North Georgia Toyota - Single Store Success

Hello everyone and welcome back to another Volley rally. This week I'm joined by JD Music from, from North Georgia Toyota. They've been a great long term user of Volley and he wanted to sit down with us and share his thoughts on how things are going. Jd, thanks for the time. How's it going today?

It's going good, man, thank you. Glad to be here. Glad to be here. Anything I can do to help, so let me know whatever we need to do.

Well, certainly appreciate that. And for those of you who are watching this, JD has been a good partner for us and so let's go ahead and dive right in. And we've done a couple of these Volley rallies with, you know, customer success stories before and they've been kind of with, you know, multi store groups. But we wanted to bring JD on here because he's a highly successful single store operator of Volley. So with that said, using Volley as a single store, how has it helped your operations?

I think part of it is it's given us the opportunity or the ability to kind of operate almost a call center, you know, maybe like some of the big stores, to be able to efficiently get your make outbound phone calls, efficiently send text messages, emails, do all the things that maybe a big call center would normally do. You know, we're able to do in house with the small staff because it just, it's so efficient. Everything is so easy. It's, you know, to send a text message, send an email, make a phone call all right there on one screen. So we're able to just, you know, hammer out phone calls, hammer out contacts, contact attempts, you know, quickly and efficiently like some of the big boys do, you know, but without having to have 100 employees or anything like that?

Absolutely. And can you talk a little bit about when you initially started using Volley, what that looked like?

Yeah, so initially we started in the service department. Our service bdc, we were kind of in the stone age at the time with using Excel spreadsheets and we would download data out of TLE or out of the dms, just start making phone calls. You'd have to keep track of. Have I called this person? What was the attempt like? Did they make, did we leave a message? Did we schedule an appointment? Everything was done in an Excel spreadsheet and everybody worked out of a shared Google Doc or whatever. And it's just terribly inefficient. So we began looking for something that would allow us to kind of a customer communication platform and one of our vendors that we use, proactive dealer solutions. I was telling her what we were looking for. And this was just about the time that Covid started. And she was telling me that they use, you know, your, your Volley software in house and kind of described how it worked. And one thing led to another. And so she set up a meeting with, I think it was Joanne at the time. And, and she, she kind of did a demo and it, and it checked all the boxes in terms of what we were looking for. And so we started using it in our service department, just pulling BMS data, building out campaigns that way, and just recently started using it for our sales BDC as well. But we started in service and we were with service for probably nine months and it could pretty easily see or quickly see that it was something we wanted to incorporate in sales. But we just want to get our feet wet with, with service and kind of get a better understanding of how everything works. But like I said, we've recently launched sales and that's going great too. With the Elite API integration, we're able to get data out of E Lead pretty quickly and start making phone calls and sending text messages, things like that.

Well, like you said, I think of a BDC as a miniature call center and so I totally get where you're coming from there. So with that said, operating your BDC like that now, how many agents do you have and are they doing inbound outbound?

Yeah. So we've got five agents total in our service and sales bdc. We do divide it up, but they do inbound and outbound. So they're making all the outbound phone calls and then all of these service inbound calls come directly into volley. Like I said, we've just launched the sales side, so we've not brought in the sales inbound calls in the Volley yet. I just want to get our feet wet and kind of take baby steps so that everybody's kind of comfortable with one process before we bring in another aspect of it. But that's eventually the plan is to bring all sales inbound calls into Volley as well. It just makes sense to do that since it'll pull up the customer information. The minute they're calling in, we'll know who it is. You know, we'll know that they're, you know, a trade pending lead that we called earlier today. You can, you can immediately see, you know, what the active open lead is. So it just makes sense to bring in all calls into Volley. So everything's being logged and it just speeds up the process. But on the sales side, we're, you know, we're taking baby steps, you know, getting used to outbound. And then like I said, we'll bring it inbound probably in the next couple of weeks.

How do your agents like working in Valley?

They really like it. You know, you, I think when anytime you launch something new, you have some, at least you're nervous because, you know, we've always done it this way and you know, there's some hesitancy there. But I think pretty quickly that everybody that had been doing things the old way could realize just how much easier this is, how much quicker it is. I can complete so many tasks, you know, so it makes it, you know, makes it easy to teach somebody that's been doing things the old way. But also on the new hire front, we've done a, we've had a lot of success with taking new employees and being able to plug them into Volley and immediately, you know, start, you know, making phone calls, setting appointments, that kind of thing. And we've actually hired a couple of folks that have served or worked in call centers outside of this industry and they, you know, they were just, it was a natural fit for them because, you know, they're used to seeing something like this and so they were able to just hit the ground running. But so, I mean, it works really well for, you know, new people and getting them up and going quickly. But the people that have been doing things the old way also, you know, it works so efficiently that they, any of that hesitation that they may have initially had just kind of melts away just because they say, hey, this is truly making my job a lot easier. So that's always nice when everybody kind of sees the big picture and sees that this is something that's good for us. And like I said, it makes things a lot easier. We've not had any real hesitation or lack of buy in. Everybody's been quick to, to embrace it and use it. You know, ultimately our plan is to, is to have our salesman, our sales team outside of the BDC in Volley as well, making their follow up calls for, you know, their showroom ups. But, and I think those folks will probably embrace it just the same because again, it's so intuitive. It's so easy to complete your task and, and you know, I just think that's the direction we're headed. But I'm excited to see where, where it goes. Like I said, we've not had any issues with employee buy in. Everybody's been so happy to, to, to use it because it makes your life easier and. Go ahead, go ahead. I'm Sorry.

No, I just wanted to branch off of that with bringing new people in. How has it worked? How has it helped or simplified the onboarding process for new team members?

So, you know, so when you, when you, you pull up a customer area in a campaign, you pull up a customer file, you see what you're calling for immediately. So, you know, if it's a, you know, it's been four months since I've been in for an ro, you're able to see immediately that that's what we're calling for you. So you've got that information in front of you, you've got a call script in front of you that tells you, you know, what to say if you leave a message, what to say if the customer, you know, picks up. So with the scripting right there in front of you, and it's, and it's, it's adaptable to each, you know, different campaign. It just makes it easy to train a new employee. You know, there's no, there's. Anybody can hop in and read what's in front of them. So even for those new employees that are, that are unsure about what they're doing, you know, just having the scripting in front of them, that's, that's customizable, depending on the lead or the campaign is, it just makes that easy. There's, you know, it's, it's, it's very thorough.

One of the neat things you're doing as a Toyota store is we've started to load in your TIS leads or your connected car leads. How has that worked, worked out for you?

Good. So, so in Dealer Daily, when you set up the notifications for any of the TIS leads, you just put in an ADF email. Volley provides that. So then whenever that customer's information or that customer cranks her car and their maintenance lights on, it automatically fires off that, that notification to the ADF email. And then that comes into Volley. It queues up the call and our reps respond, reach out to the customer. So, you know, it immediately pulls in the vin, the, you know, customer name, customer phone number, all of that information. And we're able to call and say, hey, you know, we just wanted to reach out to you and notice that your check engine lights on or your maintenance light just came on and want to see if we can get you in for your next service. And it's, it's that simple. You know, every time the call comes in, every, every time the customer cranks the car, it sends a notification, but Volley will, will catch that second notification. So it doesn't send up or queue up a second phone call. So it keeps, you know, it keeps the customer from being called multiple times on the same issue. But, and that's just kind of some of the built in logic there.

And one of the neat things about, about it is that it allows you to get right in front of those customers when they come in. And, and you told me that you have a lot of folks who. Oh, yeah, I was just about to call you for that. And, you know, we appreciate the call, how often that comes up, right?

Yeah, it comes up all the time. I mean, so, you know, just imagine you're the customer. You know, you hop in your car, you're going to run to lunch at work or something, and all of a sudden your maintenance lot's on and you think, oh, crap, you know, I got to call the dealership. And before you know it, you're getting a call from us because we received that notification. And that's just kind of a good touch point from the dealership to the customer. The customers appreciate it. You know, it makes their life easier. You know, they don't have to go, you know, Google the number and call us or, you know, wait on hold to get in front of one of our reps. You know, we're able to, you know, through volley, reach out immediately. You know, we make a phone call, we leave a voicemail, we'll follow that up with an email and a text message. You know, text message says, hey, this is so and so with North Georgia Toyota. We're able to, you know, we're able to schedule the appointment through, you know, via text message, whatever we need to do. And it just gives us, you know, gives us a good, it gives the customer a good experience with dealership and kind of leveraging the technology that Toyota's put in all the cars. And it allows us to just, you know, be there when the customers need us immediately, even before they're, you know, necessarily, you know, ready to call us. We're able to reach out preemptively there. So it's, it's pretty slick.

Mm. One of the things, and we've kind of touched on this a little bit, but just to spend another minute on it, we've recently turned on Elite, the Elite integration for your sales agents. How has that gone?

It's going very well. So that, you know, that was something that was new for us before. All, all the service leads come in via ADF email. So the E Lead API integration immediately, when a lead comes in Elite, it gets routed into Volley. And we've just turned off all of our campaigns in Elead and exclusively operate out of Olli. So when we make a phone call, send a text message, send an email, all of that gets logged into Elead. So any of the other managers that aren't operating in Bali can still see that, hey, these customers are being contacted. All of that stuff's there. When an appointment gets made, we set the appointment in Volley, it automatically puts the appointment in Elead. So there's still the record keeping, but everything's flowing well. Like I said, we're able to make more phone calls in a shorter amount of time. We're able to, you know, send out text messages easily. So, I mean, everything's worked well. I mean, the API integration is pretty slick. You know, talking with other, other vendors that have utilized, you know, Elites for their API for stuff have all said that, you know, Elite has an API that's very strong. So I can't, I can't speak to other CRM companies necessarily. But, but they've all been really impressed with Elite API and I think Volley's done a good job of integrating with it and making it work for, for, for us.

One of the things that you told me when, when we were sitting down and originally talked about doing this, this folly rally together is you told me that as a single store, you don't have the luxury of making mistakes with things. You have to get things right from the get go. You don't have other locations to balance things out. You know, you have to do. Well, there's, and, But I also know that you try to come up with new ideas and implement them into your operations. What's your thought process when wanting to do those new things and how has Volley helped you?

So, you know, part of the thing that's helped us a lot is having a good team at Volley that's able to say, hey, this is what I'm thinking. What are the implications going to be? You know, if we do this, you know, how do we, how can we make this work? This is kind of my vision. This is what I'm working with. How can we set this up and make it work so that, you know, that's been helpful? You know, we've got some ideas we're working with Pearson on right now that I think will, you know, will allow us to kind of go to that next level in terms of, you know, thinking outside of the box and using Volley for things that maybe, you know, we didn't originally see potential there, but, but having a good Team of being able, you know, at Bali to be able to bounce ideas off of, you know, kind of, kind of zero in on, you know, what's this going to take to make it work? What's the, one of the checks and balances, that kind of thing. You know, it's been, it, it's been pretty good. You know, everybody that I've talked with been pretty, pretty sharp with the, with the software, you know, how to utilize it, all of those kind of things.

One of the last things you wanted to touch on was how you've been really working hard to cut costs and how that's been a priority for you. How is working with Volley and working with Pearson, like you said, helped you work on those opportunities.

So, you know, there's a ton of vendors in this industry and if you're not careful, all of them will, will nickel and dime you to death. You know, you'll have this vendor that does this campaign and that vendor that handles all of your surveys and all that kind of stuff. And if, you know, before you know it, you're spending 2000, 3000, 4000amonth on this and then another 2000 here. And a lot of them, all they're doing is pulling data out of your DMS and making phone calls or sending text messages for survey attempts and you know, get Google reviews, that kind of thing. And truthfully, we have the ability to do that with Volley. So you know, we're able to, or we're going to be able to soon, you know, start sending out, you know, Google surveys for customers that have purchased and I think, you know, those kind of things because Volley makes, makes our BDC so efficient with our normal day to day task. It frees us up to be able to fire off those text messages to customers and maybe look at cutting out a vendor that's that we're using because we can keep it in house. So the time savings in the BDC that Volley allows, you know, kind of frees us up to be able to do these other things that maybe we're paying other vendors to do right now. And I think that's a good thing, you know, because I want to keep everything in house if I can, you know, works better. I kind of like to consolidate my vendors down to as few as possible and Volley gives us the ability to do that. Well.

That'S great feedback and really we never want to whack somebody, as I'm sure you know, but it is great to hear from a high performing single store about all the different ways that they're able to consolidate their different processes and operate it out of one system here. Really, really appreciate you taking the time to walk through, through this with us. Any, any last closing thoughts, any before we go ahead and wrap this up?

No, not. Not really. Like I said, you know, I'm excited to see where this is going. It's something that, that, you know, we. I think we got turned on to pretty early on and kind of Yalls, you know, yalls development. So, you know, it's. It's exciting to see things, see things taken off. And, you know, I'm getting calls from other dealers, you know, ask me my thoughts, what do they think? You know, what do I think? That kind of stuff. So it's exciting to see y' all growing. And, you know, I think this is a good thing for the industry. It's a good thing for, you know, Toyota especially. You know, the way they integrate with their TIs. It's overall a good product and a, and a good company that, you know, to do business with. And I appreciate it.

Well, we appreciate you and your partnership as well. Thanks for the time here, JD and thanks for everyone joining us, and we'll see you on the next volley rally. Have a great day.

Have a good day. Bye.