A rep displaying how an automotive business development center can help dealerships grow

How an Automotive Business Development Center Can Help Support Your Sales Team

admin | Automotive BDC, Customer Service | , , , ,

The sales team at a car dealership is comprised of multiple positions with multiple responsibilities throughout the company. Some positions you may find at a dealership that play a role in the sales process include sales associates, sales managers, and the general manager. And while these positions are primarily focused on driving dealership success, they are still responsible for elements of the customer service strategy. This might include answering the phone when they aren’t with an active customer, greeting customers on the lot, or even grabbing a bottle of water for a service customer waiting for their vehicle. And while all of these tasks certainly keep team members busy throughout the day, not all of them are actively generating revenue for the dealership. That’s why moving customer service activities away from the sales team is a great way to create more bandwidth for those employees to tend to the sales process and develop a truly seamless transition between the sales and customer service teams. Let’s dig into a few of the ways in which an automotive business development center can help support your sales team. 

What is a Business Development Center?

In the automotive industry, Business Development Centers (or BDCs) work alongside sales and service teams to manage incoming calls, schedule sales and service appointments, and perform outbound campaigns that generate sales and service leads. Additionally, BDCs can help improve customer retention, conduct satisfaction surveys, and handle general or overflow call volume. By removing these tasks from other teams, sales and service staff can focus on what they do best and dealers can rest assured that no ball is being dropped in the process. 

Answering Calls and Managing High Call Volume

An automotive business development center can help alleviate heavy call volume by answering calls that otherwise could pull salespeople and sales managers away from customers. BDCs, like Customer Traac, become masters on the subject of your dealership so they can answer questions, resolve inquiries, and even relay specific details regarding car service needs and timelines. This removes a lot of the time spent by sales teams on customer service issues that can pull focus away from the selling of cars, which in-turn opens up availability to make more sales and keep moving inventory.

When your dealership sales or service teams are getting a high volume of calls for questions on top of inquiries, it can get messy. Additionally, consider the times of year when you typically experience an increase in people purchasing cars as well as servicing them. These increased call volumes can be a lot to handle, and outsourcing them to a team that is equipped to manage these seasonal shifts can aid your dealership in its busy season. A BDC can take those calls and turn them into schedules for the sales and service teams that keeps everyone busy but not overloaded. 

Follow-up Calls

Following up with customers about their purchase, their vehicle’s maintenance schedule, returning calls with issues, and other customer service tasks can be left for the BDC to handle in a timely, and efficient manner. This way, salespeople won’t have to worry about keeping track of customer voicemails, emails, or disrupting sales efforts to make these follow-up calls. Additionally, follow-up calls can bring a lot of recurring business to the dealership. It’s a tactic that can easily fall by the wayside if salespeople aren’t getting responses or calls back after a week or two. A BDC that remains diligent in reaching out to existing or potential customers have a very high chance of turning calls into appointments, future trade-ins, or even a good review. 

Scheduling Service Appointments

BDCs will know a car’s suggested service maintenance schedule based on the make, model, year, and when the customer purchased the vehicle. This means they can make and maintain a full schedule of service appointments that improves customer retention and creates a full schedule for the service team. 

An automotive business development center can help create a ripple effect from the initial sale, and takes care of all the supporting activities associated with it. Customer Traac starts at once after a sale and can start outbound campaigns, pre-schedule service appointments, and alleviate call volume from the dealership. 

For over 30 years, Customer Traac has provided outsourced business development center solutions for dealerships across the country. We know that when your teams have more time to focus on what they do best, your dealership grows. Reach out today to learn how we can help your sales team sell more cars and create lasting customer relationships. 

Becoming a customer-focused organization

10 Tips for Becoming a Customer-Focused Organization

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You’ve likely heard that “customer-focused” businesses are more successful because they focus completely on their client relationships and client satisfaction. But that’s only part the story. In full, a customer-focused business fosters a company culture of its own that is solely dedicated to enhancing the customer experience through relationships and customer service. These organizations not only practice what they preach but proactively seek to hire talent that is empathetic, patient, and easy to talk to. They focus more on the customer experience and the various touch points their brand has with a customer at every stage of the buyer’s journey. Becoming a customer-focused organization can be the true key to running a successful, and profitable, business. Interested in learning more? Here are 10 things a company should do to become or maintain a good customer-focused organization.

Know Your Customer

To fully serve your customers, and your business, you need to know who they are, what they want, and how to get it to them. Market research is a great way to determine you overall strategy. Running data to find out demographics, locations, and spending habits of your customers is good, but getting it straight from the source will be your key to success. Gaining personal insights right from the customer will give you something research never can. Ask them questions, send out surveys, read their reviews and questions—and develop a customer profile you can divide into more specific segments to target more granularly.

Figure Out Their Challenge and Solve for it

Figuring out the shared problem your target customer has and solving it will build a good business model. A niche problem can help focus what and how you deliver a solution to your customers. For example, Customer Traac knows that dealerships have problems maintaining high volume inbound calls, appointment scheduling, and service follow-up. That niche allows us to focus on the customer’s problem and solve it. Trying to provide solutions for every possible challenge a customer may be experiencing will make it difficult to get good at one thing.

Build Trust with Your Customers

If your customers don’t trust you, they won’t stick around. They may even prevent others from coming to you with their challenges. Some ways to build trust amongst your customers are:

  • Solving their problem before they become more frustrated
  • Gaining immediate feedback from customers and making them feel like you care and they are part of the process
  • Being present when they leave comments and reviews—be appreciative and helpful

When customers see their problems are not only being solved, but any issues they’ve voiced have been used to better the business, they feel appreciated. This gains their trust and, hopefully, long-term loyalty.

Keep Up with Your Industry

Industries like tech, healthcare, and automotive are ever-changing. It seems as though they are on to the next big thing before you can fully utilize the last one. Keeping up to date with industry trends and changes is crucial to getting ahead of the curve when it comes to solving your customers’ future problems. Knowing what to expect down the line with industry changes and problems, is going to be beneficial to you and your clients. And they will be shocked to learn you solved their problem before they can even asked for the fix.

Utilize Customer Feedback

Customer reviews and feedback are a GOOD THING. You should actually want and crave their feedback. In a customer-focused organization, seeing good numbers on your sales reports doesn’t matter as much as how your customers are feeling and how satisfied they are. Interacting with a customer personally, asking for their feedback, is the best way to learn how to improve your business. Check reviews on Yelp, Google, and other review sites on a frequent basis. And don’t forget to view the negative reviews as opportunities, not failures!

Tie Your Customers into Your Brand

Your brand should represent your customer. One way to do this is to develop brand advocates. These are customers who love your services or have had great experiences with you, and may be willing to advocate for you to others. After all, most consumers say they would trust a recommendation from a family member or friend over any other advertising. So, don’t miss out on this free marketing! Some ways to use customers in your branding are:

  • Social media – Utilize tags and hashtags to find people who are talking about you and share their posts. People love to see their posts shared by the brands they love (and follow).
  • Videos – Some companies have even compiled videos of real customer reviews or social posts into marketing videos for their business. It makes your customer feel like they are part of the team, and what they say matters.
  • Website Testimonials – Pull your five-star reviews onto your website so prospective customers can see for themselves what kind of customer experience they can expect from your business.

Customer Experience is Key

From the beginning to the end of your customer interaction, they should feel cared for, happy with the service, and be having a good time! Putting personality into the customer experience is a huge difference between a customer who will come back, and one who won’t. Send thoughtful and engaging email campaigns, post interactive social media updates, and when you’re on the phone with them be cheerful, helpful, and personable. Going above and beyond with your customer service can increase customer satisfaction tenfold.

Also, for those rare instances when someone isn’t happy, make sure your employees know how to remain poised and calm. The customer who is upset may become one of your best ambassadors if they are treated with respect and care, and their problem is solved.

Continually Improve Products and Processes

A mentality of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” doesn’t really work for your customer-focused business. You should always be striving to improve your process, no matter what. The goal should always be to achieve 100% customer satisfaction. Of course, there is always room for growth. So, try new tactics, switch up your customer conversations, and considering trying new methods to motivate and encourage employees. Never settle, even when things are good. A successful company is always looking for and trying to achieve the next best thing.

Be Proactive

Be proactive in everything you do. Send follow-up emails, SMS text messages, or call customers from time-to-time to make sure your relationship stays strong. Be proactive in solving their problems and knowing what they want before they even ask. For example, you can proactively call recent car buyers a few months after delivery to offer them a special on their first oil change. Customers will appreciate that you remembered them and are more likely to return to your dealership’s service bay for future maintenance if they have a great experience.

Invest in Your Employees

Finally, the heart and soul of your customer-focused organization is your customer service team. To get good people, you need to treat your current team well. Invest in their well-being and encourage growth through coaching, mentoring, and upskilling opportunities. Making your employees feel wanted, needed, and cared for is the highest motivator and will encourage them to give the best customer service they can. If you feel good, you perform better. That’s why the first step towards generating satisfied customers is to manage satisfied and engaged employees.

These tips apply to everyone from the top to the bottom of the organization. And, if they are followed, a company is sure to be set up for success. Becoming a customer-focused organization will require you to be mindful, respectful, and proactive. Put the customer first to gain their trust—and increase your growth.

If you enjoyed this article, check out “Dealership Customer Service in a Post-Covid World.” And if you would like to learn more about how Customer Traac partners with dealerships to improve performance and profitability, contact us today.

Instead of having your service advisors answer the phone, let them work with in-person customers

The Problem With Having Your Service Advisors Answer the Phone

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A service advisor at a dealership is a liaison between customers and the service technicians. They determine customer’s needs when it comes to vehicle issues, repairs, and scheduling. Which means they can almost fall into more of a sales role than customer service. However, a lot of things can fall through the cracks of their busy schedule that can both negatively impact the customer experience and miss revenue generation opportunities for the dealership. So let’s dig into why having your service advisors answer the phone could be costing your dealership instead of helping it grow.

Inbound Calls Stack Up

The service advisor’s day fills up with several things they do that are crucial to the business of the dealership. They have to build and maintain trustworthy relationships with the dealership customers, communicate repairs to the customer, sell the auto shop’s services, all while ensuring safe, reliable vehicles to their customers. This may require time on the phone, moments away from their computer, walking about, and if they are the only service advisor, that’s a lot of calls for one person! Which begs the question, if they are on the phone all day, then who is talking to your customers who are at the dealership waiting for service?

Long Call Wait Times

Being put on hold is probably one of the worst parts about calling any business. A Google Consumer Survey conducted by Arise Virtual Solutions asked 1,500 consumers how long they were willing to wait before hanging up on a customer service agent. 13% of respondents said that there was no acceptable hold time, with closer to 60% of respondents stating they were willing to wait 2 minutes or less before hanging up.

These results may not reveal any new information, but it reiterates the importance of short wait time on customer service calls. One service advisor might have to put a lot of people on hold throughout the day, or even miss some calls if they are servicing on the floor or helping other customers. A back-up plan for when call volume is high or when service advisors are unavailable, like an automotive BDC, is a great way to mitigate the impact of long hold times and ensure every call is answered.

Appointment Schedule is Empty – or Too Full!

Pre-scheduling service appointments for customers is the duty of the service advisor—to upsell services and keep them driving safely. It’s important to map out the customer’s entire service journey throughout the time they are going to have the vehicle, so that requires some time and due diligence to keep that calendar full. A calendar that is TOO full, however, is not going to spread out the work and it can get gummed up – leaving fully booked weeks in conjunction with empty weeks. BDCs can help alleviate that issue by being extremely proactive about appointment scheduling.

Inefficient Work Flow

Piggybacking off of scheduling issues, keeping a steady workflow at the dealership is important to customer and employee satisfaction. An outsourced BDC, though not in the office, can help alleviate this unbalance in workflow by doing all of the above. They can schedule appropriately, encourage customers to plan ahead, and keep call volume steady by spreading it out across the day—allowing ample time to communicate with the service advisors throughout the day if need be.

Stop having your service advisors answer the phone and start letting them be a customer liaison that will improve the customer experience and drive revenue. Customer Traac can handle the calls and scheduling that keeps your dealership running smoothly. Help out your service team and give us a call today!

Interested in reading more about automotive BDCs? Check out this article.

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