with technology and people doing more things remote and over the Internet the BDC really is on the front lines do we
0:06
have any doubt that the BDC is going to become more important for a dealership
0:11
in the next five years um I I see a lot of dealers making this part of their
0:16
strategy welcome to the strategy with Jason podcast tune in for everything you
0:22
need to know to stay in the note regarding the automotive industry here's your host Jason Harris
0:31
hey hey hey what's going on podcast nation is Jason Harris here and thank you for joining me on another episode of the drive and Lexington Kentucky at the
0:39
cane Auto event today I have Scott with Volie with me Scott what's going on man how you doing doing good doing good I I
0:45
hope we're not going to be singing on this like we could if you how are the vocal
0:50
chords they're they're in good shape I got to bed early but I want people to enjoy this podcast so we probably should
0:56
fair enough we won't we won't sing for you guys today let's go I'm excited jam with you um man your presentation the
1:03
other day if you guys don't know like I said we're at the Kane Auto event uh Scott had a presentation the other day
1:08
that just was just a knowledge bomb of some amazing stats we're going to go through those and there were some really cool stats in there but you know Scott I
1:14
love kicking off these podcasts with a little origin story a because I'm just
1:19
fascinated because you know no one just wakes up one day and goes yeah I'm the automotive industry that's where I'm
1:25
going to go so let's start there how did you get started in this crazy little world we call the automotive industry
1:31
yeah I love it too um I got started because we owned a bunch of pizza places
1:37
in Iowa and U we owned 10 pizza places and we were really disappointed that uh
1:45
we weren't getting the marketing done for the stores so we hired someone to do the Basic Marketing that a that a pizza
1:51
restaurant would do kids club database marketing birthday club fundraising that type of thing and pretty soon I'm doing
1:58
it for the entire uh Pizza chain and we had a local dealer who were friends of ours and uh then I'm
2:06
they wanted us to do service retention so I'm doing service retention for 80
2:12
auto dealers in the midwest 70 to 80 auto dealers and this was in 2002 and uh that's how we got started um
2:20
and and it's been great ever since I love I love the auto business though because you know just things like this
2:27
you guys are all my friends I come to these events I see people again know isn't it it's there's there's nothing
2:33
better it the only real difference you can have in business nowadays are the
2:39
are the personal relationships you make technology is flattening most of the other things so um it's what makes
2:47
business Rich it is like this is just a fun business once it gets into you you know you just never get it out and and
2:54
and I can definitely see the connection with pizza I imagine as a pizza owner like I mean I was a dealer principal I
2:59
we we ordered a lot of pizza so I imagine you would have friends in the automotive industry so that's well yeah
3:06
we we grew up with them the real connection to uh the pizza business is
3:11
is is the same in all business transactions matter measuring transactions making sure you don't have
3:17
negative transaction growth repe customers yeah no totally makes sense okay so tell me a little bit about
3:23
Volie um I mean you guys have just exponential growth you guys are analyzing millions and millions and
3:29
millions at different data points and phone calls um you know what was the what was that aha moment that was like
3:36
hey here's the problem this is how we're going to go solve that what was that for you yeah my previous company that uh um
3:44
Team velocity bought in 2015 was called Drivin loyalty we had an equity mining
3:50
marketing platform and dealers would always say well gez we want to call these people we sent uh payment perfect
3:58
marketing with multiple vehicles that they could trade out of and uh maybe digital retailing before digital
4:04
retailing in some ways but dealers would always say hey I want to call these people what do we do when we we say well
4:11
um why don't you just start with these people well why do we go to them first sure what do we do if we don't get them
4:18
who do we call next and we realized it was a broken system um when we develop
4:24
Volie we saw a good opportunity the other common theme that we always heard or when we were in the business um was
4:31
people would say oh yeah I've got a BDC it was great until Jason left and it fell apart or yeah I've got a BDC it's
4:38
expensive um well it's because they're working off desk phones and printed
4:43
lists and yes you know or out of the serum the serums are very very good and Automotive but they they don't manage
4:51
workflow they're still very analog yeah as much as it is on a computer it's still a very analog process and they're
4:57
necessary we don't we're not a CRM but we we work with them but but as far as managing BDC productivity you know the
5:04
most expensive part of your BDC that's the opportunity we saw and uh and and we
5:10
just love it we we love it that's cool well I mean you guys so so tell me a little bit about this presentation it
5:16
was 20 how how many millions of calls you guys analyzed it was yeah we took 25
5:22
million calls um it was it was uh somewhere around 10 million inbound
5:27
calls 15 million outbound calls uh we had it depending on what data point we
5:33
were measuring you know for instance if we had to look at conversions over the next 90 or 120 days we just went far far
5:41
enough back to do that if we had to look forever you know some of the ramifications of of disappointing your
5:48
customers the phones you know we had to go back quite a ways to see to to give
5:53
the benefit of the doubt forever you know did they ever come back in ETC well you know the phone is I mean I
6:01
mean for anybody out there in the industry we know the phone is you know one of the most important Tools in our industry and you know I'm we've we've
6:08
invested you know you know tons and tons of money over the years to to get our
6:13
team to be better on the phone utilize the phone more you know um you guys uh
6:19
be because of the way that you guys are connected to the phone um you guys are able to measure a lot more than we've
6:26
ever have in the past so let's talk about some of those kind of key things that you guys are able to measure that
6:32
maybe for a lot of dealerships out there they just currently cannot do with their current system yeah and and Vol does um
6:39
email and SMS as well you know we're an omni Channel yeah it connects it to all together the thing is is that most of
6:45
those things happen automatedly there are campaigns that get set up or there alerts that go out and the reason why
6:52
you need to focus on the phone because a lot of people think the phone is p a um now there's a lot of occasions where I
6:59
text instead of phone but 33% of the people answer um you're paying your
7:06
agents to be productive they don't need to be productive by watching an email blast go
7:12
out or whatever so um that's why we focus on the phone for this study uh the
7:17
data points we're able to capture we're able to capture because they spend 100
7:22
Volie is the phone system for the BDC agents yes they punch in they are literally in Volie 100% of the the day
7:30
so uh things that you can cannot measure out of a CRM or click to call or with a
7:35
desk phone or a void phone is uh the amount of time they are efficient what is their wrap-up time how productive are
7:42
they are are you benchmarking inbound outbound um uh what time between phone
7:49
calls are they taking how how uh are you squeezing the amount of time out of them
7:55
that you can and you don't need them on the phone 60 minutes an hour if if but a
8:00
typical agent um can spend 50 minutes working every hour okay and uh if you do
8:06
that you can really have incredible numbers well that kind of makes sense I mean even when I was running my bdcs you know we we we you know you get into your
8:13
Sprint mode and take a 10-minute break walk it off you know get ready for the next one oh they they need the breaks
8:19
too BDC agents work really hard everyone in the dealership is their boss uh the
8:26
customers are their boss they they're working hard for the dealership and the thing is with technology uh and
8:34
and people doing more things remote and over the Internet the dealer the BDC really is on the front lines do we have
8:40
any doubt that the BDC is going to become more important for a dealership in the next 5 years um I I see a lot of
8:48
dealers making this part of their strategy but I definitely think it's going to continue to be a part a large
8:54
part of of their strategy um let's get into because Volie is used by everybody
9:01
at the dealership it's touched in many different ways and you know I'm sure if I was talking to a BDC agent versus if I
9:07
was talking to a floor manager or a GM there's going to be many different reasons why you know or what I'm going
9:14
to appreciate in in in volum so let's let's actually I'm curious let's take it more from like a like a BDC you know
9:21
perspective like you know what what what can an agent really kind of you know get from the efficiencies and just how it
9:27
can help them to be just better at their jobs one of the great opportunities for
9:33
a BDC in in the dealership is to be able to incentivize incentivize the agent on
9:41
the processes that they want typically if you're using a desk phone or click to call all you can measure is outcomes
9:49
because you can't measure how efficient they are so one of the great opportunities that uh that a dealership
9:55
has is to put pay plans together to you know all Al measure outcomes along with
10:01
the behaviors that they want the agents will then benefit because they clearly
10:06
know what it takes for their job to be successful if they're able to make like
10:12
a a service BDC agent can do aund or 240 calls a day if you combine inbound
10:18
outbound where with Volie where you know typical BDC is 680 100 if they're
10:24
riding them really hard they can make more money um if you need less less uh
10:31
workers and you can pay them more the by the way the goal isn't to eliminate workers there's a lot of jobs not being
10:38
filled in dealerships right now yes it's it's to empower them and just make them stronger better and faster at what they
10:44
do well we have a good exam most of our customers are service BDC okay just cuz when we started selling direct to dealer
10:51
there were no cars no one was interested in talking to this and it just naturally gravitated that way but we've we've
10:58
we're now adding uh a dozen sales BDC stores every month
11:04
we have one sales BDC they have it's a 10 store BDC they had uh 40 agents
11:11
before Volie um now they've got 24 agents they're uh
11:17
they're making more appointments they're making uh 30% more calls with uh 40%
11:24
less agents and their agents are happier they're all making more money the dealership's happy because they cut 40%
11:31
of their so that that's a lot of what an agent agent gets out of it gosh dang it Jason that was a really long answer I
11:38
hope you weren't hoping for a short answer on that question details are much better but so that's okay so let's let's
11:44
get into the manager side because I mean like I I remember one of my first jobs
11:49
as a floor manager I would get in the morning after did my little walk right
11:56
saw what cars weren't in the right place who didn't you know Park what who who didn't who forgot to lock this car
12:02
whatever right and I'd get and grab my coffee and I'd do the one thing that a lot of floor managers used to do back in
12:07
the day they would sit there and cringe and have to listen to about a dozen random calls just to see how things were
12:15
going right so so how does this kind of like benefit you know from a manager's
12:21
perspective to just make that process even easier well from the most basic uh
12:27
Point uh setting aside listen the calls which is hard hard for anyone um they
12:33
have total dis total visibility to what's happening okay there's live dashboards uh of All Sorts where they
12:40
can see what people are doing um since your work plan is you know in in Volie
12:48
they can see what calls were made what weren't how successful they were um you
12:53
you've got a lot of visibility it'll eliminate a lot of the arguments when uh when you know these are just the numbers
12:59
how do we get better um as far as the recording goes it's it's funny you said
13:04
that our our major roll out for the end of the summer is we're going to uh use
13:11
AI to score these calls so that uh so that agents don't have to do the typical
13:17
listen to three calls grade them with people because it's hard I mean it is but uh um hopefully we can very quickly
13:27
um help them focus on on what they need to and they can shorten the ramp of time
13:32
for a new agent also well you know that also helps just from like a training and coaching perspective as well right you
13:38
know it's you know I mean to know how many you know conversations and we're not just talking about phone calls too
13:43
because like I said you guys are doing email you guys are doing text message so like I mean you're able to provide that number you know to a manager to a
13:51
general manager to say look here's how many active conversations are actually happening at your dealership in this
13:58
given moment and sounds like with this new launch you'll be able to kind of put a score attach it here's here's some
14:03
good ones here's some not so ones and here's maybe some training opportunity so that is that is really cool I do want
14:09
to kind of get back to uh some of the stats from the other day sure because you know uh as I was kind of watching
14:15
you know and you presented a lot of really great stats but there were a few that I noticed people's body language
14:22
start to change by the way I don't know if you know about this about me I'm a people Watcher I thoroughly enjoy watching people and how they react to
14:29
certain things and you know especially around status checks that was kind of
14:35
like I mean there was a lot of different data on so I want to kind of explain to the audience kind of what we're talking about here but I saw the body language
14:41
really Chang some notes started to get taken but can we dive a little bit into that yeah that one shocked us as we were
14:48
putting this study together because we didn't look at it last year we weren't tracking it by the service advisor like
14:55
is standard and Volie now sure um I really don't even have good bench marks it
15:01
was it's a hidden cost in a BDC um 20 almost 25% of all calls are
15:09
spent on on status checks in the BDC um think of that hidden cost at an average
15:16
uh status check call of 3 minutes and 59 seconds sure look at how much money you're spending uh where you could be
15:23
proactively growing your business focusing on Customer Loyalty making people happy it was it was really
15:30
surprising it was also I wasn't surprised no one's going to be surprised to hear that that uh um in the high
15:39
30s they're you know they're unsuccessful transfers um so uh we in in
15:47
any business we break our promises to our customers all the time but in the case of people calling for status checks
15:54
and they're not connecting uh 37% of the time that's uh with the service advisor
16:01
uh 38% of those people never came back to the dealership well yeah I mean I mean talk about like we we talk about
16:07
the you know the holy Grill of the customer experience right and like you know the experience happens regardless
16:13
if you're intentional about it or not that's just the unique thing about experiences they just happen right but
16:18
it's those little things that will make it and break it when you when you saw that when you present that number there were some people that went well the
16:26
shocking thing was of the people who call in for status checks they averaged one and a half calls this is over over
16:33
hundreds of thousands of of status checks we looked at they average more than one call one and a half calls a
16:38
time so some of these people are calling a lot do you think they're happy with the dealership when that happens do you
16:44
think the dealership if they realize how much money they're spending on that or if they could take that 24.5 7% of time
16:52
of the BDC agents and even get half of it back yeah proactively reach out to
16:58
help your customer everyone needs service um they don't just think of it when when you you know
17:05
when they're ready to come in they may their light might come on they might be going past Jiffy Lube or whatever so you
17:12
you need to proactively reach out and help these people and well and and that creates a new process right like I mean
17:18
here's the cool thing I found about our industry and for everybody out there watching and listening I know you're all like this as well is that you know I
17:26
don't know what I don't know so now since I know I'm going to go fix it you
17:31
know we're going to create a process we're going to maybe you we're going to look at the big the big three right we're going to look at the people we're
17:36
going to look at the process we're going to look at the technology and say okay there's a hole in the boat how do I how
17:42
do I plug it you know and like I said I think that was just one of the coolest stats that you guys presented I was
17:47
going over this with with a fix Ops director who was in the audience and he said he they have 30 some stores and he
17:55
said we've got superstars who have almost no they set good expectations
18:00
with uh with the customers and those service advisors uh they make way more money
18:07
because they have people asking for them of course uh they've got other stores that do a terrible job and he said they
18:14
actually the BDC charges them more because they are they have been they're
18:19
Volie customers they have been tracking this for a while and uh there there's great opportunity and there's but yeah
18:27
to your point if you can't measure it then it's just
18:32
an argument right yes because you just don't know what you don't know um there was a couple other stats I'd like to
18:38
kind of get your thoughts which one did you kind of see that was one that I saw but what what were some of the other ones you saw that kind of people kind of
18:45
perked up or maybe came back and you know asked you a little bit more information about well the one that they
18:51
were kind of disbelieving and and really for me I was surprised was the percentage of people who call back if
18:58
leave a voicemail on an outbound campaign so when we when we look at campaign uh
19:06
Effectiveness 40% of all the outbound appointments set were from someone
19:13
calling back in uh inbound from an outbound campaign okay so when we heard
19:18
26.6% of the people call back if you leave a voicemail if you don't receive them you know reach them you know it
19:25
seemed high but then you know it made sense cuz we have the we have the backend numbers as well it's very
19:30
important to realize that everyone needs service like I said they uh sometime
19:38
they're mostly not NOS they're not right now so leave friendly voicemails be very
19:44
friendly when you get a know oh is everything right yeah so because people
19:49
they just need help and uh so that was one of them that that surprised me the previous year we took a control group
19:56
and we looked at who you know what the lift was on the database if you didn't compare to the same ripe people if if
20:04
you reached out to them and the lift was about 52% this year we took a a group and this
20:11
was this was a huge subset of it like 9 million people and who were all due for
20:17
service and uh and we looked we measured the people who who you actually made
20:23
contact with yep and compared to the people that you didn't and you were five
20:28
times more likely to have them come in in the next 120 days if uh if you
20:34
actually spoke with them um the the funny thing that's that that's a big deal like that's you know I would have
20:40
never guessed that to be totally honest with well and and uh now that's a short measuring period right but part of the
20:47
reason why you do a you do proactive Outreach a you want to catch the people who um who are due and and might skip
20:55
you but also you want to speed up your database if you can get a large amount of people to come in three four weeks
21:01
early you know in in a in X number of months you have an extra month of service Revenue so exactly that you know
21:08
those are the benefits um uh I was just very surprised one of
21:13
the crazy thing is we compared those people and keep in mind all of them met the dealers parameter for due for
21:19
service yeah so um but we narrowed the window um uh for for measurement we all
21:27
and that that's part if we went forever it wouldn't be five to one obviously but uh but you know to measure effectiveness
21:34
of Outreach the crazy thing is you it was almost two to one if you just left a
21:40
voicemail and you didn't reach them compared to I think that was on I think I saw a lot of people and that makes
21:46
sense because that definitely was one of those very interesting sets it's just I just I don't know I don't never put that
21:52
much emphasis I gotta be honest with you I didn't ever put that much emphasis on the voicemail it was more of like a per
21:58
verbial checkbox like okay we did it but it never really put a whole lot of emphasis on it and now that you're able
22:05
to kind of you know you know actually show the data behind it it's like wow I
22:10
mean I think for a lot of people that are watching listening right now guys it's like what's your voicemail game uh because the stats are there like it's
22:17
it's it's a big deal yeah with or without Volie folks um write good
22:23
voicemail scripts practice them with your agents you will move the needle with it and think about what changed in
22:29
the last 10 15 years well actually the iPhone has been out for longer than that
22:35
but you know in the last 10 years they do a very good job of transcribing every voicemail yes so that is like youve sent
22:42
a personal message to someone if you leave a good voicemail that you speak clearly that they can read on their
22:48
phone even if they don't play it times have changed and that is another hidden message and you know if you're taking
22:56
the time to dial someone take the extra 20 seconds to leave a nice voice right and and you know look I I think that's
23:02
an amazing takeaway and actually let's let's kind of go a little farther because I think that's a solid strategy I mean to your point I think you know
23:09
anybody out there watching listening right now um that is something that you can do right away and will just
23:15
fundamentally affect your business in a very positive way what are maybe a couple other strategies that I mean
23:20
because you guys have seen a lot of good you've seen the bad you've seen the ugly you know like what what are some other
23:27
strategies that dealerships should be focusing on right now yeah um so with or
23:32
without Volie if if it were my BDC um let's say you have no technology and you're still working off desk phones you
23:39
should still Benchmark inbound outbound separately most bdcs say oh we expect
23:45
our agents to do 80 80 uh contacts a day well if you take 60 inbound calls on a
23:52
bus or you know you're not getting much to outbound if you just Benchmark those numbers separately and put a goal in
23:59
every day because the amount of inbound uh opportunities you get on a Monday is
24:04
24% more than on a Tuesday 41% more than on a Friday so a lot of Mondays combined
24:11
you didn't make any albone calls so Benchmark those separately um and then
24:17
somehow uh figure out how to put a system in place where you can make more
24:23
than one attempt yes most people if you're printed off a list it's really hard to make multiple attempts but
24:30
you're losing a lot of sales by not at least working through that list any any service retention campaign should be uh
24:38
four attempts if you can do it there how do you feel about multiple attempts in the same day because I found great
24:43
success with two attempts in the same day someone sees the number on the phone they didn't answer it you maybe an hour
24:50
or two later they see that call again and they're like okay maybe I should take this that um I I think that's kind
24:57
of you know at the moment though you kind of called me out here on something
25:03
we should be tracking on conversions by there we go I gave the data guy who literally has measured every data point
25:09
possible a new data point to measure well yeah I I'll have it I'll have it um we're going to start tracking that but
25:15
no it's great yeah um I think that you know at the moment the best I can tell you is that's that's an art not a
25:21
science uh I if if it were me running service campaigns though I would I would
25:28
try to get through those calls uh relatively quickly I'd have no trouble with two attempts in a day yeah on a
25:34
sales campaign um you know we have people making calls out to 90 days we
25:40
had an interesting data stat here on our sales BDC uh the the no one answered on
25:46
the dealership's 42 attempt um not one not one person answered but uh you know
25:53
on a on a on a inbound web lead you know you've got three attempt you know standard to do three attempts the first
26:00
day um two attempts the second day uh two attempts on the third is is fairly
26:05
standard in a dealership um you better never miss those attempts on a sales BDC
26:10
because because your answer rate on day four and down it gets below 10 it gets
26:16
under five pretty quickly yeah the the the first three days are really just the most important time to do so I'm now
26:22
kind of going back to that your first strategy and I and and you know it's funny I I don't do nearly as much Consulting with dealers as I used to I
26:28
still do on a fair amount usually at the bigger group level and but I am still
26:33
surprised to find some significantly large organizations out there that are not doing exactly the strategy that you
26:39
were just talking about and just you know just even if it has to be manually tracking the difference between the
26:44
inbound and outbound and I can't tell you how many times I've gone into a dealership I've audit to go in for a quick audit or review around their
26:51
strategies and find that what they think they have is a business development center in reality they just have an
26:57
inbound call call team yeah there's a lot of people just waiting around for the phone
27:03
ring that's incredibly expensive uh the business is changing though right and
27:09
Technology um is coming alongside so they can measure these things uh I I I
27:16
can see it changing you know we are I mean we're just not that great at sales at the moment and we're still selling
27:22
like crazy so I I heard an interesting stat on that actually um and because I I'm with you right I mean just I think
27:28
industry right now there's a lot of reasons but someone it was a hiring company that put this on I thought this i' love to of get your take on this the
27:34
average salesperson has been in the industry for less than 18 months like over 60% of
27:42
sales people out there have been in the business less than 18 months is that crazy um I don't know how
27:49
to take that I I me for our part uh with
27:55
Volie it's great if we can have someone with a good attit ude who has experience
28:00
um typically in Automotive Sales you know there's there's the big
28:07
Achievers and and then less a lot of these guys who have been in the business for a while aren't used to working that
28:13
hard anymore yeah so you know I can see a lot of people want to want to start over with someone who's optimistic and
28:21
they can teach um well let I I think that's actually kind of what was my takeaway around that stat is is that all
28:29
right it's almost kind of like a reset okay so I got a reset of people um you
28:35
know I need to stress test my processes and look into technologies that you know
28:40
are going to really kind of help me build out this next generation or this next you know this next group of BDC
28:48
agents sales agents service advisors like I mean actually you know at first I
28:54
was a little alarmed but I actually I was like you know what I think there's a huge opportunity here well and and none
29:00
of us want to be Lites with technology but uh the business is changing yes um
29:07
you know whether it be social SMS monitoring chat uh the BDC agent is is
29:15
getting a lot more pushed to the Forefront as as poorly said as that was
29:21
and uh you're right though that you used to be kind of in the back back back of the building that's kind of not the case anymore yeah I mean I was I was talking
29:28
with a BDC manager this morning and she said you know our previous manager
29:34
didn't really think the BDC was important and and our new guy is is really um really focusing on it and and
29:42
the dealership is really seeing the importance of it no I I've seen that a lot too I think that that that line
29:48
between the front and the back you know as far as you know BDC and variables of VDC and service is gotten a lot thinner
29:56
and you know it's kind of bluring which actually makes me excited you know and and look at the end of the day you know um we're a people process and Technology
30:04
you know business and you know we have to balance all of that out and that's
30:10
why I love you know Technologies like like Volie and what you guys are doing and just the the way that you could
30:16
assist and support and just Empower you know the staff just to ultimately be better and make more money look I I know
30:23
we're getting towards the tell end of our time right here and this has been a great conversation uh for everybody out
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there that's watching and listening right now Scott who love to connect with you and learn more about Volie what's
30:34
the best way to do so yeah um probably just email me scott.com
30:41
v.com um I'll answer it I'll get back with you you don't need to be a Volie customer I i' I'd love to help you we're
30:47
at the Dain event um one thing that really strikes me is uh a lot of people
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want technology to solve their problem make all their sales for you technology does not sell cars it allows
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people to sell even AI this big AI boom mostly it's an assist for for dealers to
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better connect with people you know David Kane's big philosophy is is uh um
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it's time for you to to let your customers know that they're valuable to you and treat them such instead of
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transactions and uh you know volle's great software but really what we do is
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is we help help the dealership uh um you know help treat their customers
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like they're valuable um I'd love to speak with anyone I can help them with a without Volie I really had fun this was
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a lot of fun I really appreciate it and look everybody out there watching listening you do need to take Scott up on this because he is 100% this type of
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individual reach out to him connect um I I know you just have this big heart and willing to help everyone out there Scott
31:51
this has been so much fun man thank you yeah it was fun really appreciate it hey thank you for everyone out there watching and listening you guys have an
31:57
amazing day see you thanks for tuning in to the strategy with Jason podcast with your
32:03
host Jason Harris don't want to miss new content be sure to check out the full
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