Dealership Customer Service Outsourcing: Increase Customer Satisfaction Without Sacrificing Call Flow
admin | Automotive BDC, Customer Service |
Many of our success stories begin with a dealership reaching out because they are overwhelmed with answering calls and emails. Customers reaching out for appointment scheduling and services often falls to the sales or service team. Without a proper dealership customer service team, the rest of your business will have to pick up the slack. This can disrupt the process of each department, and customer satisfaction can suffer. This is why we always recommend outsourcing your customer service to a professional contact center or business development center.
Feeling Reluctant About Customer Service Outsourcing?
It’s difficult to hand the reins over to someone else, especially when it comes to dealing with your customers. However, when a business outsources their customer service they often find more bandwidth to focus more on important tasks in other departments.
Hiring a professional team means you can get right back to business. Outsourced BDCs already have the staff, tools, and experience to handle anything customers can throw at them. An automotive BDC is able to stay on top of industry trends and service schedules for all makes and models. They will be able to help with customer inquiries regarding past and current models, too.
What’s more, customer service companies should have obtained extensive training on security and fraud prevention. They have tight-knit measures in place to prevent fraud and keep customers’ information secure. In fact, customer data may be more secure with an outsourced dealership customer support team than with internal staff. They are in an outside location, away from onlookers, with highly secure phones and computer systems—so you can rest assured your, and your customers’ information, is safe.
How Can Outsourcing Boost Customer Satisfaction?
Outsourcing can ensure the sales and service teams can devote all of their time and energy to their respective sides of the business. No longer do they need to focus on answering or returning calls—having their time pulled away from customers who are in-house needing assistance. With dealership customer service outsourcing, customers can return to being the focus and marketing efforts can be handed off to the professionals.
Business development centers can also handle outbound marketing campaigns, promotions, and giveaways. They can help affect reviews by offering anonymous surveys, links to leave reviews, and gather customer effort scores (CES). They are a one-stop-shop for inbound and outbound calls.
The team working within a professional customer support company or business development center has probably seen and heard it all. After all, talking to customers is what they do, and they are well-trained to handle any situation, including frustrated and unhappy customers. When you give them the trust and power to do whatever it takes to make sure the customer is happy, you will start to see an uptick in customer satisfaction. An increase in satisfaction can lead to customer retention and more positive word-of-mouth marketing for your dealership, too. So you not only improve current customers’ experiences with your dealership but are more likely to do so for a much longer period of time.
Outsourcing Your Customer Service Improves Call Flow
When calls are coming into your business, and you don’t have a receptionist or customer service team to manage to them, they get funneled through other departments less equipped to handle the high call volume. That can mean more callbacks, longer hold times, and dropped calls, which can negatively impact customer satisfaction.
An outsourced team is much more equipped to handle spikes in call volume throughout the year. The dealership may have higher call volume around key holiday sales like Labor Day and Christmas when they do more promotions. Outsourcing call management means the dealership doesn’t need employees to work overtime or hiring temporary workers to handle the massive spike in volume. The outside customer support knows how to prioritize those spikes in volume before they even happen, and track metrics to understand how much coverage they need to have.
Some businesses may be wary of outsourcing part of their business and worrying about the flow of phone calls coming in or out. But sending all contacts to an outside customer support line helps to avoid transfers and holds. It also keeps a streamlined process from an inquiry to an answer and maintains full service appointment calendars. Being able to integrate these outbound marketing efforts into the business means improving your competitive advantage in the marketplace.
Outsourcing your customer service can indeed increase your customer satisfaction without sacrificing call flow. It can improve your call flow by streamlining the entire process. It’s our passion to help dealerships thrive and boost profitability by handling their customer care. Read more about automotive BDCs and what they can do for you here. And contact us today if you have any questions on how to get started.