Toyota & Acura Rank Highest Across Luxury and Mass Market Brands for Inbound Phone Experience Released by CallSource

WESTLAKE VILLAGE, CA: 5 Nov 2019: CallSource, the leader in automotive call tracking and analytics, released their first annual Inbound Phone Experience Study analyzing OEMs to determine how each brand’s inbound phone calls impact customer experience.

“For years, everyone has known there is a direct correlation between car shoppers’ dealership experience and their likelihood to purchase. The phone is a key element of customer satisfaction within a car buying journey. We wanted to use our data to find the right combination of behaviors that will have the quickest impact on customer experience for dealers and OEMs,” stated Pogo Parr, President of Automotive.

In this study, CallSource focused on three key areas of the inbound phone call: answer rate, connectivity score, and appointment set rate. CallSource identified these key areas as easy opportunities for dealers to immediately improve their customers’ phone experience. According to the study across all brands and categories, both luxury and mass-market, the average answer rate in dealerships is 95%, with only 83% of shoppers being connected to a live person in the correct department. The biggest dealership challenge is getting in-market shoppers to commit to a dealership visit, which only occurs 19% of the time.

“Awareness is key. By listening to and analyzing thousands of calls, it is obvious the phone process is broken in the dealership. With dealership visits declining as more shoppers research online, securing appointments to increase showroom visits is more important than ever. This study sheds light on the process of the phone that is broken within each brand and what OEMs and dealerships need to pay attention to, right now, to improve the overall consumer experience,” says Pogo Parr.

Other key findings from the study:

• - Toyota and VW rank highest in phone experience in mass-market brands.
  - Acura and Audi rank highest in phone experience for the luxury brands. Luxury brands, in general, have the lowest phone experience scores.

- Kia (90.3%) & GM (88.5%) have the highest connectivity scores in the mass-market while Acura (87.2%) and Audi (86.7%) rank highest in the luxury category.
- Toyota (27.9%) and Hyundai (24.5%) set the most sales appointments in the mass-market category while Acura (27.3%) and Alfa Romeo (25.2%) rank highest in the luxury category.

How Does Your Brand Rank?

For the full report and findings of this study, contact us at marketing@callsource.info or 888-340-0123.

About CallSource’s Phone Experience Study:

CallSource reviewed over 50,000 dealership phone calls across 23 brands between May and July 2019. The calls were scored by live analysts to determine the overall brands’ answer rate, connectivity score and the average number of hard-appointments set by in-market car shoppers.*

About CallSource

CallSource is fully committed to the quality and value of our data. As the inventor of call tracking and over 25 years’ experience, CallSource is the only company that has listened to and analyzed over a billion phone calls, and delivers targeted solutions for OEMs and dealers to improve customer experience and internal processes. We provide call tracking, call processing, coaching, and data analysis to the largest OEMs and industry providers in the automotive space.

* Hard-appointment defined as an appointment offered including specific time and date.

CallSource works closely with many automotive dealerships, and while we know how we can help your dealership improve your marketing, phone skills, and more – ultimately attaining more leads and getting more sales, maybe you need to know better how we can help you. Read on to learn why your dealership needs CallSource.

The Cost of Not Measuring Marketing Attribution

Do you know how much each call is costing your dealership?

Without accurately attributing your online and offline marketing sources, you can’t make data-driven decisions for your dealership.

It’s time to start attributing your phone calls from these advertising sources, especially since phone calls are the second-most-common form of consumer’ initial contact with a dealership.2

Measuring attribution means staying in front of competitors. It’s time to start gathering real attribution with reliable analytics.

How are you tracking attribution and success
from these advertising sources?

Dealerships spent almost $10 Billion in advertising in 2018, with Internet, TV, Radio, Newspaper, and Direct Mail coming in as the highest advertising expenses.1

“Knowing what influences a shopper to contact the dealership, regardless of method, can help dealers determine the value of their advertising and understand where to most successfully invest marketing dollars.”1

The Power of the Phone

One out of four consumers will call dealers as their initial point of contact with the dealership; this method of communication comes in second only to walk-ins.1

What does this mean for your dealership?

You can’t ignore the phone.

Your Dealership’s Experience

Customer service starts with recording your phone calls to ensure a great phone experience that gets leads coming in the door through effective advertising. Call tracking measures what’s driving calls, so your sales team can move more cars.

By not paying attention to the customer’s phone experience, you’ve lost that sale to your competitor before your team has a fighting chance to win the sales.

16% of buyers note that they did not purchase from the first dealership visited because of a poor sales experience.1 Don’t let this happen at your dealership.

Do You Know Your Customers’ Phone Experience?

Do you know what your customers’ phone experience with your dealership is like? Call tracking will show you how many verified leads that call your dealership result in:

- Connected Calls

- Hang Ups

- Voicemail

- Wrong Department

• - Connected Calls

With inbound and outbound call tracking, you will never guess at call outcomes again.

Dynamic Number Insertion (DNI)

With DNI, you can track the entire customer journey online to offline with dynamic numbers that isolate specific customers and what they searched to bring them to your dealership. Every ad source that requires code, like your website, needs dynamic number insertion.

DNI uses a pool of toll-free numbers in the background. The volume of numbers provided is based on your website volume to ensure that each user or source gets assigned its own specific number to be tracked from digital to offline conversion. Some number pools (like ours) are managed automatically, so you do not need to know ahead of time how many visitors you are expecting.

Most other solutions require you to provision the exact amount of numbers in your pool ahead of time. A phone number from the pool will display after being dynamically switched based on the user or source. This ensures that each user or source gets its own unique number.

Text-Enabled Numbers

Calling isn’t the only way consumers will use the phone to contact your dealership. When 97% of Americans text at least once a day, you know that consumers will text your phone number instead of calling.4

With one-click engagement, CallSource’s text-enabled numbers are fast, accessible, and multi-functional to ensure that you’ll never miss a lead.

If you aren’t using text-enabled numbers, you aren’t responding to all of your leads. The customer is left hanging and thinks they are being ignored. This means your potential customer is going to someone who will respond.

Reliability

No other system is more reliable.

CallSource uses humans, not robots, to score calls with 95% accuracy. Our competitions’ AI software accuracy rates can’t even come close to that, as it’s reported that speech and voice-to-text analyses only reach an accuracy of 77%.5

With our 99.999% uptime, you won’t miss a single sales opportunity due to a missed call.

CallShield

Make sure the calls you’re getting are worth your time.

The number of fake calls blocked through CallShield has been as high as 5 to 6 million, or 35%, of fraudulent phone calls being blocked during times of nationwide spam call increases.

Don’t let spam calls take over your dealership’s phone lines. Shield your phone system with CallShield.

Our proprietary IVR solution was built to block spam calls, so your employees aren’t wasting time answering fake and spam calls.

CRM Integrations

CallSource integrates with the top Automotive CRMs – so you can see what’s going on without logging into too many places.

CallSource seamlessly integrates with:

• - ELEAD1ONE

• - DealerSocket

• - VinSolutions

• - Vistadash

• - DriveCentric

• - Momentum

Don’t see your CRM on the list? Ask us about how we can integrate with your system. Chances are we can.

Chat Integrations

CallSource has partnered with almost all the major chat providers so you can see your chat conversations in our EveryLead Dashboard.

We also work with chat providers who have co-managed chat services, providing them with text-enabled numbers so you won’t lose out on any type of communication.

CallSource integrates with the following chat providers:

• - ActivEngage

• - Gubagoo

• - CarNow

• - ContactAtOnce!

Missed Opportunities

Only about 20% of potential sales calls are converted to an appointment, according to a recent automotive study by CallSource.3

What is happening to the other 80% of leads? They are going to your competitor.

Missed a chance to get a lead to come into your dealership? We’ll let you know within 2 hours – usually as quickly as 30 minutes or less.

The other guys can take 10 hours or more to alert you – long enough so that missed opportunity has already gone to your competition.

Stop guessing at call outcomes. DealSaver alerts allow you the chance to recapture that lost lead and turn them into a fan of your dealership.

DealSaver will send you alerts when:

• Disconnected: Sales calls disconnected in progress
• Transfer: All Sales calls transferred to voicemail, where the caller leaves message or hangs up
• Not Available: If the vehicle is not available and the rep does not suggest an alternative vehicle
• Purchasing: Caller asks about buying/leasing car and is disconnected in progress
• No Attempt: If no attempt is made to secure an appointment

CallSource analysts (real, trained, qualified people, not software, and not crowdsourced) listen to the entire call and alert management when an inbound opportunity wasn’t closed.

If an opportunity is worth $2,200, you lose $17,600 for every 10 calls you don’t convert.

But don’t believe vendors that promise you a 96% conversion rate – because converting every caller just isn’t possible. But there’s always room for improvement – we can help you with that.

Converting calls to appointments means you aren’t giving competition to your business.

Book more calls and recapture lost leads with DealSaver alerts.

Employee Performance

The battle of competition isn’t a game.

Missed a chance to get a lead to come into your dealership? Get your employees up-to-speed on best phone practices so they can start booking more appointments and getting more customers through your doors.

CallSource’s criterion for call-handler performance is based on over 25 years of analyzing and scoring phone calls. Call handlers are scored using a special scorecard developed by CallSource and honed over the years, called our Core Four Principles of a Phone Call.

The CallSource Difference

Attribution and closing deals isn’t a game.

Having tracked over 1 billion phone calls, CallSource is the industry expert in all things call performance. We have developed our products based on our clients’ feedback, wants, and needs.

Accuracy

Accurate and timely alerts

CallSource summarizes and contextualizes your data to help you make more informed decisions

Uptime

Reliability

Redundant servers with 99.999% uptime won’t leave you in the dark

Insights

Call processing and integration

Cut through the clutter and take control of your opportunities

EveryLead

CallSource’s premium automotive platform

Track your customer’s journey cross-channel and cross-domain while attributing every text, chat, and web form in real-time.

Support

Dedicated team

Our team has an average tenure of 10 years, delivering the expertise, training, and support you need.

Your Team

CallSource is much more than just a Saas call tracking company. With human-analyzed lead scoring, appointment confirmation, and employee performance overviews, as well as real call coaches and a reputation management system that responds to reviews for you, CallSource aims to help our clients improve in all aspects of their business.

Customer Service

Customer service is the number-one priority for CallSource, and every client receives a designated team of CallSource representatives. Your CallSource team will have an introductory call with you within days of signing up to guide you through any setup and walk you through our easy-to-use reporting platform.

Our continuing advisory services make sure you are not just getting data delivered to you, but that you know how to use this data and set goals.

Data-Driven Reporting

With customized and group reporting available, you can get your analytics the way you want them.

Reports aren’t helpful if you can’t use them. We make sure to deliver your data in the way that works best for your account, no matter how large or small.

Who We Do Business With

53 of the top 150 Dealer Groups partner with CallSource. Are you ready to partner with us too?

Contact us today and get started on your path to dealership improvement.

References:
1. https://www.nada.org/nadadata/
2. https://b2b.autotrader.com/oem/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/2018-Cox-Automotive-Car-Buyer-Journey-Brochure.pdf
3. https://www.callsource.com/automotive/data-insights/
4. https://www.pewinternet.org/2015/04/01/us-smartphone-use-in-2015/
5. http://www.leadscon.com/speech-analytics-meets-manual-human-review/

Learn about car-buyers’ digital journey and how it’s changed the game for auto dealers.

It’s no secret that the internet and digital devices are important for today’s consumers. It has changed the way people buy, and has especially had an impact on car-buyer’s journey to purchasing a vehicle.

Dealers cannot ignore digital formats as a vital piece of their marketing and brand recognition for customers. Without a great digital management program in place, dealers won’t have a great chance of even being considered by most car shoppers.

(In a box): Learn more about digital management with your free copy of our Automotive Digital Management Guide.

J.D. Power recently released their U.S. New Autoshopper (NAS) StudySM in which they deliver insights into today’s consumers’ customer journey to car dealerships.

Below are some interesting insights from this study that dealers need to take into consideration for the rest of 2019, and when planning for 2020.

Path to Purchase

• The time of from when internet shoppers start looking online to purchase a vehicle until they actually purchase a vehicle is 12.6 weeks.
• Premium and Pickup buyers have a slightly larger path to purchase, at about 14-15 weeks.
• Lease buyers move the quickest through the path to purchase, buying just after 10 weeks.
• The path to purchase increases as age decreases – so expect Gen Y/Z to take the longest when buying a new vehicle.

Knowledge of make/model to purchase

• 58% of internet shoppers enter the shopping process knowing the make or model they want to buy.
  • This has increased from 49% of buyers knowing the car they wanted to buy in 2013.
• Only 2.4 models are considered when buyers first begin visiting dealers, including the model purchased.
• Dealers’ websites are the most common way that new buyers discover the vehicle that they want to purchase, followed by having previously owned the model they are looking to purchase.

Devices used and website visits

• Shoppers continue to use smartphones for their automotive shopping, and over half of car buyers are internet shopping use their smartphone when looking to purchase a vehicle.
• 14% of automotive internet shoppers don’t ever use a computer (desktop or laptop) while shopping.

• Fewer sites are visited over time as more and more buyers know the make/model of the vehicle they want to purchase from the onset.
  • On average, internet shoppers visited 3.7 manufacturer websites, 2.4 dealer websites and 2.6 independent websites in 2018.
• Of all the websites visited, independent sites are named “most useful,” (36%) followed by the OEM site (32%).

Shopping content accessed

• Almost three-quarters (73%) of shoppers look at vehicle pricing and 71% access model information.
• Search inventory, photo galleries, and vehicle comparisons also remain in the top 5 pieces of content accessed by shoppers.

(pull quote) “Vehicle pricing, model information, search inventory, and photo galleries continue to be the most used content on auto shopping sites.” – J.D. Power U.S. New Autoshopper Study

Dealership contact

• A phone call remains the second-most-common initial form of contact, coming in only behind walk-ins.
• Only 29% of buyers initially contact dealerships in a digital format:
  • Dealer website
  • Email
  • Requested quote online
  • Online chat
  • Text message
  • Facebook page

Track your consumers’ online journeys with EveryLead

CallSource has the most powerful automotive dashboard in the industry. Our robust, non-cookie based web analytics allows you to separately track sales, parts, and service calls also while correctly attributing your online and offline sources so you can spend your money efficiently on your best customers.

CallSource’s Digital Management Platform, EveryLead, is the only platform that shows calls, texts, chats, and web leads all in a single, real-time dashboard. Schedule a time to talk to a specialist about EveryLead today, or give us a call at 833-EVERYLEAD.

Digital attribution may sound like the newest marketing buzzword, but it is more than a trendy topic. Understanding digital attribution tells you how to reach consumers to get them in your doors so you can sell more cars.

Why does digital attribution matter?

To implement an effective digital strategy, you need to track and analyze your digital marketing. When 9 out of 10 Americans are online, and 81% of consumers research online before making a buying decision, you have to advertise online. Easy, right? The trick is  – correctly tracking your online ads’ success.

Research shows that digital channels will overtake traditional media by 2021; everyone knows you need to advertise online to reach potential buyers.

The problem is consumers’ buying journeys aren’t as linear as they used to be. It isn’t always as simple as a person seeing one of your PPC ads, clicking it, and then calling your dealership to come in and see a car. Everyone wishes it were that simple! But we all know when potential consumers are doing research, they are bouncing from one piece of content or ad to the next before contacting you.

When this happens, how do you correctly measure which points of the customer journey were important and how do you weigh each touch point? The answer is to use multi-touch attribution.

Solving gaps with multi-touch attribution

A key component for successful multi-touch attribution is determining unique users to follow along their buying journey. Not all research sessions or point of the journey are completed in one session; it may be across several days or even longer that a buyer is researching and increasing their purchase intent.

By correctly identifying people – either by using cookies to identify users or using a more robust, cookie-free marketing attribution solution such as CallSource’s EveryLead platform, you unveil the complete customer journey. Once you know your consumers’ journeys, you must determine which multi-channel attribution model your dealership should and will follow to attribute each touchpoint.

The main multi-channel attribution models used by marketers are:

• Last Click/Final Click Attribution: Attributes the final channel’s click through to the source of lead generation.
• First Click Attribution: The reverse of the last click; attributes the first channel that brought someone into all of the other channels as given credit in lead generation.
• Linear Attribution: All channels are assigned a consistent value in the customer journey by distributing attribution evenly.
• Time-Decay Attribution: The channels at the end of the consumer journey receive the most credit, and the channels as the beginning receive the least. The channel at the halfway point of the consumer journey received 50% of the weight.
• U-Shaped/Position-Based Attribution: Favors straight lead generation by giving more credit to the first channel that brought someone in and the final channel that converted the consumer.

To dive deep into multi-channel attribution models and determine which is right for your dealership, download our free Automotive Digital Management Guide.

How to track consumers along their car-buying journey

With a reliable digital management platform, your dealership can correctly attribute all of the touch-points that consumers interact with to bring them to your dealership.

By knowing where consumers go online when they are researching cars, you can make better-informed marketing decisions. This matters because understanding what is important to customers means you stop paying for things that don’t matter as much. This translates to driving people to your dealership more efficiently.

Without using cookies (which can be unreliable at giving true data), but by using a more robust digital tracking system, your dealership can track consumers not only cross-domain but cross-device. You need to know this to understand what ads ultimately end in a sale.

Dynamic number insertion (DNI) measures the number of phone calls from your digital marketing and connects the online consumer journey to an offline phone call. Simply stated, DNI is a phone number that follows your customer no matter where they go on the internet, regardless if they switch from a phone or tablet.

The rule of thumb for DNI is if something requires code, you need to be using DNI.

Learn more about your consumers’ complete journeys and your marketing performance success

Investing in your digital attribution with multi-touch attribution tracking empowers your marketing team and your dealership to have a fuller picture of the customer journey.  This means your sales teams get more leads to close more deals.

CallSource, the originator of call tracking, is excited to announce the promotion of Pogo Parr to President of its Automotive Division. Pogo has been a staple in Automotive for many years and has recently served as CallSource’s Senior Vice President of Automotive. Pogo has a strong track record in the automotive industry and a reputation of loyalty and dedication to his company, employees, and customers.

 “In the past 18 months, Pogo has been realigning the automotive division with talent, structure and new technology, empowering the team to bring the best service and most accurate analytics to the industry. The results Pogo has posted on the retail and OEM side of the business have been impressive. Not only have we seen significant growth over the last two years, but we are also bringing substantially more value to automotive dealers. Our OEM relationships are growing at a rapid rate, and we’re designing specific products to fit their needs. Pogo is a strong leader with both people, and understanding technology needs. We’re delighted to have Pogo in this position, and are confident this move will bring even more value to our company and customers,” said Elliot Leiboff, CallSource CEO.

As the inventor of call tracking and the first call-data company to offer actionable analytics to monetize all inbound opportunities, CallSource understands the needs of the auto industry to drive and measure results. “This is very exciting. It’s been great to be back at CallSource and helping to reestablish the brand and winning our market back. This company has been built on customer service, focusing on bringing the ultimate value to dealers and people. We are going to stay focused on those three principles and stay true to the market place. We’ve recently launched our new EveryLead platform that’s giving dealers insight into key metrics, benchmarks, and conversion trends with both campaigns and appointments. We’re going to be the first company to truly complete the loop and help dealers and OEMs master the phones and increase conversions and appointment rates,” states Pogo.

CallSource is delighted to have Pogo drive his vision for the Automotive Division and provide the best possible experience to our customers. 
 

About CallSource---Own Every Lead

CallSource provides dealers with visibility into what is driving customers to call, text, chat or click on your website. We provide transparency into which calls are real leads, and which leads booked an appointment. CallSource helps dealerships track call-handler performance and provide individually targeted training and coaching. Dealers are alerted to missed opportunities in time to save deals. Our tracking numbers are text-enabled, and our digital attribution system tracks a customer’s complete online journey. We have a solution for you to track, set, and close every call- click- and chat.

Car-buyers have more ways than ever to discover your dealership and contact you. Of all the ways they can reach you, the phone remains the second-most popular initial point of contact your dealership.1

Over half of all inbound calls to automotive dealers are revenue-generating opportunities, so it is vital your inbound calls are handled by trained and skilled employees.

The first impression of your dealership

The person who answers the phone is the caller’s first impression of your dealership. Good customer service skills and a positive tone will make a caller’s first impression of your dealership a good one. Without proper phone skills, a customer will be left with a bad taste in their mouth instead of wanting to buy a car.

The right first phone impression shows the customer why they should choose you over your competitor.  When call handlers are equipped with value propositions about your business and give your lead the help they need—your chances of booking the appointment and making the sale will increase even more.

Showcase your dealership’s superiority

By answering the phone quickly, answering the caller’s questions, and leading the conversation to get details, you increase your close rate. Confidence in your dealership and knowledge about what you sell and have on your lot builds trust with the caller.

When a potential customer has a great phone experience, they believe they are choosing the right dealership. By ignoring “your phone issues” and not providing great customer service from the first phone call means you are leaving money on the table.

You can’t close a deal if the lead doesn’t walk into the dealership. You need to pay attention to the phone.

Dazzle callers with superior customer service skills and they won’t go to your competitor

In a Box: Download “6 Perfect Phrases for Every Stage of the Sales Call” to start improving your phone skills today.

Getting the caller’s foot in your dealership’s door

Having great phone skills doesn’t mean answering questions and being respectful Great phone skills means you get a YES for an appointment.

A “soft appointment” is not a YES.  You should only consider appointments that specify a date and time as a “real” appointment.  

Customers who have called your dealership, made an appointment, and walk through your door are ready to buy! It is up to you to close the deal.

Improve phone skills & improve conversion rates

Better call handling skills means higher call-to-appointment rates, which means more sales for your dealership.

For help improving your team’s phone skills, check out CallSource’s custom employee scorecard and our over-the-phone or in-house call coaching. Schedule a time to speak to a specialist to learn more, or call us at 888-340-123.

Reference:
1. https://b2b.autotrader.com/oem/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/2018-Cox-Automotive-Car-Buyer-Journey-Brochure.pdf