Dealership Voice AI: Why BDC Call Volume Increased

Hello everyone, welcome back to another Volley Rally. Today I'm joined by Aileen Velez with the Jerry Seiner Automotive Group, Jerry Seiner Dealership Group out of Utah. How's it going today?

Good. How are you?

Good. Thank you for joining me today. This is going to be a really interesting session here today in that you have brought a lot of data and best practices to share with us in regards to implementing AI digital service assistants onto the stores, you know, some of your early results as well as You know, really the meat of this is you've worked really hard to adjust your IVR options when a customer calls in to make it easy to get where they wanna go. If they wanna speak to a human, you know, speak to a person, how can they do that? If they want the AI to handle them, if they need to get to the BDC, and you've had a lot of, you know, you've tweaked this a little bit and you've had some really interesting developments on your inbound volume. I guess just right off the bat, what are, you know, what's been your experience so far?

Well, so I would definitely say we're testing 2 different AIs, but I would say to anyone who is doing an AI, it is not set it and forget it. Like, you definitely want to keep looking at your data, listening to your phone calls, and just tweaking them. And tweaking the different things that you're allowing your AI to schedule, how the calls are getting to where they're getting. When we first started, we started with Blink in June at one of our locations, and we noticed quite quickly that the calls to the BDC were not decreasing, which originally I would think that if I'm getting a voice AI and adding that in, and that's going to be making appointments for me, that it would lower and decrease the amount of phone calls that the BDC is getting in general. But after looking at our data, that was not the case. We're actually getting more phone calls than we were previously getting. They're definitely not all appointment phone calls. We're getting more non-revenue phone calls versus revenue. inbound phone calls, but we have had a huge increase in the calls that we're getting. So that's probably the main takeaway. When we started with Blink, that was middle of June. So in September, we launched a secondary voice AI for Fly. Fly. Fly.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's Fly, but— It's Fly. Yeah.

But so we launched them as well. And when we launched them, we did change Blink, our IVR with Blink, to see if that would kind of help direct the calls to where they really should be going. So originally, our IVR for Blink was 1, to make an appointment, which would go to the voice AI, 2, to hold for the next live representative, which would come to our BDC, our live BDC, and then 3, to check the status of your vehicle. So that was June through September with Blink. And then when we did Fly, we did change also our Blink IVR, knowing that our phone calls had increased. So now it's 1 to make an appointment goes to the voice AI, 2 is if your vehicle is currently in service, that goes to the advisors, and then 3 to hold for a live representative comes to the BDC. And we did want to, just with the change, knowing kind of some people's hesitation with AI, we did want to have a speak to a live person option. So.

So can you— you have some charts you prepared to show the changes. So why don't you pull this up real quick and we can talk about this. This is going to be really interesting because People assume that you implement some of these things on the, you know, on your inbound calls, and the inbound calls that require a person in the BDC go down. But as, as you have realized here, that's actually turning out to be the opposite.

Yeah, it's definitely not the case. I know that a lot of 20 groups talk and think, oh, I've replaced my whole entire BDC with a voice AI, and I find it hard to believe, or if it is happening, they're losing a lot of customers because there are still a lot of customers that want to talk to people. Um, so if you look at these stats, that blue line on the very top section, this is going to be our Blink location. Are the total inbound BDC phone calls. The orange line is the advisor phone calls. The green line is our rerouted phone calls. Those are ones that go to the advisor and then come back up to us. We kind of just make sure that we're getting phone calls for everybody. Mm-hmm. The red dotted line is the BDC appointments, and then the purple dotted line are the Blink appointments. So in combination with, if we're looking at appointments, our appointments are pretty steady, almost the same. But our phone calls have increased drastically from before us starting with the voice AI.

So just to say that back to make sure I have this right, the top chart is showing the store where you launched Blink at. And you launched this in June.

Yep.

And since launching the Blink in in June at the store, you've noticed that the calls that have hit the advisors have definitely gone down. But the calls that have hit the BDC have gone up quite a bit. And then the overall did I hear you right? The overall appointment. Number for BDC pre-June and then BDC plus Blink post-June, it's about the same.

Yeah, yeah, there's not too much of a difference in the amount of total appointments being created. So really, it's kind of the— just the flow of the calls have changed.

So then just to talk about Flye, then at the second store, You launched Flye in September, right?

Yes, correct.

Okay. So interestingly, we see a sharp decline right away in the advisor calls, and I'm getting close to my screen here. Sorry, marketing team who is looking at me doing this. No, I just need to make it bigger. I got it. I got it. But I realized here we're recording and here I am. So sorry, marketing team, but when I look at this, you have an immediate sharp decline in the advisor calls and then a not as dramatic as the first store, but still a noticeable significant increase in calls that have hit the BDC. Is that correct?

Correct, yeah. And it's hard to see in this picture because it's just one singular purple dot. But the fly appointments are kind of hovering right beneath the red BDC appointments. So, again, same thing as Blink. I was just gonna say that the appointments have gone up, but just a little, not a drastic amount.

Yeah, when you and I were looking at the individual numbers before, I think it was Uh, correct me if I'm wrong, I think there the, the September numbers, the fly plus the BDC was above, you know, you look at the last 6 months, it was definitely in the upper average, but you had a month or 2 where the BDC outperformed, uh, September. Is that right?

That's correct, yeah.

So I guess the, the big— first off, I, I want to really dig into the IVR options. You know, you mentioned how you Switched them to now, where to go back to the, you know, the June through August at the first store, how was the IVR set up and what made you realize that there were some improvements needed?

So June through August, it was one, we were offering appointments obviously first always, and that went to the voice AI. And then 2, we were offering a live person as a secondary option and then leaving status check as a third option. We feel that the first 2 were— is just kind of people stopped listening, right? They stopped listening after the second one, like, oh, I want to talk to a person. They would just hit 2, even though possibly they did need the status on their vehicle or speak to a service advisor. And so we decided When we started to launch FLY as well in September, that we were going to make the change to see if it made a difference. And it truly does and did— has made a difference. So, and we changed it so that the advisor option was secondary, and then we were left as the 3rd option, so that if the person's vehicle was with us, that they would choose that first before choosing the option to speak with a live person.

Do you have— I know 1 is schedule an appointment. Does it say schedule an appointment with our AI agent, or does it just say press 1 to schedule an appointment?

It just says press 1 to schedule an appointment.

Okay. Do you have— it's— I know it was on the— I know it was on the other— the table we looked at. What is the How is the transfer rate from Blink to the BDC been?

So I would say, well, for September, um, we had 348 calls be transferred to us from Blink from a total of 607. That, that went straight. So half, about half of the phone calls came to us anyway.

So I guess the last point that I want to just touch on with the data here, you mentioned this when we, when we first joined before we started recording, but you are not, as it turns out, able to make more outbound calls, which is Which was, you know, one of the goals, right? You know, can you talk about what, what that's looking like?

Yeah, so originally, our, our main goal of getting the voice AI was so that it could take the easy appointment phone calls, convert those, and allow us to have more time to make outbound calls. But obviously, looking at the data, we are taking more inbound calls than we were taking previously. And so it really hasn't allowed us to do any more outbound calling than what we were previously doing. So really our stats are kind of staying the same, but we're paying for an additional

agency. Well, I guess I wasn't going for that, but it is interesting. No,

no, no. Again, I think it's part of the tweaking, right? Like we just gotta figure out The best way to make it work for us, make sure that the calls are going to where they need to be, so that we can take care of the customer and take care of the customer the right way.

And that's obviously what this is getting at. I suppose just to put a positive spin on this, because really it is great to see. Look at the decrease in the advisor calls.

Yeah, it the decrease they. The advisors, listen, they're going to be the first ones to say, don't take it away. They have had a ton less phone calls. It is so drastic, the amount of calls that they don't have to deal with. That's been really nice for them. And then it— We're still that intermediate person for the customer. And so there are a lot of calls that we can help with. Still a lot of calls that we're able to convert that either the AI can't convert or the advisor probably shouldn't have been dealing with in the first place, because a lot of customers will just call in and ask a quick warranty question or a quick question about if they have prepaid maintenance. A lot of those things we can answer in the BDC and convert that call into an appointment. So yes, our calls have gone up. Our inbound-specific appointments have gone down a little, but I think that we're converting calls that we weren't even taking possibly before. So.

The last question here I have on the advisors is, and we didn't chat about this before, it just occurred to me, if you turned on Blink in June, why do you feel— I mean, May is already 2/3, so already a sizable decrease from March. For the advisor calls. Do you have any insights into why that was already trending down?

No, other than I would say May was not as high of a total volume and appointment month for us. May definitely decreased. We had a stronger beginning of the year. May kind of slowed down. Maybe people were on vacation or getting ready to go on vacation after The schools, but then we kind of just in general pick back up for, for the summer months.

Okay. Well, this is very, very interesting. I think it's, it's easy to come on and say, this is what we're going to be able to do if we turn this on or implement this strategy or something. But until you see the real data behind it, you know, the results of how it's actually impacting the call flow and taking care of the customer, it's You know, it's all just a theory until you see the data, right? So I really, really appreciate you taking the time to to do this and share this. Any other points that you wanted to make here on this data? The answer can be no, by the way, just to put you on the spot. But anything else that I didn't that we didn't touch on that we should?

I don't think so. I really I would just say if you're looking to add a voice AI. Make sure that you are tweaking your IVRs and listening to your phone calls and truly working it and making it the best that it's going to be able to be for your location and where you want to route your phone calls.

Awesome. Well, Eileen, thank you very much for taking the time. I really, really appreciate it. And to everyone tuning in, feel free to reach out if you have any other questions, and I hope you have a fantastic day.

Thanks, guys. Bye. Bye.