Call tracking and analytics firm, CallSource, recently released their first Inbound Phone Experience Study. The goal was to determine the impact on customer experience based on how each brand handles inbound phone calls. What it revealed was remarkable, and provided insight for dealers to better understand callers and their process to the sale. Three scoring criteria stood out: answer rate, connectivity rate, and appointment set rate. How does each of these criteria affect CX?

It Begins with the Answer Rate

First and foremost, the phone needs to be picked up. CallSource determined the answer rate as a percentage of all the calls answered within a 24-hour period. On average, their study showed 95% pf calls were answered in dealerships. Not bad, but that’s still 1 in every 20 calls that goes unanswered, and there’s no reason that should ever happen. 

It’s extremely likely that a caller who doesn’t get picked up will abandon the dealership and try the competition. Simple as that. 

CX Continues with the Connectivity Rate

Of the calls that are received, you’d imagine the next hurdle would be setting an appointment. But that’s not the case - it’s actually in getting the caller connected to the right place. Only 83% of callers connect to a live person in the right department. That number sounds pretty solid, but nearly 1 in 5 calls goes to voicemail or to the wrong department. 

Picture yourself in the customer’s shoes. How satisfied will you be with your experience at this point? If a basic phone call isn’t handled properly, how do you project the rest of your interaction going? 

It Converts with the Appointment Set Rate

And finally, the whole reason you have a process for answering calls is to convert them to the sale. Sadly, the appointment set rate falls well short of expectations, both by customers and by dealers.

Stephanie Robbins, Senior Director of Strategic Accounts at CallSource, says, “On average, dealers are only converting 15% of sales prospects to a hard appointment.”

Callers punch those numbers into their device for a reason. Inbound calls are incredibly strong leads - potential buyers are reaching out to you! 17 out of 20 callers get off the line without committing to a firm date or time for a visit, and often they’re in the wind and unlikely to buy from you. 

What Dealers Can Do for Inbound Calls

What’s often understood as a basic skill, handling inbound calls is not as straightforward as dealers might think. Especially as younger generations take over the switchboard - generations that communicate primarily with text and DMs - training is the first step. Training in any role, even as routine as answering and transferring calls, is required before accountability can be commanded.

• Train your Director of First Impressions (receptionist) to comprehend the caller’s needs. Is it the service department or sales that they’re looking for? Are they searching for a new or used vehicle, or do they need help with a current car? Do they have a contact name they need to speak with? 

• Coach team members to field calls with open-ended questions. Learn more about the customer’s needs and build trust. Develop rapport to enhance the customer experience so they’re compelled to feel committed to the salesperson and dealership. 

• Train to ask for an appointment. The goal is to convert the caller into a shopper, then a buyer. Dealership staff need to ask for the first commitment - an appointment date and time. Anything less than asking for an appointment from a lead equates to turning them away at the door. 

This past holiday season, hundreds of dealers used e-commerce to sell more cars and reach year-end goals, even when their showrooms were closed. Leading up to the holiday season, I met with Drive Motors CEO Aaron Krane where we talked about buying trends during the holiday season. 

As expected, dealers using e-commerce saw an even smaller dip in online orders on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in 2017, than in 2016. Many buyers took advantage of great deals on Christmas Eve, with orders doubling those placed in 2016.

Surprisingly, car orders on Christmas Day itself nearly tripled year over year, even though most showrooms are closed. The final 7 days of the year were a critical time for dealers, as well. In fact, several dealers raced all the way to the finish line, making over 75% of their December online sales in the final 7 days of 2017. Not only are people shopping more during the holidays, they’re also buying. 

What can dealers take away from the 2017 holiday season? As automotive e-commerce evolves, customers are becoming more aware that they can order their next car online from their local dealerships. They're excited to buy online because it's easy and convenient. 

As a result of these buyer preferences, dealers that offer e-commerce are earning more business online. Even when their showrooms are closed, they're selling cars 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Here's the video:

Please enjoy this conversation I had last week with Mat Koenig, Chris Speer, and Big Tom LaPointe. Mat and Chris are the purveyors of the Rockstar Auto Conference. Big Tom is a regular on my shows. 

In this edition, we recap Jim Ziegler's Internet Battle Plan, the Chicago Auto Show, and Digital Dealer's Regional Workshop in Chicago.

We also discuss the recent Cars.com acquisition of Dealer Inspire, and how the role of automotive advertising providers like Cars.com is evolving, and what dealers can and need to be doing to stay ahead of the game. 

Enjoy!

PS - If you're into podcasting there is a podcast version of this as well. Here's the link.

February is a unique time for dealerships. The popular car-buying Christmas season has long passed, and Memorial Day is still several months away. Therefore, President’s Day (Feb 19 this year) is the only “big” shopping holiday between late December and Memorial Day.

So how can dealers take advantage of this?

Check out my video interview with Drive Motors CEO Aaron Krane where we discuss why he expects a 50% increase in online car orders this President's Day Weekend compared with last year.

> Enjoy the video below, and/or check out the podcast.

When Uber first appeared on the scene, skeptics were quick to point out how easily the company could fail.  An army of freelance, casual workers putting in time whenever they felt like it and customers willing to trust a smartphone app with payment and location information?  It seemed like a set-up positively doomed for failure.

The rise of Uber

But, despite the naysayers, Uber taxi flourished and inspired its biggest competitor, Lyft, as well as a slew of start-up services and Uber-inspired on-demand apps.  They also inspired a national conversation on how freeing – and how confining – freelance can be, for Uber drivers.    The company effectively changed the landscape of personal transportation – empowering freelance drivers and giving people more choices when it came to getting from Point A to Point B.  In many ways, they have been held up as the ideal start-up: a simple idea that filled a need and became part of our pop culture.

But, although Uber offered creative insight into new ways of organizing workers and creating custom services; their marketing and public relations disasters have shown how bad press can undermine even the best business plan.

Uber CEO mishaps

In December 2016, Uber’s CEO Travis Kalanick was tapped to join President Trump’s economic advisory council.  This put him and, by extension, all of Uber under greater scrutiny.   What followed was a series of public mishaps which have led to Kalanick’s recent announcement that he was “taking a leave of absence” from the company.

Shortly after his appointment, the President’s travel ban was announced.  Taxi drivers in New York went on strike as a protest and the NY Taxi Workers Alliance called for drivers to refuse pickups from the airport.  During the protest, Uber sent out a tweet about turning off surge pricing for customers requesting pickups from JFK.  The backlash was almost immediate, with critics slamming the company for taking advantage of the situation.  In the end, Kalanick came out publicly against the ban, resigned from the President’s Council and committed millions in legal aid to immigrants.  But by then, #DeleteU ber was already trending and the damage had been done.

Uber accused of pervasive culture of sexism within the company

In February, Susan Fowler published a piece on her blog about her experiences as an engineer with Uber.  In the piece, titled “Reflecting on One Very Strange Year at Uber” she openly discussed the sexual harassment she claims to have dealt with at the company as well as the HR department’s refusal to follow up on her complaints, which included chat messages from her boss about looking for someone to join him and his wife in a threesome.  The post was shared widely and did become the driving force behind investigations into the Uber company, which led to the firing of more than 20 people.

In March, it was reported that Kalanick and a group of fellow executives had visited an escort bar while on a trip to South Korea.  One of the executives was a woman from Uber’s marketing department who later complained to HR that being stuck in the bar with the men calling out numbers for escorts made her feel uncomfortable.  At one point she reported to HR that  “It made me feel horrible as a girl (seeing those girls with number tags and being called out is really degrading).”

Doing what they could to work it out

Many times, Uber tried to remedy the situation publicly.  Presumably, this was to assure the public that even though the Uber corporate culture might be rough around the edges, they were doing what they could to work it out.  After the slew of sexual harassment allegations, that had levied against them, the company hired high-profile women like Apple exec Bozoma Saint John and Professor Frances Frei, author of Uncommon Service: How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business.

But for every step they took publicly, there were new scandals waiting in the wings to reveal the Uber need for lessons in reputation. A leaked email from Kalanick ultimately illustrated the ‘frat house’ culture better than any allegations being touted by former employees and customers who had filed complaints about sexual assaults from Uber drivers.  Kalanick’s email consisted of warning about a ‘puking surcharge’ for employees who partied too hard and a reminder not to throw kegs off of “tall buildings”.

Is Uber doomed or will it survive?

In the end, Uber may not survive.  If it doesn’t, the company’s demise will have been brought about – not by problematic business decisions, but instead by a string of PR debacles and their own corporate culture, which has been described as toxic by many.  But even if their efforts prove to be too little too late to save the company, Uber will leave a lasting legacy for entrepreneurs looking to capitalize on the growing service industry as well as providing a real-world example of just how important – and powerful – a company’s reputation can affect its future.

Originally Published on AutoConversion - Is Uber Doomed to Fail?

Each and every day hundreds of people, if not thousands, are visiting your dealership website. While many people reach your website as a result of clicking on links from emails you send, ads you run, social media posts, etc....practically speaking a majority of people arrive as a result of searching your dealership name on Google.

Of the thousands that decide to click on a search result and visit your website, how many hundreds do NOT do this? Why do they overlook you and eliminate your dealership, and how valuable could they have been for you?

Phrased differently, how much potential business are you NOT acquiring as a result of cracks in your online presence, and how much is this costing you?

What Are the Losses?

Considering that each dealership customer is potentially worth a million bucks over a lifetime between the business they bring you directly and refer, the loss of potential business is significant. Even if only 1-3% of website visitors convert into incremental sales and service business immediately that doesn't mean the remaining 95%-plus have no value.

If you could make improvements to your online dealership presence that reduce the "lost potential traffic" by say 25% and get these people onto your website, how would this impact your bottom line and improve your ROI?

Reality is, there’s no way to know how much potential business you are losing because there’s no way to know how many people overlooked or eliminated your dealership. You only know how many are considering you.

Here’s What we Do Know

We know that low ratings on review sites cause people to eliminate your dealership. When you search a dealership name on Google and append the words, “dealership reviews” Google shows all the stars, ratings, and number of reviews on relevant sites such as Facebook, Yelp, DealerRater, Cars.com, Edmunds, and of course Google itself.

We know that people overlook you when they don’t like what they see.

We know that people click on these links which means they see what your profiles and listings look like. They see what your Facebook page looks like, they see what your Yelp listing looks like, they see what your YouTube channel and LinkedIn page looks like.

We know that you only have a few seconds to make a good first impression and if you don’t then you get eliminated.

So while you’re busy launching the next marketing campaign or ad initiative, spending tens of thousands a month to get your dealership front and center with folks to go online and research you and your online presence is not buttoned up, how many ad dollars are going down the drain don’t have to be?

Shopper Consideration Assessments

Unlike Mystery Shopping that puts your process and your people to the test, a Shopper Consideration Assessment puts your online presence to the test. An assessment that scrutinizes your dealership from the initial phase of the shopper’s consideration journey where you know you are being eliminated is a simple and practical test you can and should be running your dealership through at least twice a year if not every quarter.

One challenge with shopper consideration assessments is that they are difficult to do objectively because they can make the people responsible for your online presence at the dealership look bad. Nobody likes that. This is why it’s best to have a third party perform these types of assessments.

Another challenge with shopper consideration assessments are that you can’t have vendors performing them when the vendors themselves have stake in the performance of your online presence. They don’t want evidence pointing to them that they are the cause for cracks in your presence.

A final challenge with this type of assessment is while your dealership presence might look good on paper, you have no way of knowing how it compares with others. A dealership with 500 reviews on DealerRater and a 4.9 rating, but lacking reviews elsewhere does not fool the savvy shopper comparing that dealership to one with a balance of reviews and ratings across multiple sites.

Standing Out Above the Competition - It's a Numbers Game

I’ve been performing shopper consideration assessments for more than three years now. During this time I’ve accumulated data on hundreds of dealerships and even devised my own proprietary scoring system. You’d be amazed how low-performing the average dealership is in these areas, and what little effort it takes to stand out above the competition.

To give you an idea of the numbers, the social media portion of my assessments evaluates dealerships on Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn and is based on a potential high score of 19. Of those 19 points, Facebook is worth up to 10, YouTube up to 6, and LinkedIn up to 3.

Most dealers score between 4-6 points on Facebook, 1-2 on YouTube, and 0-1 on LinkedIn. The average overall score for social media fluctuates between 4 and 5 points.

So consider this...the dealers that take action on the areas keeping their score down can almost immediately place themselves in the Top 25% of dealerships when it comes to social media.

How long are you willing to wait before you stop the leaking from your online presence and improve your ROI?