Fixed Ops Roundtable Discussion: How To Train Agents To Convert Appointments?

Welcome back to the Fixed Ops Roundtable. It's a great honor to present the roundtable with Scott Davis from Valley. You'll recognize some of the folks on the screen today. Tully Williams is here. Megan Cooper is here. And Kim. Kim, how do I pronounce your last name?

It's Grubb.

Kim Grubb is here as well. So everybody, if you would, Scott, start with you. Tell us who you are and what you do and where you work.

Yeah, sure. Thanks, Ted. Good afternoon, everyone. Scott Davis, president of Valley. We have BDC software that dealers and call centers use to communicate with their customers. Our mission is to create software that people love to use that makes it easy to communicate with their customers. And that's what we work to do. So glad to be on today. Thanks, Ted.

Scott, thanks for being here.

Tully, who are you coming out from the west coast? Tully Williams from the great Nelo Company in Sacramento, California.

Super. And Megan, if you would.

Yes, good afternoon. My name is Megan Cooper. I am the founder and CEO of InFocus Solutions. We are a virtual BDC and marketing company. We have about 80 agents that are located all throughout the US and we work in automotive and RV industries primarily. And we do a little bit of everything, too. We call everyone and anyone so happy to be here.

Yeah. Great to have you. Thank you. And Scott speaks very highly of you. And Scott and Megan, what's the relationship? How did you. How did you folks meet and how do you. How do you know each other?

Well, Infocus uses Volley. And so what we love about Volley is that we say that volley can standardize our customization. So we work with several hundred dealers throughout the US and so everyone needs just a little something different. So Volley is able to make it so that we can make it easy on our agents in order to really convert traffic and drive appointments to our dealers.

I love it. And just so you all know, the number one topic at the Fixed Ops Roundtable for the last two years has been the phones. All right? And it is a hot, hot, important topic. We're hearing about it all the time. Kim, if you would tell us who you are and what you do.

I'm Kimberly Grubb. I'm based in Oklahoma for the Cooper Auto Group, where I am the director of communication and customer experience.

And Kim, you've got a unique background on the service side of the business. If you would tell us about that.

Well, just the quickest synopsis I can do is started in sales in 1999, realized, yeah, I liked it, but I was always in the service department talking to my customers and realized that I really liked that aspect. And then one thing led to another and I'm a service manager and service director and then we decided to do this and with all of that combined, it seemed like a logical choice to head up a centralized call center for the fixed operations telly.

You and I have had a lot of conversations about the phones and the work you're doing there at the Nelo company. You know your thoughts on, on hiring the right agent who will convert and being able to convert.

You know, we love to hire within. So I, I believe it starts with, you know, you know, cashiers have kind of gone away from us today, you know, because since we're self cashiering but it really comes down to I call call coordinators and BDC agents and I think that when we look at the look at hiring people is that we want to bring them in, right? Start them off at simple things and then see if they're ready to make that great leap. Right. So there's an interview process because everybody says I can answer the phone. Okay. Then there's, you know, I can answer the phone nicely and then I can answer the phone and ask for something. Right. So I think the goal is, is that we want to bring them in, tell them about the Nelo culture, right. Watch them, learn them, teach them, train them, coach them. Before we make that leap, before we put them in our BDC center, we've had great success. And then what happens when they go in there? They're already are known by the bdc. The BDC already knows those gals or guys are coming in, right. So we have that relationship already started and then the coaching and mentoring starts all over again. So I believe start, train, start on a lower level and then bring them into the main level is my goal.

Megan, you're really a specialist at this and you do this all over the country with a lot of dealerships. I'm interested in your perspective on hiring that right person.

So the first thing that we look at when we look at who we're going to hire is what they're going to be calling. So an agent that's calling to tell a customer about their open recall is different than a declined service call. So that declined service call has to be a little bit more salesy than hi, my name is Megan. And you have an open recall. When would you like to schedule that? Today. So if there is somebody that applies that maybe doesn't have any experience but there's an open seat on a team that can really get their feet wet in the BDC arena, then we're going to hire that person based upon, you know, their, their personality, whether or not they can ask twice if they have that tenacity versus a campaign that has, have a little bit more background and experience. So those ones that are those more salesy campaigns, for example, a declined service campaign, they need to have some background when they, when we hire them. And then from there, as Tully mentioned, you know, we, we train accordingly. You know, then we take these agents and we train them for two weeks. We have them sit with our senior agents and our team leads to really get them coached up and also keep them in a controlled environment. And, but I definitely recommend when you're hiring for teams and when you're hiring for your bdc, look at specifically what they're going to be dialing when you're hiring them based upon their background. Some they don't necessarily need to have any experience. They just need to be a good, a good worker.

Megan, I'm hearing that phrase virtual BDC now a whole lot in the industry especially, it seems recently. Okay. In the last few months. Megan, that really seems to be coming on strong.

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I definitely believe that it was going there anyways, but Covid catapulted us forward. And so dealers are definitely looking at, at BDC companies and, and, and anybody in the dealership is, is looking at that kind of model too because let's face it, people run out of time. You can have the greatest BDC and there's only so much time in a day. So it doesn't mean that, that the, the BDC folks at the dealership are doing anything wrong. There's just a lot of data out there and a lot of times we can, you know, virtual BDC companies can come in and we use software like Volley to make us really efficient and come in and back up those great dealership BD agents and, and call the people that they just don't have time to get to. And we can, you know, do that very efficiently through, through certain platforms like.

Bali Kim, you're overseeing a big dealer group there. You got a lot of nameplates, a lot of franchises. How do you hire the right agent who's going to convert and how do you train them?

Well, what I've noticed is when I hire for personality, I seem to get more longevity out of that employee. And if we're good at what we're doing, we can train them to do, follow, process and do things the right way. If we notice in them, that spark, you know, that empathy, that bubbling spirit, that's what I'm more interested in and how they sound and are they a self starter. So for me it's been higher for personality, train for talent.

Wow. Wow. And again, give us the, give us the nameplates that you've got there. And approximately how many agents working?

I have 10 agents working for the dealerships, making appointments and outbound calls. And then I have two customer satisfaction agents that do a completely different job. And we have three Ford stores, Lincoln, BMW, MINI Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge and Ram and Chevrolet Cadillac.

Scott, this is a great topic and I've never seen it more timely than today.

Yeah, I mean these guys are the experts on here. When we look across all of the dealerships and businesses that we work with, there's one common theme and it's something bigger than the job itself. I always have this theory that people start out perfect until we ruin them. You know, everyone wants to do a good job. We can say what we want, but everyone dreams, everyone wants to be successful in life. And so the dealerships that really do a good job and the businesses in general that really do a good job are the ones who make it bigger than what they're doing. They let them know how they fit into the grand scheme. They're on the front lines. Kim told me. I mean, they're handling millions of dollars in business every month. These, these people every month. And, and so the good BDCs that I see who keep agents for a long time, they let the people know their value. They don't treat the jobs as disposable. They give them a future in the company and they, and they, and they help them, help them strive to move forward. It's the key. It is the number one theme that I can see from the successful BDCs to the bad ones to the good call centers, subscribe to us to the bad ones. It's the same thing in both.

I want to follow up with Kim and then Megan. Kim, you, I assume you're using the Volley software there.

Absolutely.

At the auto group. What are some of the benefits and why did what I, we said in the green room? I heard that you fought to have Volley there at your group. Tell us a little bit about that and why you, why you did that and believe so strongly yet.

Well, you know, in the positions that we're in, how many emails do we get every day? How many phone calls, hey, I've got this product. Try it. And I, it got to where I turned a blind eye to Everything. And then another colleague that is. That speaks in our auto group spoke very highly of Volley and just said, just give them a chance. Just let them make their presentation. And Scott, I. You made me feel bad last time we had a meeting. I feel like I was mean to you, but. And I'm not mean, so. But now I'm the biggest rah rah for Volley that there could be, just because of the changes that it has created in my own business.

I love it. And, Megan, you've got to see a lot of solutions out there as well. Why? Why Valley?

Well, besides the partnership that we have. So we. I love the support that I get from Volley. It's very interactive. You know, if there's a. If there's a problem that's outside the box that maybe we've never come across before, we really put our heads together to figure out how to solve for it. But beyond all of that, which should be important to any vendor, any dealer that's looking for. For a solution, there's a couple of different things that I think Volley, you know, sets Volley apart. And that is the way that we're able to manage our call queues and also the way that we're able to specify for each campaign and each organization and the way that we're able to feed data back that really just makes us efficient from both the administrative side and. And then also on the agent side to again, really, you know, dial for dollars and. And be able to cultivate the gold from the massive list that we have.

Tali, this is really different than what you and I have seen out there. I know a few months back, you and I were watching a presentation that Scott Davis did, and it was chocked full of nuggets. I mean, a lot of data, a lot of calls, a lot of research until it was really well put together.

It was. I think that when you look at a lot of stores, think that we have a bdc, because I have someone behind the counter to answers the phone and says, I'll get the service writer for you. Okay, that's not a bdc, you know, a bdc, you know, and then you look at the amount of calls that come in and we do a great job answering at 65%. Okay, that's not a BDC either. And I think when you look at the data set that comes in at your store and all these people that are going to leave you, as we, as I like to say, we're in the repeat referral business. Phones are your key issue here. And you need to know how to work those phones properly with the most trained success. And what we found out is our BDC agents are prized possessions at our stores. Our service writers all of a sudden now think these people in the back are the greatest people since sliced bread because they're making those great appointments for them. Right? And we keep it regulated. You know, we have an X Time product that keeps everything in check so nothing will be overbooked. That's the key issue. We just want to have great appointments coming in our driveway so everybody stays busy with proper data and proper, with a proper program, you can make it happen if you do not have that information. BDCs fail miserably. And that's what we don't want. We want, we want these things to be, to turn in to be superstars. And now our, our agents are superstars. We run contests, they're chasing lunches all the time. We just make it fun in the back for these gals to be strong success as we bring our other stores into our group. We're super excited.

Tully, could you imagine is it possible that a dealership. I guess it is possible that they would not have a service BDC in today's age but that those objections are really going away little by little. And you know, it's, it's really obvious that the need for this is. Is strong.

I think the issue has to be is that dealers are sales managers and general managers are sales managers. Right, and general managers are sales managers. They're not a fixed ops manager. And I think that when they realize and thanks to you to bringing fixed up to the to the top is that they realize that oh my God, if I have a whole bunch of appointments in the service drive, I'll sell more cars down the road. And guess what? We now can get these great programs to help us drive repeat referral business because they realize if our retention in our store is 70 plus, we're going to sell all the cars we ever imagined. And as we, if we gain customers and keep them in our service drive, we're going to sell more cars. And then guess what we do. We sell more cars are there to their friends and family. So the fixed ops drives retention for the sales department. And I now see that dealers and general managers are seeing that success. And that's why BDCs are a huge success in fixed sales has always had them. Just because we're a sales organization. Fixed has not always had them. And I see today is that you're almost gonna. You can't operate without them. Is the way I see it, Scott.

I also recognize that Volley does not have a one size fits all approach. You really custom this to the, to the client. Tell us a little bit about that because I thought that's really unique about one of the things you do well.

I mean, we tried not to paint ourselves into a corner. Every business is different. They have different objectives at different goals. So our goal is to help the call center or the dealer BDC be able to make the right call at the right time with the right person inbound, outbound. And we pretty much centered everything around that. It is. Tully's comments, by the way, are, they're so right. There are reasons why you would maybe not, maybe you'd send some of the calls to Megan or maybe you do it all in house. Those are all totally legitimate. But the days of the service, advisors telling someone wait, and while they're at the counter, those are, those are pretty much over.

So Megan, middle of the day, how hands on should managers be, you know, come the middle of the day? Because, you know, there's peaks and valleys and, you know, a lot of work required here.

Absolutely. And I think if you look at the data at the end of the day, it's kind of like looking at your data at the end of the month. It's a little too late. Right. So it's important for managers to be, to be heavily involved throughout the day, whether it's walking the floor, seeing what they can hear, or whether it's listening to phone calls and doing, you know, what we call to be, to be calibration sessions where you, you kind of calibrate the agent and, and have them listen to themselves and then stop that call and say, okay, great job. Right. Because you have to not just look at the bad, you have to celebrate the good. Right. And reward the good, but also provide coaching points and leaving, you know, either an open meeting or an open door policy, whether you're, you're remote or you're, you're in the dealership to make sure that people can ask you on the fly questions and make sure that you can take those lifetime tos when they need help. So one of the most important things that, that an agent can know, whether it's, you know, whatever time of day it is, is that not only will I be held accountable, but I'll also get that support when I need it. Because if it's only a culture of accountability, then it's just, it's, it's almost a fear culture. Right. So you have to also know that, hey, this is the process, when you need help, when you need help, this is who you go to and this is the expectations that we're going to hold you accountable to and we're going to marry those two together to get where we're going collectively.

Wow. Love it.

Yeah.

Agree. Kim, following up with you, how do we improve performance during the course of the day?

What I found is, you know, our valleys seem to be that time right before 11 o', clock, the lunchtime and then from about one to three. But those are also my opportunities where I can listen to calls. I can take 10 calls and send them to an agent and have them do their own self assessment and then come in and talk to me about it. What's also great is whenever I'm watching that real time screen and I see somebody's call go longer than about three minutes, that's kind of a trigger. I need to go see what's up. Why is that call taking so long? And I can stand there and listen because my team is in the next room and I can listen and see where maybe I can help them in the future or if that call needs to be to. If it's just one of those calls.

And Kim, we hear so much about making those outbound. The importance of making those outbound calls volley really prompts the agent to make that next call and move on. Talk to us about that.

I'm telling you, that has been, that was the main thing for me that I have noticed a huge improvement. You know, we referred to ourselves as the shrimp net of the auto group because we're going behind and we're picking up all these little bits and pieces and we were doing a really, really good job. Now we are doing a great job. We have increased our outbound appointments by 75% and they now make up about 20% of our total appointments for the month.

Well, I love the 10 spots and I'm going to be, you know, I'm going to be emailing Kimberly for the 10, the 10 points. So I think, I think when we look at our word tracks, we didn't have 10 spots. So I really love that idea. But we want the call taker to make it their own in our umbrella. And I think that that's really helped them because if we tell them, you must say this, it's going to be a horrible call. But if we say we're looking to say these things, what we found out is that then they grab it and it's their phone call. And we've had great success with that. So we Having the basic script of what we're getting across has been a massive success for us.

Yeah. And these guys do have scripts. Tully and Kim, they're not saying don't have scripts. I mean what they're saying is get a base level that the agent can own and then they can get really personal on the call. And that's really the key.

Yeah.

Kim, as a follow up with you, how do you recognize if a bad agent, if there's such a thing, is able to be trained or to improve if they're, let's say, a bad fit?

Well, you know, and we all hate it when it happens because when we hire that person we're like, this is the next greatest thing. And sometimes it's just not for them. They're excited, you're excited, they've got a great personality, but maybe they just don't have that inner drive to keep as busy as they need to be during the day. If the work is there, you know, and they're looking on their phones. That's not that. That's not very productive. So what I do is I have three levels of tiered bonuses. So I have three different levels. I expect you to reach tier one. I mean that's just a given. Tier two, you get quite a bit extra in bonus. Tier three is almost three times the original bonus. So I've got a couple of people that never miss tier three. I've got a few people that are always continually to your tier two. Ish. And then if somebody hasn't reached that minimum with, in a 90 day period any of those months, they're needing help. So after that first month, I assign them a mentor. We listen to calls, we partner them up with somebody else to listen to their calls and them listen to theirs so that they. Because even though they're in a room together, they might not really be listening to what everybody else is saying that's making them successful because they've got their own track. And then after that second month, it's a lot more one on one with me. It's meeting every week, turning in different plans of information and what am I going to do to change things. And then finally, if it's been 90 days, it's a probationary period. And we realize and usually come to the discovery between myself and the employee that it's just not for them. And if there's something else in the dealer group that they think they would thrive at or I think they would, I'll help them move along. We've done that.

Last question for today. Everybody, before we wrap, I'll ask each of you this. What is the number one thing you can do today? And I know our audience wants to know this, to improve the number of leads that you convert. So, Megan, if it's all right, I'll, I'll start with you and I'll come to Kimberly and then Tully and then Scott to bring it home. No audio.

Yeah. Darn it.

Oh, hold on. Try it again now. I thought we had it there for a moment.

We'll have you on again, Megan.

All right, Stay, stay with us. Stay with us. Don't go away because I want to keep the video box open. Kimberly, I'll come to you with that same question. Number one thing you can do today to improve the number of leads you convert.

What I've noticed is quality of leads, and that is making sure that the service managers and the GMs are supporting the BDC as a whole department. And it's not us and them, it's all of us. We are the dealer group and getting us that access to those OEM sites so that we can go in and look at the recalls, look at what parts are available. We can go in and see retention lists and you know, those telematic lists from, you know, FordPass and BMW Teleservice, those are golden. And we can pull those at any time. And those are quality good leads. That customer needs service. It's time.

Tali, Number one thing you can do today to improve the number of leads you convert.

Kimberly, Spot on. I think the best, the best lead you can have is OEM leads. Buy none. These are the best leads. Barbada. Next is good recall leads. Usually the manufacturer can give those, but there's also third parties that can help you with that. And then the next is because if you're doing quality recommendation from your inspections, is that we'll be calling back our red declines, right or not. Today's is what I like to call them. Those are quality leads. I'm not after like this person hasn't been in here in 45 years and it's a purple car, I just don't think that's the call we want to call today. But if we work on the lists that we have in our, in our, our DMS today and work those lists and just make sure that we remind them that we love them and want them to come back in, that's usually just enough.

Scott Davis, I'll ask you to bring it home.

Sure. I've got a couple things I couldn't stop with just One. But, but my, my b idea is make it easy for your agents to, to convert it. So have rebuttal scripts handy, have add on services handy, have whatever cheat sheet your, your fixed ops director can give for tires. Those things have them all handy for the agents. Make it easy for them to sell. Okay, so I, I'm, I violate this all the time myself on demos and such. But, but the number one thing, and I can tell you, you listen to 10 calls, you want to blow your brains out. It's so hard listening to them. The number one thing you can do is teach your agents to slow down and work on listening period. Get them to slow down. Because customers need service. Every single one of them. They have to buy service. They have to, they just don't have to buy it from you. So, and you know, if, if this is a career for the agents and we know that they can really help the dealership and themselves, they will have the viewpoint that they're doing the customer a favor by calling them. So take the time on a call, listen to them. Really teach on active listening skills and listen to what they need. We looked at it. We had this 10 million call study that you and Tully referenced earlier. 91,200 people told the agent they weren't interested and then came in in the next 90 days out of, out of the outbound calls that they reached. Well, they were just in that right now. If they, if you had taken a little more time, would they have said, no, I don't need service, but I'm going to need it in a month. You could have helped them then and saved them another call to the dealership. So just, just take a little more time. How many people did you miss because, because you didn't take the time with them and they were not a. No, they were not right now. And when they thought of it, they got a Jiffy Lube commercial or, or a coupon or whatever. So just really get every agent to slow down. You know we work on cell phones. Cell phones are have. You can go, you can go half as fast when you're talking to someone on a cell phone or on, on Zoom or anything like this. And you can back and forth and you tend to over talk people, so just slow down, make sure they're always done and then teach them to listen. People want to buy, so we've got to help them buy. Hey, one last thing. I forgot to say it. I can't read my own writing, but train your agents to leave friendly voicemails. I looked at one of our dealer groups response recently. Last week they made 5,000 outbound attempts. They spoke with 2,000 of them but then the 3,000 they didn't get over a couple week period. A thousand of those people called back. So train your people to make friendly voicemails. People don't mail in those voicemails and don't hang up on them. So I guess, well, guess that was three things. So sorry for going over there.

Everybody. Volley is the leader in the we're very grateful to have Scott Davis from Volley with us. Scott of our audience wants to reach out for more information. I see the volley.com website. I see looks like your email and I see a phone number on there as well. I guess those are the best ways to, to reach out.

Yeah, we're here. We love what we do. And, and with or without Volley, we'll, we'll help you if you have any questions.

Great resource. Everybody want to thank Megan Cooper, Kim Grubb, Tully Williams of the Nelo company and Scott Davis from Valley for being with us today. Great session everybody. Than and I want to wish all of you and your families a very happy Thanksgiving next week. So thank you for all you do. Thank you for having us everybody. Scott Davis and the panel at Volley here today at the Fixed Ops roundtable.