How Team Gillman had 10-FOLD Increase in Agent Output with Volie

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another Volley rally. Today I'm joined with Marla Cardenas from the Team Gilman Group. Marla, thank you so much for joining me today.

Well, thank you for having me.

Really, really appreciate it. Really appreciate having you on here. I know that you had some feedback you wanted to share with your reach with your recent launch with Volley. And before we get to that, can you tell us a little bit about what, what you do with Team Gilman?

I'm the platform director for the group. I wear many hats, but one of them is also overseeing the technology part, and that's where Valley fell underneath it. And also building out the centralized call center for Mr. Gilman.

So when you say building out, how long has it been built out for?

We built the call center a little under a year ago, but we just activated Volley just a. It's been about a couple of months or so. So. Yes. We didn't find out about you. You were like a very well kept secret from us. And when we were told about you, we were very excited.

Yeah. And you've been a great group to work with thus far on our end. But can you share your onboarding experience with Valli?

Absolutely. Usually it's a nightmare getting started with any new kind of program technology, even a lead source. And I was absolutely amazed on what an easy project this was for us. I was kind of dreading it knowing because I've worked with call center projects before and it's usually nothing less than a small dumpster fire. And this was so smooth, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and the shoe never dropped. And even to this day, anything that we need, it's just, you know, because I don't think that we're ever going to learn the full power of what Bali actually does. You evolve as we keep learning things. But the girls that we've been dealing with, and especially Joanne too, it's just been kind of an amazing process. But dealers need to also know what their responsibility is in helping. And if they do what they're supposed to do, then you're able to do what you can do. And that's what makes it an easy process, that we both have to be very good partners to each other.

Yeah, absolutely. And you guys have been great partners thus far. Can you give an example, please, of one of these things that you feel your volley reps have gone above what you were expecting in terms of onboarding a new vendor?

Well, patience is probably their best virtue. You know, we all pretend like we know what we're doing. Because we don't like to be vulnerable. And I think that's one of our biggest shortcomings in the car business is we all like to stretch our muscles and go, oh, we got this. We don't. And, and you all have, and we all have a type personalities. So the amount of patience that they have and their listening skills is absolutely unbelievably amazing. So what we say and what we need are usually two different things. And, and our onboarding team was able to read through that and actually ask such great questions that they did the most phenomenal needs assessments. And that was the thing that I saw as our biggest win was their ability to, they were like csi, you know, people. They were able to actually get down to what we actually really needed instead of what we thought we were telling them we needed. So, so that's what made this such an amazing experience.

And how many stores were onboarded? How many stores are in your call center?

We decided to be very bold and we did all, we did our first six all at once and now we just did our seventh store. We just closed on one actually this week. You could probably hear all the noise in the background going on. So we're just, we just closed on this one on Monday, so.

So six stores all at once. I mean, obviously that can be pretty tough. I'm very glad to hear that the team did a great job listening and making sure that the launch went well. How has it been going since launch with Volley?

Fabulous, actually. It's been quite exciting and it's been very eye opening for somebody like me who owned a call center before. This kind of software for the car industry is far different than the software that I had for running a regular call center. And because it is so specific to our industry, it's able to dissect certain things that we need to run at efficiencies that our business is so poor at. And it's absolutely, you know, if people don't understand that the analytics have to drive the narrative, they're so sadly mistaken. And we've been able to not only save a lot of money payroll wise, but it helped us be able to revamp our, our pay plans in the call center. And we were able to increase the output from each of our agents to, you know, tenfold. So yeah, it's been pretty amazing. And I'm, every time I go in there, I'm finding something new and I'm sure that Maddie and Liza are eventually going to probably that my novelty of me is going to wear off soon. You know, they're so patient every time I'm coming at all times during the day. So they've been fabulous. But I am, it's an abyss, never ending questions and they're fabulous. So.

Well, they, they will love the feedback as well. We really appreciate that aspect of it. You know, as you look at this, do your agents like using Volley too?

Actually yes. They like the fact that they're able to kind of have a way to. I was surprised at that actually. Let me back into this question. People say that they really are excited to do something but, and, but accountability, once they realize that they're being held account, they're not. So once we put this in place, I was actually quite surprised on how they embraced the system and because actually Volley helped us rewrite our pay plans to work in congruency with the platform. The agents were able to actually see how their output was going to change their income. And they really loved working with the system because they were actually able to have like a nav system all day long to know where they were going. So if you can't get, if you don't have a map, you can't see where your destination is. So they actually really love it. And then it became really competitive. Volley let us run a program we call Hunger Games. So it was, you know, they became fun wise competitive with each other and grabbing phone calls and our efficiencies just started going through the roof. So they actually kind of, they, they, they love it actually. And it also makes them hold each other accountable too.

Well, that is one of the best things about it is when the team using it day to day gets great buy in. I'm going to be really looking forward to Marla in a year or so. We do a check in maybe six months or so. And what have your numbers looked like as opposed to before Volley? You know, that'll be great to see obviously. Now you said that you're seeing a ton of, you know, tenfold. You said, you know, a lot of great efficiencies with each agent. I'll be really looking forward to a follow up. Is there anything else you'd like to share today?

Yeah, I think that the big thing is, is that we don't have to ask is, you know, we don't always know what to ask about Bali. We don't really always know what to ask about what we should be looking at. And Maddie and Liza are the type they'll say, hey, let's go ahead and take a moment and look at wrap up time. Hey, let's Take a look and look at talk time. Hey, let's look. They'll. They'll go in and help us look at specific efficiencies that we can do our one on one with our agents with to help us help them become more efficient. Because it's your system and you're teaching it to become our system. And I would tell any dealer not to miss their weekly calls with their person at Bali because it's constantly. You're constantly learning. But they have to invest their time and be a good partner to their vendor partner. So that's the biggest takeaway. I've always. I felt that you're only as good as your partners are, and they're only going to be as good with the program as they are in cooperating with their vendor partner on the Voli side.

Awesome. Well, we love being great partners to you guys. And that's really been one of our goals from the onset, is to make our customers, you know, our Vola users feel like we're members of their team. Right?

Absolutely. We call you a partner. I didn't say that you were just a vendor. You're a partner to us, and we appreciate that very much.

We love that. Thank you so much, Marla, for the time and for everyone listening. Thank you so much and have a fantastic day.

Thank you so much for having me. It was nice talking to you. Absolutely know where they were going. So if you can't get them, if you don't have a map, you can't see where your destination is. So they actually really love it. And then it became really competitive. Volley let us run a program we call Hunger Games. So it was, you know, they became fun, wise, competitive with each other and grabbing phone calls, and our efficiencies just started going through the roof. So.