How Lombard Toyota Made Huge Improvements with Volie

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another Volley Rally. Today I am joined by Don Ramondi from Lombard Toyota. Don, thanks so much for joining me today.

You're welcome.

Really, really appreciate having you on. Don is going to share some of the successes that he's had utilizing volley at the store despite high turnover and how it's impacted his TLE scores. Just to start with, for someone who may be watching and isn't familiar with Toyota, what is, what is the TLE mean?

Right. To customers that have abandoned your dealership, They've stopped coming back for service visits, and you get two chances to get them. You get them when they're about ready to go to an inactive customer, and then you get another chance when they're inactive. You only get so many days and so many months to contact these people. And a lot of dealers don't bother going back and looking at those lists. We weren't previous service people just weren't doing it. And we were dead last in the zone. And we picked up, since May, when we went on, we picked up 37 places, which no one in Toyota has done, 112 to 75. And we're within a percent and a half of winning the President's Award this year, which we haven't done.

So that's awesome. That's. That's an extremely strong increase. As you said, most people don't typically have that high of a lift. Right, Right.

We just now are starting the Toyota service connect, which is a big thing. A lot of dealers don't bother with it, but, you know, these people spend the money to get the new cars. And when one of your lights go on, it sends a connect to the dealership saying, hey, Donna Mondi, your RAV4, this maintenance line is on. And they'll ignore it. Well, the problem with that is if you don't answer the customer, I believe in 30 minutes that that alert becomes prey for all the Toyota dealers in the area, so their service departments could actually steal your customers. So now we just went on with James. We are setting it up this week. Who are. We're not even letting the service people handle it. It's going right to the, to our volley representatives here that they're doing the calls. They get the alert, they can set the appointment for the customer, find out what the customer's needs. If they don't understand what the light is, they can connect them right to service to get the people in. So we'll be connecting people as it happens, not when we get to it.

And especially if it then opens up for Other dealers to be able to get to those. I'm sure that that will be a huge win for you guys.

The biggest problem we had was in our service department. That was problem managers and the writers that were. Any time we were these TLE customers, to get them back in the. You have to offer them a fair priced oil change or something like that. And they were just turning the service department into a Jiffy Lube. They weren't using it as an opportunity to reconnect with the customer. Your car needs this maintenance. You may have this recall open. They weren't doing it. They were just boom, boom, boom, getting the people in and out. And the service numbers have suffered. So now we've changed it. We've got new service writers here and now they're actually upselling on the people that are coming in, which is what you're supposed to do, but they just weren't doing it.

So how does, how did Volley specifically help you get on top of these TLE lists?

Just how we manage our call, we wrote the scripts, two meetings with James a week, sometimes three meetings with James a week, sometimes I'm on the phone with James every day. We monitor what the cashiers are doing. They get what they're expected to do with how many calls they should be making. We have scripts don't go off script, don't free bay, you know, free ball and stuff. You got to do with the way it is and change the way we call people. What lists are more important to call? I mean, a customer that just set your first new car appointment, they're going to come anyway. That appointment, that's the bottom priority. But now we remind customers the day before, three days before their service appointment, one day before their service appointment. And if they're a half hour late for their service appointment, we call them. We also have them calling on denied work. So what we do is if when you get the denied work list, when you see that something goes to denied, it'll say, you know, the customer didn't do the work at this time. Well, we have alternate payment plans, we have sun bit. We have a whole list of things people can do and we offer the people and we go from there, which they just weren't doing. The writers say they were doing it, but they weren't doing it. I mean, I did the list one month. We had $460,000 worth of denied work in one month that nobody followed up with the customers.

So what volley's helped you do is prioritize those lists and give you the visibility that they're actually calling on them.

And we can inspect what they're doing. You know, they always say, inspect what you expect. And so we can look at the calls, we can see how they're doing on incoming calls. Are they answering the incoming calls in a timely manner? Are there too many people going to voicemail? Are there too many calls? Because an inbound call, that customer's taking the time to call you. If you don't, they're going to call the next guy online. So we make sure. I mean, we're less than 5% drop rate. We were 20 to 25% when this started. Now we're down to 5%.

Wow, that's a great increase as well.

Yeah, so, I mean, everything's been working. We've had a few hiccups, you know, and mostly user problems. You know, everybody always tries to cheat the system. You know, you put that DNC out there, do not call. Every time they felt like they didn't want to recall a customer back, they change it to dnc, but they wouldn't tell you why, so we took that away from them. Now they have to use the codes. DNC can only be done by myself. And then they have to give me the reason why it's a DNC. And we listen to calls. We, we take like 10 or 15 calls a week from each agent and listen it just to see are they talking correctly to the customers, are they doing the. Yeah, you know, stuff like that, you know, and make sure they're always in a good mood. Make sure that you're not calling the customer like it's a bother to you. And now today, yesterday, we had a great meeting with, with James and we decided, you know, maybe we should reward the people, you know, like the reps that are doing the best job. So you find out what they do. You know, you see somebody walking in with a Starbucks cup every day. Well, if they do a great job for the month, give them a hundred dollar Starbucks gift card. If they like Dunkin Donuts, give them a hundred dollars Dunkin Donuts. If they eat Chick Fil a like once a week, you know, just, you know, see what they use and what they like. Instead of just handing them a gift card, you know, oh, here's a Visa gift card. You know, if you do it to something you know, they like, they'll use it and they'll appreciate it more.

Absolutely. One of the things that Liza had said to me when she was saying, hey, you got to talk to Don. They've had crazy improvements is you've had a lot of turnover in your service department. Can you. Can you talk about how that's been going on and how Volley's helped you work through that?

We've taken Valley out of the service. I bet in a lot of places you're at, probably the service managers handle Volley. We don't have that. We don't have that luxury here. So when we install voli, it was hilarious the first time I talked. And James, the owner, said, hey, I'm spending this money. If it doesn't work, I'm blaming you, nobody else. So that's how we started. And we just, we went through three service directors trying to get the right one. We finally think we've got the right one now, but the service directors were so bad, we just had service writer after service writer after service writer. I mean, you get a thing where a customer is dropping a car off. One day one person was taking care of them, the next day they come in. We got a whole new set of service writers. So it doesn't build any loyalty or trust with the customers. And. But now we can get the alerts they call. We also do follow up calls with the customers. How was your visit? You know, if we see there's a problem, we immediately go and hand it to the service director. He calls them immediately to try to fix it. Before you get a bad survey, before the customer goes here, we're in a weird area here. Our customers can go anywhere for service other than warranty. They can go to Firestone. They can go to Jiffy Lube. They can go to, you know, Napa. They can go anywhere. They don't need to come here. You have to give them a reason to come here. You have to make it convenient. You have to. I mean, we had, I think, one writer alone. Oh, boy, I can't even remember. He got in 30 surveys in one month, which is a lot people. Usually, they'll only answer the survey if there's a problem. They know the answer for the attaboy. But out of his 30 things, we were able to define. And then we went on volley and listened to the phone calls with the customers in the ring. We nailed in. This guy was just abandoning customers in the dealership. He'd take their keys, write them up and oil changes. We try to get them done in 40 minutes or less. You try, but sometimes you get backed up and they're here for a couple hours. But no one was going. He wasn't going into the rain room and saying, hey, done. You know, we are backed up. Can I get you a cup of coffee. What can I do for. They just abandon them. And then, you know, they wait, they go, gee, I was there four hours for a 40 minute oil change. And it's stuff like that that we're able to catch now and then we can make phone calls. That's what helps with the calling the customers. You know, every customer that comes in for a service visit, we call them experience. How would you rate your writer? Is there anything we could do to be better? So that's how it's working and so can't argue with the numbers. I wish our service, the problem is the people we had were just using it as a jiffy though, right? He had wouldn't spend time with the customers. But we're so worried about getting the customer in and out here. Well, our dollars per hour tanked because they were just doing, you know, let's do the oil change, get them the hell out of here. It's a daily. We got a new service writer, a younger kid who was at another Toyota dealership. Now you got to spend time with these people. And he did spend time with him. And he's averaging $480 per oil change ticket upsell. He's selling tires, batteries, I mean, he's doing a good job. You know, 50 of the people aren't going to spend a dime. Some people will buy wiper blades and stuff like that, but you got to be in front of them. And we structured it because you got to be careful. You can't get a customer in because he doesn't trust you. And then the very first time he comes back in, oh, your car needs $3,000 worth of work. I mean, you gotta be, you have to manage it and you have to, the people just have to do it correctly. And that's what we're able to do. I mean, we're able to listen to calls, we're able to, you know, we take the writers out of the mix because service writers, like anybody else, if they're busy, they're not going to answer the calls. They're not gonna. So we've taken all the calls, everything. It goes through the girls now it doesn't go to service at all. Awesome. The complaints go right to the service director. If he's not there, they go to me.

Awesome. Yeah, that sounds great. And I know, like you said, the proof is in the numbers, right? You know, you've had crazy improvements since launching. And, and we hope, I hope to hear that, you know, maybe we check in with you again in, in six months and you've gained another 20 points. Right.

So too because if we get the President Award, that'll be a big deal. Last, last year we would have won the President's Award and you know, Toyota stopped doing it with COVID because you can't have a President's Award. When you showroom was being shut down, everything was remote. So Toyota got away from that program. Well, now it was back. And last year we missed the President's Award because of the service department service. This month, as of yesterday when I did it, oh, I told James we had the call RTLE went up to. We were like in the 80% of satisfaction and you have to be over a hundred percent to qualify for the President's Award. So we went in from the high 70s, low 80s, 98.9%. So all we have to do for the rest of this year is pick up 1.4% and we'll win the President's Award. But it's not, you know, you can make the big jump like the 37 spots. That's a huge jump. Do I expect another 37? It's impossible. We are not going to leapfrog another 37 dealerships. You know, you're talking of, you're getting now like we're at, you know, the separation between 10 and 30 could be 0.5%. So you really to get, you know, if we, if we could get middle of the pack and win the President's Award, we'd be happy if we could be in the 40 to 50 range for that TLE and not have to worry about 112 out of 112 and then still get the President's Award. That's a win for all sides. That means you're getting people in service, you're getting people in sales and they're happy. That's the big thing. They're happy. So now that's what we've been gearing volley. We're starting to tweak it now. We're going a bit away from the hammer and the people to get them in, get them in, get them in to, you know, offer the services. Tell people, you know, we have like Sunbilt, which is fantastic for service because today credit card rates and everything and interest rates are so high, they have 90 days, same as cash. So you tell the customer here, you get this 90 day same of cash or you pay 29 on your credit card, you know, so yeah, we can have some things. So hopefully we'll see what happens.

Well, we, we're, we're really hoping that, that you continue and, and Vali helps you get there. We really appreciate you, you share in your story. Honestly, it's great to hear so success stories like this. We love knowing that we're, that we're making an impact with you guys.

James is the best. He deserves. He deserves more credit than I do for this. He really does. He's, you know, he goes out of his way. You know, if I have a question, you know, I know it's an hour difference and he's got young kids at home, just had another baby, but if I send him an email at 6 o' clock at night, he'll get back to me, which is above and beyond what he really should do. But you know, he'll do that and we appreciate stuff like that. The only thing I that gets me about volley and I've told James, you got to bring this up at every meeting you guys have. I know you have a niche in service. You need to expand the sales. There are no companies that do a good job with sales BDC anymore. If you did half as well with sales as you do with service, dealers would flock to your company to use them.

Well, it's beyond the scope of this call, but I will tell you and for anyone listening, we are starting to, to do a really good job with sales. We have some, some good sales BDC customers on. So I would, I'll make a note here to make sure that, make sure that we, we talk with you about that.

But absolutely.

Well, thanks so much for hopping on. Really, really appreciate it again. I mean, what, what a success story.

Yeah, fantastic. I. Yeah, yeah, it was good. When I got that, we were in the middle of our meeting when the numbers came out yesterday. Jay, I talked to James. I go, hey, it's, it's the 19th. Let's see if the numbers are out. We're on the call with lighting him. We get on the call. I look, oh, there's a red button and you click on the button. I looked and I had to look twice because I didn't think we were going to pick up another 10 points from the month before with all the changes in service and everything. I was just like gritting my teeth. Hopefully we stay at 85. Hopefully we stay at 85 and it went down to 75. Like, holy cow.

Yeah. Yeah, that's great. It's great. 37 points, 10 points. Maybe next month, you know, we'll see.

Another four or five points. If I can get four or five points a month for the next few months and get in that even if I can get down to 60 or 55 by the end of the year that'll be a huge help awesome well.

Don thanks so much for joining really really appreciate it and for everyone listening I hope you have a fantastic day.

I take care they wait they go I was there four hours for a 40 minute oil change and it's stuff like that that we're able to catch now and then we can make phone calls that's what helps with the calling the customers you know every customer that comes in for a service visit we call them experience how would you rate your writer Is there anything we could do to be better so that's how it's working and so can't argue with the numbers I wish our service the problem is the people we had were just using it as a jiffy loop he had wouldn't spend time with the customers but we're so worried about getting the customer in and out here well our dollars part ro tanked because they were.