you can ensure that you are answering all calls or be alerted every time you have a missed call in the office. Don’t let calls ring forever or go to voicemail – improve your answered call percentage by reviewing your call tracking data.

3. Improve employee phone performance

Call tracking includes call recordings, where you can listen to employees’ phone calls and ensure they are following proper phone protocol. When the phone is answered, your call handler is the first impression of your business. Are they leaving a good one?

And just as importantly, are they asking the caller for an appointment? Don’t let a lead that is far into their buying process slip away without making sure they are going to come by the dealership for your salesperson to close the deal.

Looking to increase efficiency and retention? This tool is simpler than you think.

If you’re like almost 100% of Americans, you already use this popular communication tool in your everyday life. So why aren’t you using it in business?

Any guesses on what this is?

If you guessed text messaging, then DING DING DING – you’re the winner!

What’s your prize? Well, it’s the great results that you’ll have once you implement this into your dealership, of course.

That’s right – texting is becoming increasingly popular to use in business, and can truly help your car dealership.

How exactly can utilizing texting in this way help you?

Save time by making less missed calls

The usual process for your sales, service, and parts departments when following up with a scheduled or current client is probably to make outbound calls to confirm appointments or information. Most of these probably end up reaching the client’s voicemail instead of the actual client.

When you can send a text message in lieu of leaving a message on their mobile phone (which they may not even have a voicemail set up for), you can send the text and move on to the next!

Send appointment and service reminders in an instant

No more wasting time with countless outbound calls just to remind about appointments – you can now schedule texts or simply type off a quick message reminding someone about their appointment to come in or letting them know when their car is ready to pick up from a service appointment!

With populated responses, you don’t even have to necessarily be near your computer or phone to text the client – you can set them up ahead of time when you have extra time to dedicate and do it for you when needed.

Seamlessly transfer texts to the correct department

Transferring phone calls between departments may be difficult if there is no one available in the service department at the moment that a caller needs to speak to them. The caller must be put on hold or, even worse, transferred to a voicemail for someone to get back to them.

With a great texting program, you can seamlessly transfer a text to the correct person or department that can handle the customer’s question or inquiry without them even know that they are speaking to possibly different people all within the same text exchange. It is still a best practice to answer a text in a timely manner of a few minutes, but it gives much more leeway than a regular telephone conversation would.

Reach customers during normal busy hours and get responses

When making outbound follow-up calls, it is easy to miss people who work regular office hours or may be busy and not pick up their phone. But the average response time to a text message is just 3 minutes – people can easily access their phone to read a text even when they may be busy in a business meeting or somewhere where they cannot necessarily speak on the phone but can type up a quick text message.

Never miss a conversation

Although you should never be missing inbound calls in your dealership, text messaging ensures that you really will never have a slip up where you miss a customer or potential customer who is trying to engage with you.

When you have a buffer of time before you have to answer someone (it doesn’t have to be immediately such as a phone call does), it makes it easier to get to more people. You can also communicate with multiple people at once when you are text messaging – especially if your texting program allows you to communicate via desktop or mobile, and from many different devices that anyone who would speak to customers has access to. Where is the miscommunication excuse now?

Keep a thread of all conversations

While you can keep call recordings from your tracking telephone numbers, with text messaging you easily have a text thread of past messages and conversations to keep handy if needed in the future. These also take up less space to save than audio files would.

Curious to learn more about how texting can help your dealership gain and retain more customers? CallSource can help!

Millennials optimize the online car buying process more than any previous consumers. What does this mean for dealers?

It’s no secret to car dealers that the process of car selling is ever-changing. Besides the evolution of automobiles themselves, there is also another important factor changing in the industry—the customer.

As the largest call tracking company in the world and having worked with auto dealerships for over 20 years, CallSource sees all the trends in the automotive marketing space—so you can say we know a thing or two about it.

It is important to not only focus on the car selling process but the car buying process that your consumers are experiencing. And while it may or not be surprising for dealerships, millennials (people born between 1981 and 1997) are making up a bigger customer-base than you may have previously thought. Seriously –AutoRaptor reports that as of April 2016, millennials are the largest living generation in America.

The question that remains is: where should you be focusing your marketing and selling efforts to most effectively meet your sales quotas and your millennial customers’ needs? The answer, of course, can be found online.

Quite literally—I mean the answer is the internet. You need to focus more on your online process and the online car buying journey.

OK, focusing a bit more on your online efforts probably isn’t any groundbreaking news for you – but I want to make sure that you understand the significance. Having a website isn’t enough; there are many facets of the online experience that you need to pay attention to, especially when it’s reported that millennials spend over 17 hours researching their vehicle before purchasing it, and 71% of them need to be aware of all of their possible vehicle options. These two stats combined show that they are obviously perusing many other sites other than your own, so you need to make sure that your dealership stands out online, and that doesn’t only include your website. How do you do this?

Focus on Online Reviews

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again—you need to focus on your online review presence! This is even more vital when attracting millennial customers, who are more likely to read and write online reviews. Still not convinced that you need to spend more time on reputation management? This statistic may change your mind.

BrightLocal reports that 97% of millennials read local business’ online reviews and 89% of them trust online reviews. That means a better online review presence may make the difference between winning or losing a customer.

Don’t think that just because you may be in the closest proximity to customers that they’ll choose you for convenience—Digital Air Strike’s Sixth Annual Automotive Social Media Trends study for 2017 reports that 72% of car buyers and 63% of service customers would drive 20-60 miles to a dealership with good reviews. Don’t you think that’s worth striving for?

Get Smarter on Smart Phones

Most of us are guilty of being attached at the hip with our smartphones; it’s a device that millennials are using when doing some of their online research. Sad as I am to report this, according to AutoRaptor, 80% of millennials have texted in the past 24 hours, and 83% of them even sleep with their mobile device. This is why you need to be sure to have a great mobile-enabled website, as well as tech-savvy smartphone capabilities such as text alerts, click-to-call, and app integrations. Don’t know if you have a mobile friendly site? Check out Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. It’s a free mobile evaluation tool.

Friends and family used to be the biggest influencing factor in making a large purchase such as a car, but the internet now wins again. AutoTrader reports that 82% of millennials credit third-party sites as the top source of their purchase decision. Keep this in mind and keep up with the times – accepting an app such as AutoGravity, which lets consumers search local dealerships and apply for car financing right then and there, gives a convenience that may be the tipping point for a millennial’s decision of where to buy a car.

Less Isn’t More

I don’t want to say that millennials are more flashy than their Baby Boomer parents but…I’m going to say it, they’re more flashy. When you can show off everything you have in a few clicks to a social media site, how can you blame them? According to AutoTrader’s study, Millennials care about owning the best brand and are willing to pay more for a product that fits with their image.

Marketers and salespeople know that achieving a sales lead is no time to be modest – show off on your website what features your dealership has that makes you the best and put your vehicles’ special features in the forefront when listing cars. You know that millennials are going to do a deep dive into figuring out all that they can anyway, why not deliver it all up front?

Get Social

You better believe that some of millennials’ online research will lead them to social channels. If you aren’t present there, it can be catastrophic for your dealership. The truth is, they might not even find you to begin with if you aren’t present on social media.

Digital Air Strike reported that 77% of car buyers and 55% of Service Customers clicked on a Facebook ad because of an offer or promo, and a recent report by Deloitte found that 47% of millennials say social media influences their purchase decisions (compared to 19% across other age groups). Where are you advertising?

Social media isn’t only for gaining new customers, though. You should be using your social channels to regularly communicate with your audiences, especially if someone directly communicates with you via these platforms. Sprout Social reports that 30% of millennials engage with a brand on social at least once a month, but also—89% of social media messages to brands go ignored.  Yet, the top choice for a customer care channel is social media. Don’t be a part of this disconnect—use social media to your advantage in marketing and customer service.

Keep them Engaged

It’s evident in this internet-era that people just don’t have quite the attention span you may be hoping for.  And when, as we mentioned, millennials are spending over 17 hours doing their car research before buying—it’s important to get their attention back to your dealership. Responding quickly to online chats, tweets, or whatever digital way your consumer is interacting with you is imperative.

Do you know how your social chat feature on your website is doing? How about the number of consumers who are visiting your website and then leaving to visit another dealer’s site? Well, with EveryLead, you can see these stats and more. With this newest product, you can see transcripts of online chats, which cars your consumers are viewing, and how many are defected to competitor sites—all in one easy dashboard.

So what are you waiting for? Get working on your online presence and start selling to your largest pool of customers! The millennials are waiting for it.

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”