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!

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!

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.

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.