A study of 2,716 dealerships found that 25% of callers hung up without booking service appointments. Acura, Mazda, and Lexus handled phone calls best, while Fiat, Alfa Romeo, and Chrysler ranked worst. Easy scheduling directly affects whether customers return.
Questions this video answers
2,716 dealerships.
34 brands.
January through May (year not explicitly restated in this chunk).
About 1 out of 4 (approximately 25%).
Acura, Mazda, Lexus, Infiniti, and Volkswagen (top five).
Chapters
So when we talk to a dealer and they're struggling and they're, we get to their service department, let's say that they're losing money. What does the dealer GM usually tell us? They need more of traffic. I need more traffic. It's.
And we usually find they need more traffic. And then second they need advisor training. Those two things.
Yeah, those are the most common ends.
Up not to break anybody's heart. Neither one of those are ever the case.
They are not effective long term solutions. However, this study that was done is super interesting and I'll just read the title of the article to you. Study looks at how well dealerships answer service department phone calls, specifically inbound calls for customers trying to set appointments. And the test was a check engine light. So they studied 2,716 automotive dealerships spanning 34 brands between January and May. Now I've got a lot of information to give you but the first and.
Probably so the, the test is they're.
Calling to make an appointment and they want to see how far out they're booked.
Yeah. So how hard is it to make an appointment? Right.
Does it tell you how far out they were booked?
Yeah, I'll get to that in a second. But the first thing I want to say is.
If you had to guess how many of these people what percentage hung up without setting an appointment, what would you guess when that's the goal of the study.
10%, 25%.
1 out of 4.
1 out of 4 did not get to set appointments. So we need more traffic. Yeah. So if you want it, if you need more traffic, just get the 25 that hang up and you'll be in really, really good shape.
So they were trying to make an appointment.
Yeah.
Yes, they were trying and a quarter of the time they couldn't even do that.
They couldn't even make an appointment. So.
So yeah, so they rated the, the manufacturers on a scale.
None of these people better be in a, in our coaching group.
Yeah. So they didn't give us the dealership names but they did give us the brands. So the brands that did the best in terms of they graded on hold times, ease of making an appointment and offering of alternative transportation. Acura was the number one brand followed by Mazda, Lexus, Infiniti and Volkswagen were the top five.
Now I wouldn't have guessed that.
I would not have guessed Infiniti, although they don't have a lot of business right now. So I think that it's easy to get an appointment in there and then the bottom four see if there's anything that seems like it has a theme to it. Fiat, Alfa Romeo, Chrysler Polestar, Genesis and Lincoln Genesis.
Really?
So Genesis shocked me.
Wow.
So I think a thing with Genesis, they're supposed to offer you a loaner car and I would assume that they'd be pretty easy to get a hold up to.
I mean most of those are C tier brands.
Yeah. Well, a lot of them are Chrysler products. Fiat Alpha and Chrysler, all Chrysler.
You want to then you want to watch something funny?
Sure.
Me getting, getting in a Fiat.
Is there a video of that?
No, but we could make one.
I'm sure. I think we should.
We could find a few.
What about a smart car?
Oh, that'd be even funnier.
Yeah, my neighbor's got a smart car. I could ask him if we could borrow it for a video. He'd probably give it to me, but yeah. So. Wow, this stunk. The best score was a dealer, a Porsche dealer that got a 70 was the highest scored. But. But yeah. So we're one out of four times. We're not even setting an appointment. But it just says, you know, well run service departments focus on increasing customer loyalty. And the first service experience to drive that loyalty is the customer's phone call to schedule an appointment vehicle. Customers who find scheduling service difficult vote with their feet by moving to another dealership or an independent shop or even just getting rid of the car. I think all that's true.
So we're seeing a quarter of the.
Time they wouldn't even make an appointment.
But we're also in that they're saying.
That it wasn't that great of an experience even when they did.
So. That's exactly right.
Thanks so much for watching this clip of Service Driving Revolution. We're uploading new stuff every day, so make sure you subscribe and click the bell icon so you don't miss out. If you have a question you'd like us to answer on the show, call 8333 Ask SDR and we'll answer your question on the show. That's 8333 Ask SDR. For special deals on our books and training, head over to offers.chriscollinsinc.com that's offers.chriscollinsInc.com I'm Chris Collins and I'll see you in the next video.
