Connected cars are generating new lists of prospects: customers whose cars are telling them they need a service. You’ve likely received what we’re calling an “OEM Action List” of these customers from your manufacturer. Prompt follow-up with the right message can net you new business and loyal customers – especially important today when the average length of car ownership is nearly 12 years.

I can hear you saying, “My service advisors are already swamped. How am I going to get them to cold call a galley list?” You’re not. Instead, put one or two service BDC reps on the job. The latest call center technology makes it a snap to contact customers through the right channel at the right cadence. And, unlike older systems that seem to require an Act of Congress to upload a list from a third party, today’s technology takes only seconds to import names and contact information.

Automation is key to get the best results from working your action list. It’s the only way for agents to make more calls in less time, send targeted campaigns to hundreds of recipients, easily access customer data, and retrieve campaign analysis. You’ll never know if your BDC is profitable if you don’t have the ability to measure campaign results and track agent performance.

I see way too many BDC agents relying on call lists, sticky notes, and Excel spreadsheets. This process is inefficient and nearly impossible to track who was contacted and when. Tracking and automated follow-up according to your preferred cadence is crucial because the last thing you want is to annoy customers with too many communications. Contact a customer more than three times in a 24-hour period, and you’re practically guaranteeing they will never do business with you.

I also see too many agents relying on a CRM. It seems like a good idea, but when agents have to pull records, click to make phone calls, and manually enter notes, the entire process slows down. You also have very little visibility into what they are doing day to day. An agent can waste hours rummaging through the CRM trying to decide who to call next. I’ve even seen agents go rouge and ignore action lists in favor of “easier” communications like birthday emails. That’s not going to make you more money.

It kills me to hear a dealer or manager say, “It’s a great idea, but I can’t get my team to follow my processes.” The right technology forces employees to follow the process. Technology that automatically calls the next customer on the list, schedules follow-up, records conversations, and tracks the performance of each agent, will very quickly reveal who’s doing their job and following your process and who’s not. Agents can’t argue with hard numbers. 

Of course, you need to set them up for success with appropriate scripts that address why a connected car communicated back to the OEM and how your service department can help. Take a conversational approach and offer a compelling incentive, such as a free oil change, when they come in to purchase new tires, for example.

Action lists can be a great source of service revenue – when customers are contacted with the right message at the right time. Let your service advisors address and up-sell customers in your shop, and turn over outbound calling to a service BDC. With the right call center technology and processes you can turn OEM leads into loyal service customers.

 

You’re not closing as many leads as you want, but you can’t figure out how to improve the situation. Your sales team is jumping on hot leads and setting follow-up reminders in the CRM, but your closing ratio is still below the 12.5 percent industry average.

It’s fairly commonplace for follow-up to be perfect for a week to ten days, and then fall off a cliff. That’s a problem when the average cost for an automotive lead is $205, and that figure is on the upswing. Abandoning follow-up is as good as throwing money away.

Yet, it happens every day with hundreds of leads. In fact, nearly 24 percent of the average dealer’s leads are flagged for not receiving follow-up within 24 hours. Nearly 68 percent of those flagged leads do not receive follow-up within a week!

I believe the problem is that a manual follow-up process is time-consuming and difficult. Plus, there’s very little visibility into follow-up activities and minimal accountability. How do you know a salesperson is calling that list you provided instead of going rogue and making birthday calls that net you zero sales?

The problem of dropped leads is compounded today with our historic labor shortage butting up against time-intensive follow-up. There is a lot of pressure to attack new leads, while older leads languish and are eventually forgotten altogether.  

You can solve the problem without adding more staff. The solution lies in combining the right technology with automated processes so one salesperson can do the work of three and convert more of the leads that other dealers throw away.

Relying on your CRM to help with lead follow-up, schedule tasks, and click-to-call dialing will never get you the results and productivity you can expect from an automated contact management system. The right technology will perfectly track all productive time your agents are punched in and engaging with customers.

A system that manages customer data, campaigns, and follow-up tasks in one platform allows salespeople to quickly work through all leads, not simply the lowest funnel. You keep more of the leads that you paid for in the funnel until customers purchase from you, tell you they’ve purchased a vehicle or dropped out of the market.

Automated follow-up allows you to set rules so that salespeople contact customers according to a prescribed cadence and length of time. So instead of follow-up dropping off after a week, you can put in place a process that triggers communication for as long as 180 days.

The latest in automated dialing technology is key to help salespeople make more calls in less time. This software automatically pulls up the next customer record when a salesperson is done with a call so there’s no rummaging through your CRM or scanning spreadsheets trying to decide who to call next.

As an example, I recently spoke with a dealer with a list of nearly 4,000 leads who had not been contacted in 30 days. Using dialing software, the dealership was able to contact every lead in one day and connect with 592 customers. That’s nearly 600 “lost” customers back in the pipeline!

Dialing software also ensures salespeople can’t skip records. If you put a list in the system, you’ll know that every customer is contacted, notes are automatically logged, and the next action is automatically scheduled.

Too many salespeople give up on leads way too quickly. Leads that your dealership paid good money to acquire. You can convert more of the leads that other dealerships throw away with an automated contact management system and sales processes that keep leads in the pipeline without adding more staff.

Clean, organized data will help you achieve more productivity and revenue from your BDC. You may not even realize your data is dirty, or disorganized.  

That’s because mess and decay happen gradually, over time. For example, it’s estimated that up to 30 percent of the workforce will change careers or jobs every year. That translates to a constant flow of outdated email addresses and phone numbers clogging up business records.

Disorganization is often due to a lack of technology or system capabilities. Storing large amounts of data in spreadsheets or call lists is inefficient and error-prone.

It’s nearly impossible to follow-up on campaigns and send that next message without combing through thousands of rows of information. That’s a huge waste of time and money – and rarely generates results you can measure.

If you want a productive and efficient BDC that conducts effective campaigns and gets measurable results, you must clean your data and manage it correctly. Here’s how to get started:

Clean your data.

More data is not always better. For example, a lead that has been inactive for years is not likely to close. A hundred records with invalid emails aren’t improving your metrics or agent productivity. Duplicate records for the same customer are wasting marketing dollars.

I liken this ‘less is more’ strategy to a lead provider that sends 500 leads per month but the closing ratio is only 2 percent. When you put together the actual cost of the lead, including internal costs such as paying the salaries of BDC agents to follow-up, one deal could cost upwards of $1,500!

It’s better to have fewer qualified leads that close at a higher rate, than spend money for a bunch of leads that may never close. Apply the same logic to your data. Fewer accurate records are vastly preferable to dirty data that hurts productivity and wastes money.

Define what to purge based on your business goals and record quality. Keep all active leads, current and previous customers, and those within your defined market and region. Purge duplicate records, contacts who have had no activity for years, and those who have unsubscribed.

A call center marketing automation system can help you automatically clean and verify your data via data appending. Appending your data simply means the system validates the information stored in your database.

The same system can also help you complete any empty fields – like email or phone- for the records you’ve retained in real-time to enrich and complete your lists. Finally, it can help you stay diligent by constantly refreshing your data to remove duplicate records and perform ongoing updates.

Manage your data.

Clean data won’t do you much good without proper management. Properly managed data increases productivity – agents spend less time finding, digesting and relaying information and more time making calls and running campaigns.

Properly managed data also spurs informed decision making – it’s easy to track campaigns and results so you know to repeat the activities that make you money.

Finally, proper management allows you to send the right communication to the right customer through the right channel and at the proper cadence – actions that create a better customer experience, and again, make you money.

It’s hard, if not possible, to achieve this level of management through the CRM. Most systems are simply not equipped for the required level of data analysis and automation. 

To get the best results, equip your BDC with a true call center system. This will allow you to load all DMS, CRM, OEM spreadsheets, web leads, and more, into one platform and run all campaigns with one log-in.

You can manage all outbound communications across your entire dealership with complete visibility into what has gotten done, what needs to be done, what campaigns are generating results, and where agents should spend more time.

Don’t make the mistake of failing to clean and manage your customer data. Equip your BDC agents with technology that organizes your data and keeps it pristine and you will see higher agent productivity, lower marketing costs, and increased revenue growth.

Marketing and lead generating activities take tons of time and money. Unless you automate them. Marketing automation can increase sales as much as 33 percent, according to an article in the Harvard Business Review. 

Chalk those results up to the fact that automation allows BDC agents to make more calls in less time, send targeted campaigns to thousands of recipients in seconds, easily access customer data, and instantly retrieve campaign analysis. Ultimately, generating more leads and doing more of what makes you money.

Ad hoc phone calls, individual emails, call lists, and sticky notes are the way of the past. So is relying on your CRM. Using your CRM to pull records, monitor tasks, and click to make phone calls, is a fatal mistake that will never get you the productivity and results you can expect from a truly automated contact management system.

With a system that manage campaigns, customer data, and communication types in one platform, you can easily automate these essential BDC activities:

Deciding who to call next.

Agents can waste countless hours rummaging through your CRM or peering at spreadsheets trying to decide who to call next. Automation erases all of that guesswork and dramatically improves productivity. You set call and campaign priority and an agent’s screen automatically populates with who to call next.

Placing outbound calls.

Click-to-call functionality within your CRM is inefficient and hard to monitor. Are your agents consistently making call after call or are they taking their time with plenty of breaks between clicks? A system with a dialer that automatically calls the next number erases that down time and significantly increases agent productivity. An agent making 60 to 80 outbound calls a day with click-to-call can jump to as many as 300 calls a day with an automatic dialer. That’s productivity you can take to the bank!

Finding customer information.

Having a customer’s information and history readily available on the agent’s screen when a call comes in saves time and makes for a better customer experience. The right platform will automatically verify a customer’s identity and track that customer through multiple data point changes and campaigns.

Blending inbound and outbound calling.

Your agents should handle both inbound and outbound calls, but how do you know what they’re prioritizing? The right platform blends the calls so inbound calls take priority. The system automatically routes these calls to an available agent so customers never get caught in an endless hold loop or sent to a voicemail box.

Campaign follow-up.

Nothing ticks-off a customer more than too many follow-up calls, emails, or texts. Customers who feel harassed will not want to visit your dealership. Automated follow-up allows you to set rules so that agents contact customers appropriately according to your prescribed cadence.

Automation also allows you to trickle down information to prospects based on who they are, what they like, and how they found your dealership to begin with. This allows you to engage with them on their own terms so they’ll want to do business with you.

 Tracking conversion rate.

It’s nearly impossible to track campaign conversion rates within your CRM, so many dealers don’t do it. But how do you know if your BDC is profitable if you don’t have the ability to measure results? An automated system will automatically track conversion rates so you know what type of marketing campaign is working best for your business and what type is not. This allows you to make informed decisions and expand those efforts that make you money.

An automated system will also track agent performance according to the metrics that matter to you. This can include contact rate and effective rate, meaning the connection motivated the customer to act in the way you wanted. Tracking performance is key to accurately award the commissions and bonuses that help you retain good BDC managers and agents.

Don’t make the fatal mistake of sticking to manual processes in your BDC. Automating essential BDC activities saves you time and money and effectively grows your business. It’s the key to a well-oiled department that will increase revenue and customer satisfaction.

Implementing a BDC at your dealership is a proven way to maintain control of leads and processes. However, too many BDC’s underperform or even break-down completely due to a fatal mistake: a poor BDC manager. Poor managerial skills lead to erosion of processes and employee morale, resulting in unanswered calls, long wait times, loss of business, and high employee turn-over.

Don’t let a poor manager bring down your BDC. The following tips can help you hire the right manager, set that person up for success, and develop a profitable BDC.

Hire a true leader.

Cast a wide net for the right manager. Don’t limit your search process to only candidates with automotive experience or knowledge. That can be taught. Hire for intrinsic personality traits that make a good leader. In my experience, the best managers exhibit integrity, adaptability, tenacity, and self-motivation.

Excellent communication skills are also key. According to a Gallup report cited in the Wall Street Journal, people don’t leave jobs, they leave managers. What do workers want from their managers? Number one is clear and consistent communication.

It’s worth noting that the average contact center has an agent turnover rate between 30 and 45 percent. That’s a lot of coming and going, and even worst, wasted time and money spent on training and onboarding. The right manager, with the right skills, can significantly cut that churn.

Write down your must-have leadership skills in order of importance. Have each candidate speak to instances in their careers where they had to use these qualities (providing examples, of course). Remember, you’re looking for a true leader – not just someone to give out tasks and orders.

Set your manager up for success.

You can hire the best manager out there, but without strong support from upper management and the right tools, even the brightest star can crash and burn. Ensure that your sales managers and service managers understand the importance and value of the BDC. Enlist their help in setting up processes for inbound and outbound calls.

Bring in a contact management system designed to help managers and agents succeed. The best platforms integrate with your DMS and are a central hub that includes data management, automation, and campaign management. Make sure a platform tracks the metrics that matter, including agent productivity, effective rate, and conversion rate. These metrics are the key to accurately award the commissions and bonuses that are crucial to retaining BDC employees.

Last but definitely not least, make sure your manager and agents have proper training. Most contact management systems offer employee training as part of implementation. Make sure you partner with a vendor that adapts to your preferred processes, not the other way around. Every dealership is unique and has unique BDC needs. The right system will be flexible to align with your dealership’s strategy.  

Work with your manager to design ongoing check-ins and training with agents. There’s nothing more demoralizing than feeling overwhelmed and unsure about hitting expectations and targets. These check-ins will happen less often as time goes by, but your manager should continue doing them weekly for at least the first couple of months.

Consider limited outsourcing.

If your manager and agents are continually swamped with calls and it’s not in your budget to add more staff, consider outsourcing some activities. An outsourced call center can handle more mundane tasks and lower-funnel opportunities that need to be acted on, but may not be immediate money makers. For example, outsource long-term unsold prospect follow-up, such as phone, internet, and showroom leads that are 60 to 90 days old.

A BDC manager can make or break customer engagement. Don’t make the fatal mistake of hiring a poor manager. Hire according to intrinsic traits, establish processes and technology that drive success, and don’t be afraid to get outside help if you need it.

Phone and email are the titans of customer communications and most likely form the backbone of your business development. But they shouldn’t be the only way you communicate with customers. Relying on only one or two traditional forms of communication can be fatal to your dealership.

Customers today expect to be able to converse with you through multiple channels. Everything from texting to Live chat to Facebook messenger. And they want those communications to be seamless and easy. To keep up with customer demand and grow your business, you must have an omni-channel communication strategy.

“Omni-channel” has become a big buzzword in almost every industry. But it’s still not well understood. At the most basic level, it means you provide integrated and seamless communications across the myriad of channels we have in 2021, including online chat, texting, video chat, Twitter chat, etc. 

Omni-channel is often lumped in with multi-channel, but they are different. In multi-channel, the customer has access to a variety of communication options that aren’t necessarily connected or synchronized. During an omni-channel experience, however, there aren’t only multiple channels, but the channels are connected so customers can move between them seamlessly.

What does this look like in real life?  

Think of a customer who visits your website and live chats with an agent. The next day the same customer uses his smartphone to text about a particular vehicle. Then he picks up the phone and calls to ensure a vehicle is in stock. Finally, he shows up at your showroom ready to test drive the vehicle.

With an omni-channel approach and the right technology platform, every time that customer interacted with your store it was tracked and logged. So, every subsequent time he reached out, the system recognized him and automatically displayed his customer history. The customer never had to repeat information or start the process all over again. He received a continuous, seamless, intuitive experience through every channel, and exerted the least amount of effort to get it.

That experience helps customers gain trust and confidence in your dealership, which can be a huge factor in lowering sales resistance. High-quality interactions also make customers want to do business with you again. That’s how you cultivate long-term relationships, instead of one-off transactions.

So far, we’ve discussed building an omni-channel customer experience for customers who reach out to your store. But you can also apply omnichannel strategy to enhance your outbound marketing, generate leads, and acquire customers. The key is using your customer data to identify the preferred channel of a specific audience segment – or individual prospects – and create a great experience on that channel with ad content or special offers tailored to that specific segment.

In the last decade, we’ve seen huge leaps in call center technology that automatically does this kind of data science for you. The right platform will integrate with your DMS to match customers with their data, even when they’ve gone across channels and marketing campaigns. This allows you to target them in a more efficient manner.

It will also allow you to schedule which customer actions trigger your dealership’s actions so the customer journey moves along with as little pause as possible, yet at a cadence so customers don’t feel hounded by too many communications.

Providing your employees with the training and technology to converse across a wide range of channels along with the content that your customers want will pay-off with a better customer experience, and enhance your outbound marketing for more leads and sales. Don’t make the fatal mistake of relying only on traditional communication channels. Embrace the omni-channel approach that customers demand and they’ll want to do business with your dealership.

A lot of dealerships prefer using an internal sales and service BDC to maintain control of leads and processes. Yet, many struggle to measure what’s working and what’s not when it comes to maximizing the efficiency and productivity of every BDC agent. Are you among them?

The BDC is the glue that holds it all together when it comes to bringing traffic into your store. Managed properly, your BDC can help increase appointments, shows, sales, and closing percentages.

But how do you know if your BDC is performing well for your market, region, and target customer? Sure, we’ve all heard the benchmarks. For example, the industry standard is that for every 100 leads, 40 percent should set an appointment. Out of those 40 people, 20 people (50 percent) should show up. Out of those 20 people, 10 people should buy.

Another “industry standard” is that BDC agents should make seven calls and send five emails per lead over a 30-day period to achieve the numbers above. Is that true for your dealership?

There’s a reason many dealerships struggle to assess the effectiveness of an internal BDC: Every dealership is different. The benchmarks that work for one may be ridiculous for another. There is no one-size-fits-all approach.

What you’re asking of your BDC may be completely different than the dealer down the street. I’ve been in stores where service BDC are tasked with upselling the customer on the phone. If parts are needed, the same agent fulfills that order once the call is complete. These agents are likely making fewer calls, and the calls are lasting longer, then a service BDC tasked with simply setting an appointment. In this case, the number of dials each day is a poor metric of performance.

After more than 20 years in the auto call center business, including creating call centers for over a dozen of the industry’s biggest players, I have earned my reputation for helping dealers maximize BDC productivity and results according to their own specific business rules and metrics that matter.

I know there are four areas where you must identify and measure strengths and weaknesses in your current process to maximize BDC ROI. 

Contact Rate

Your agents are dialing, but are they connecting? Are they connecting with the right person? The number of outbound dials per day is far less important than your contact rate. Review call reports to determine when your phone calls work the best. Use this information to adjust call times and staffing so you have the most activity and proper coverage when you have the best connection rate and want to make the most outbound dials.

Effective rate

Your agents are connecting, but are those calls effective? Did they set the appointment? Or complete the CSI survey? Why or why not?  Record calls so you can pinpoint problems. Agents may need better scripts, or more training. I often counsel dealers to identify their rock stars and then create mentoring programs so under-performers can learn from the best. You may want to offer a bonus or incentive to get your rock stars on board with helping other team members.

Productivity rate

How much time are your agents spending working versus not working? Are they taking long breaks? Checking their personal phones before clicking to the next customer call? You have to be able to track and manage your agents’ time to maximize their productivity. Granted, this is difficult to do without the right software. Effective BDC software should require agents to log in and set their status as ready for a call. When away from their desks, they must change their status to unavailable and record why: lunch, break, training, etc. This holds them accountable for how they are spending their time, and alerts you when productivity drops so you can address the problem.

Quality control

Are you reviewing call reports daily? Are you recording calls? These are your most important measurement tools. Every week, you or your BDC manager should hold one-on-one meetings with every agent. Review a recorded call with the agent and discuss what he or she is doing great, and what can be better.

Don’t be a slave to BDC industry benchmarks. Every dealership is unique. There is no magic BDC metric that every dealership needs to hit to grow business. What matters is that you know and measure your specific numbers and set your specific parameters. Once you know what works for you, you can spend time developing your people to maximize BDC ROI.