How Volie Changed Our Team Culture - Keryn Flanary

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another Volley rally. Today I'm joined by Corinne Flannery, BDC Director for Toyota and Subaru of Ann Arbor. Corinne, thank you very much for taking the time today. How are you doing?

Of course, thank you. I'm doing well. How are you?

I'm doing great. I, I'm not going to turn my computer, but right out here I have beautiful Florida sun. And up where you are, do you have snow on the ground? No.

Well, a little bit. A little bit. But today's a good day. Today's a good day. I think we're in the 40s and we're getting some sun on the dealership, so it's pretty nice. It's not anything compared to the Florida sun, but we'll take it.

We went on a walk this morning, it was low 50s and I thought it was freezing, so.

Oh, okay. We want to make it here.

No, no, you adjust pretty quickly. So anyway, we appreciate you taking the time. Corinne's going to talk a little bit about her experiences with folly and some of the neat things that they're doing with their Toyota programs or tis leads, et cetera, and then Subaru. So with that said, Corinne, can you talk a little bit about your bdc? How does it function? How many agents do you have? And you're answering calls for both stores, so how does that work?

Yeah, so we have eight agents on our service side, five on our sales side, and they're both incorporated into Volley. I started that off right off the jump with Volley. I initiated the service in the sales department. I didn't want have a break from one another. And then our service department, we have pretty much every process integrated into Volley. And then the same on our sales side. I think the, the pushing of the list that you have, it's just, it doesn't compare to anything that we've done in the past. So right when I took over the BDC side, I was working out of the tedious Excel sheets, checking back, seeing how agents are operating on the day to day, kind of the mundane feeling. But then in Bali, you're able to, you're able to push everything, track everything, and they're able to see it. Right. So you guys have a visible dashboard to the agents. And the key for us and how we operate is we have that up on our wall and so they're able to see where they're at at all times. So if you're, if you're in a missed call selection and you've, you've been there for quite some time, Everybody can see that. And for those viewing, if they don't know what a missed call selection is, that's where your missed calls are held in Bali. But if you're not having anything, you're not having anything to keep you going, or if you're on an inbound call and I see it and I look up and it's about five minutes and that's a little high for service, well, then you're able to actually jump in and listen to the call through volley, which I think is one of the greatest things in volley, I'd say is that ability to jump in on calls. So I think I kind of went into my love of Ollie there, but hopefully I touched a little bit of how we offer it on a day to day.

I think you touched on maybe 10% of that was that. But no, that's great. And know we, we, we appreciate all that. It's funny you say that. Do the, do the agents hold each other accountable then with, oh man, Billy Bob is, you know, been on hold. He's not taking a call for the last 10 minutes. What's going on?

Right, yeah, well, it's a team effort. Right? So not only do they push each other on a day to day, but when they see that they're able to pick it up and say, well, pick it up for their coworker next to them, you know, like, hey, do you, do you need my help? Do you need me? Because I may be out of the office on a meeting, so I'm not always able to shout it out, you know, but yeah, it does bring that competitiveness, competitiveness spirit into the flow of their day to day.

So talk a little bit more if you can about the pre volley. You're using spreadsheets. What were the, what was the agent workflow like?

Yeah, the pre Valley era were your dinosaur ages. It was, it was tough to flow and keep the flow going. It was. Where did I, where did I land on my last customer? Who's my last customer? Okay, so and so is calling in. Who spoke to so and so? Who spoke to so and so? Did anyone have them? Well, they're calling in, I don't, I don't know what exactly they're asking for. Well, who called them last? And that, that's just an error that's gone away in Bali. You're able to see communication history. You're able to see exactly what campaign they're calling back off of. So what you called them from. And then the agents are able to track them. Right. So it's not. You don't have to work out of an Excel sheet anymore of agents putting in their numbers, tracking everything. Volley is able to hold all that.

So then your agents enjoy the new. The new workflows. They enjoy getting to more calls and such.

Yeah, yeah. I will happily admit that in the beginning stages we had our integration in Valley and it's new and everything, everything new that you adapt to. You're going to have growing pains. We had our growing pains as a department. But I will say, looking back at it now, it was 100% worth it. It's going to be a different process. It's going to be different groove. You're getting shot a call right away. Why am I getting shot a call right away? I just finished my last one. Well, then, you know, like where you can go to with your productivity, you know, so you don't have anything holding you back of. Well, let me dig in here. Let me do this here. Rather you're just able to keep going and keep flowing.

I know one of the reasons why you like folly and you already said you, you have visibility, you can see how many calls are happening and such. So maybe you don't know this answer, but just off the cuff, do you have any idea when they were using those manual processes, the desk phones, spreadsheets, how many calls per day were, you know, your best agents getting to? I know today, you know, your top service rep is making 165 calls a day, you know.

Yeah.

What did that look like before?

Yeah. So put that in half. So probably you were sitting at like 70, 80.

Yeah.

And now they're like, they're, they're at 160 and we even have the days of 160 plus, you know.

Yeah. You guys also do an exceptional job with your drop rate. You guys have a 2 and a half percent drop rate which we benchmark higher than that, you know. So can you talk a little bit about how you guys manage your drop rate well and answer those calls as they're coming in?

Yeah. I think I can just attest that it's, it's my team. I have a great team. And I would say the other thing that's helped us is having it on the board, having it viewable for everybody. So saying, hey, there's two in the queue, three in the queue, one in the queue, you know, and shouting that out and keeping them mindful because it's on our, it's on our tv. But the tv, some are, some backs are facing it so they can't always see it. That's probably half of your team. So shouting it out. And then we're really good at working our team's chat too. So since it is viewable to everybody, hey, so and so is calling back in, like, heads up if it was a disgruntled customer or anything like that. So just having that constant communication and again, having the visibility of the board and then just taking the lead on it. Everybody, everybody's a leader in my department. So again, if I'm not in the room, then, hey, three in the queue is coming from so and so on the third desk, shouting it out for the team.

And, you know, getting to those customers when they're trying to do business with you. I mean, we all know how important that is.

Yes.

So Toyota and a Subaru store. I know you guys do a great job with your TIS leads. When I was talking with Maddie, who's your customer success rep, before we got on this call, she told me to ask you about your TIS leads because you guys do pretty well with those for conversion. So, you know, how does Volley help you get through those?

Yeah. So I would say the process in place in Valley is. Is unlike anything else that we could have. We could have manually put out on our own other than going back to the Excel Sheet era, but that's the same and I won't dive into it. But that's the same with our SOP process. It's just process in Volley. So our TIS leads, they have a very specific process on them, very specific touch points on them, and scripting that we can use through Volley every time so it doesn't change. The scripting on the screen doesn't change. So just having that process built out and then knowing that they know exactly what to do when it pulls up on the screen, I think gets us to where we land every month.

Is there any thing else OEM specific, whether that's for Toyota or the Subaru store that Volley's helped you do better at?

Yeah, yeah. So Subaru, they have Starlink notifications very similar to tis, and we built out the process in Volley as well. So rather than relying on a CRM process that, I mean, CRMs are, they're always a give and pull too. But rather than relying on a CRM process and using it as another whole dashboard for them to follow, now they can just follow Volley and push out from the leads in the CRM and just hold them in Volley. I mean, it's huge. It's huge because I know I used to. Before I became a manager, I operated as A full time PDC agent. And it's huge to not have to work out of multiple dashboards and just to have one and just be like, oh, this is my home. This is what's going to hold my sis. This is what's going to hold my Starlink. This is what's going to hold everything. Everything that I need process related.

And I believe with, with your Starlink leads, your Subaru regional rep has mentioned before to, you know, I believe it was Scott or Joanne, but someone was told that, you know, oh yeah, Subaru Van Arbor, they do a great job with those. Yeah, you know what, what kind of feedback do you get from Subaru?

Yeah, you know, we, we love, we love our OEM and we love our reps that come in and meet with us every month. And you know, I wish, I wish with everything with me, I could bring every BDC service agent in there with me every time they come in. I mean, because we just, we just do it and we do it well. We work hard and VALI has helped helped us with our process play into that. And then it's just a communication too. It's our communication with the customers. And how, how does valet help in that? It's showing us if they're calling back in, what are they calling back in? Through Starlink. So if they're calling back in and say, hey, I've got, I've got this going on with my car, can you help me out? Well, it looks like we actually received a notification from you, so. Absolutely. Well, in the days before Val, you have to go back into your CRM and then for Toyota you would have to go back into the dashboard for tis, you know, and then look it up and pull it up and see what's going on. See if they even have anything. Right. It's not even notifying you. At first instinct, you're just like, okay, let's get you an appointment, let's get you scheduled. Rather you're able to make that connection with the customer and say, hey, it looks like we've been made aware of this. We actually reached out to you. Why? From the contact history from Bali. So let's go ahead and get your schedule then.

Yeah, and it's clearly, you know, doing you well because I know you get good feedback from Subaru. Lastly here, you know, obviously we know Joe and some of the leadership at the store, but what do they tend to think? You know, what do the GMs think about volley?

Yeah. So we'll go back to real quick. My first, my first push off with volley. You had the growing pains, you had the, well, what process is going to work? Is this going to work? And Joe came in and I felt, I felt a good connection with my rep. I felt a good connection with the onboarding. It was, it was smooth, it was clean. However, I was in the day of like, how am I going to survive without my Excel sheets? Like, how is this going to work? This doesn't make any sense. And Joe with his leadership really kind of said, hey, like, this is, we've worked in this before, this is going to work. Give it some time. I'm, I'm thankful that I listened to him. I'm thankful that I still listen to that man. And we gave it time and here we are. So GMs, they, they think on me, they're like, don't you remember how you were in old days in Valley when you first took off with it? And now I just, I mean there's, there's nothing, there's nothing negative that you can push into it. I mean, because it's, it's helped us, it's grown us and it shows by performance wise. And I mean performance affects your culture. Right. So it's shown us culture wise too.

In our department to the culture. And does it do, do the rest of the dealerships feel better about the BDC team than they did before? Is that what you mean by it, by culture?

Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's being, having that camaraderie, like you know, the cue shouting out that I told you about the scene where someone is and being able to work as a team like you, you only know, right? So you and your agents around, you only know how that dashboard works. So I mean, I can, I can tell the GMs here, like, hey, when you come in, you seat up on the board. That's where they're performing at. But if a GM comes in, they see that they're in the yellow, they don't know what that means, you know, unless we really hone in on it in a meeting one day. So they only know. And that competitive spirit kind of gets, gets everything flowing and then, you know, it just really, it boosts and it generates this overall just attack from your agents and just a really, really great culture.

Awesome. Well, love to hear that. Obviously you all are great to work with too and we'll look forward to seeing you soon at, at our, at our 20 group meeting in a couple weeks. Yeah, you'll get to enjoy some of this nice weather and.

Can't wait.

Yeah, it'll be great. Karen, thank you very much for taking the time. We really appreciate you guys. We really appreciate you taking the time and. And for everyone tuning in, I hope you have a fantastic day.

Thank you, Jake.