Tyler Williams and Carl Figanshu of Nelo Automotive Group explain how their 12-person BDC team handles 30,000 annual calls to drive service retention. Personal outbound calls convert at high rates and keep customers coming back. They credit culture, coaching, and Volley software for hitting their 70% retention goal.
About 30,000 calls total (inbound + outbound) with roughly a 50/50 mix (≈15,000 inbound).
On average over 40 appointments per agent per day (per speaker claim).
Answer rates reported as 80%+ for campaigns, with some stores over 90%+; overall inbound answer rate in the very high 90s (per speaker claims).
Target retention is 70%; they report currently at 70% overall, with some stores in mid-60s to high-60s and some above 70%.
Hello everybody. Scott today filling in for Jake now for the third straight time I think. And we've got a volley rally today. We've got two of the best that we work with today. Tully Williams and Carl Figan Shu from the Nelo Group, Neo Automotive Group out of Sacramento. How are you guys today?
Fantastic. Thanks Scott, for the invite.
Absolutely. Thank you.
It's Friday afternoon. After this, heck, we should all go out and do something fun. We got a good topic today. We're going to take just a few minutes. Customer loyalty isn't earned in the showroom, it's built in the bdc. What does that mean to you guys? Tully, you stood the BDC up for a reason and moved Carl from a big job in the dealership because of this. So let's start with you.
I moved Carl to a bigger job. So I think that the importance of the BDC is to drive retention. Right as we are in that retention business. The BDC helps ensure that. And what we do is that we believe that if we call people to come back in for their next service appointment when we have a human being that cares. At the Nelo Company we've been in business for 104 years. We have a great reputation and our BDC is there to extend that great reputation. So now we're calling people at 10, 11, 12 months asking them to come in are some of our best campaigns. 80% answer rate plus plus and some stores have been as high as over 90 plus plus on converting to appointments. That is driving our retention numbers high. That is driving dollars to the store. And when you think about it, is there appointment made in the store that's not made through the bdc? None. Unless it's a walk in. And in theory you could actually dial in and say all the dollars come from Carl and his great team.
Yeah, this, this bdc. Most of most of your numbers in the BDC are, are at the very top of our group.
Carl.
Your guys, your guys and gals guys generically average over 40 appointments a day for every one of them and they're working pretty hard across the stores. How many agents do you have for, for your 10, 11 stores?
We have 12 agents handling inbound and outbound calls. And then I have a 13th agent that is solely responsible for making next day appointment reminders.
Yeah. So it's not very many agents to cover this entire dealer group. They got to work hard. How do you, how do you create a culture that helps the, help them improve loyalty in the dealership?
Well, I coach them that the relationship with the customer starts with us. We're the first point of contact and we want to make sure that that point of contact goes smoothly. So making sure that we're friendly with them and, you know, I create a great environment for my team to thrive in and then making sure that we're setting the appointment up for success. So it's going to be a good interaction with the customer and with the service advisor. It's just really a great way to create that loyalty.
I want to chime in just one second on Carl, on the culture side. When you look at the culture side as Scott, you warned me a long time ago, it's hard to keep people. And Carl hasn't lost anybody. And that's because Carl makes a fun environment to answer phones. I'm not going to say this is the, you know, the oh my God job, but Carl's made it that way. Where those people have, are friendly or happy doing things together. They have luncheons, we go out to dinners a lot. The goal of that culture is why I feel our BDC is successful. I think when people are upset with their job or, oh, this is the boringest thing in the planet, people are going to sense that on the phone. But when people are happy and enjoy what they're doing and we have great crowdery between everybody, I think our customers sense that. I think, I think that is part of Carl's success. Carl is the only person that's done that at our store. And Carl, thank you.
Thank you.
You guys touch a high percentage of the service business through the bdc. I mean, that helps loyalty, right?
Yes, very much so. You know, when you figure out we have all the calls route through Carl. So, you know, our struggle is, of course, is that when they come in here and when you look at your inbound calls, we have about 30,000 calls that we, we go in and out for our outbounds and inbounds and about 50, 50ish mix. You know, it varies each time. So that's about 15,000 calls that we, that Carl goes through on inbounds only. Right. Our answer rate is in the very high 90s. Because Carl, you know, Carl, I look at a report every day and Carl's like, if it's more than an X amount, you know, I'm going to call him up, say, what's going on? You know, I'm freaking out. But I think that it happens. Whereas when we look at those calls is how do we help those people make appointments fast? That's only 10 to 15 to 20% of those inbounds, the struggle that we have with and we've got great success with customers and do we get those calls back to that service advisor? As you know, in BDC world, that's the hardest part.
Yeah, but you know, you guys success with Outbound, it helps create the habit and keep these people loyal. The, the, the returns that you guys have are on some of these outbound campaigns are astronomical. Carl, do you do anything special with, with onboarding or training of your agents to, to get these good returns or you know what, what are you doing to, to, to help with loyalty through these incredible returns?
So Volley has some terrific online videos to watch and then Katie, through your organization has an excellent certification process. So I make sure that all of my agents are go through that and then once they're finished with that, they spend time with me first and you know, I kind of get their feet wet, show them kind of what, what we're going to be doing and help them to understand, you know, my expectations for the team. And then from there they spend time shadowing with each one of the other agents to get a feel for the different dealerships.
You know, I, these guys are great and I hope everyone is getting a good feel for the dealership. You really, the dealer group, you really, you just can't even, I mean, I've been there multiple times. You really can't even imagine it until you're in there with them. I have, I have no doubt that the BDC is really helping with customer engagement and customer loyalty. Tony, what did I miss?
As far as I think that I love that you talked about retention is from the bdc and I cannot strengthen that enough. As you look at a car dealership, retention is what the name of the game is. And we believe 70% is our number and it's a high expectation. And right now we actually are at 70. We have some stores ticking over 70. We have some stores in those mid-60s, high 60s. But I think that you, if you rely on email and automated outbound campaigns to drive appointments to come back in, I think people get turned off on that. I think they would rather have a loving call from Carl and his team saying, hey, Mrs. Smith, I noticed it's been about 11 months. I would love to get you in here for your yearly service on your blank car. What day would work for you? Right? That to me is a win. And those are our most successful calls and those is what really drives retention. And that's the reason why this BDC for us has been a monster win. It is I would say the best thing that happened in 2025, Carl coming on board, of course. But Carl made our BDC superstar in the year 2025.
Customers tell us all the time that they really appreciate that human touch. Even from the next day appointment reminder, they really appreciate that human touch rather than just an automated text or email.
Yep. Barbara does a good job for that. She makes a ton of calls, doesn't she?
Yes.
You know, everyone listening, I. I'd like to claim, you know, vendors in general, they, they want to sell you software and they want to say, oh, we're going to do all these things for you, and you're not going to have anything, anything to do or agree with. You know, we hope our customers love Volley. We hope we make it easier to engage with your customers. The bottom line is technology helps people help people faster and better. I think you can hear if you're listening today that, you know, a lot of times there's just no magic bullet. It's really caring and doing one customer after the next. These guys do great. Anything else you guys want to add today?
I want to say thank you, Scott, for all the help you've given Carl and our team here at the Nelo company. You know, I. I would agree. Your technology, and I don't think you're a vendor, you're a partner that's made a success. And without Volley, I don't think Carl could have ever done what he's doing today. So again, if you're thinking about a BDC software, volley is it, and the support you get from volley. So, Scott, thank you so much for helping us.
Thanks, guys.
Carl, I agree with what Tyler was just saying. You know, it's not just your software, it's your entire team. And the support that we get and the ideas and, you know, mentoring that we get from being part of your team, we just can't say enough.
Well, right back at you, guys. Love working with you. Have a good day and thank you very much. We'll see you later.
