Q & A | Automated Phones vs Humans

Foreign.

Welcome to your Friday drive by. This is where we answer your questions, the questions that are pressing in your mind. Say hello to everybody, Chris Jones. Hello, everyone. The number, should you have a question is 833-3-ASK STR. That's 8333-ASK SDR. Let's go to this week's question.

When it comes to two things, almost every dealership you walk into, you'll find dealers talk about the phones. They all know they're broken, but nobody really holds it accountable to fix the process and create improvement. Number two, the sales to service handoff.

Again, the thing that's almost constantly broken. So every dealer knows if they're not enforcing this process, it contributes to silo effect. It really hurts themselves. Two things that are really broken almost every dealership and rarely, rarely get fixed. So just curious what your thoughts might be. Why is it happening? How do they fix it? Just some feedback. What do you think? Thanks a lot.

I mean, it's funny with the phones. Rich is like one of the things that we'll hear from time to time is I need more traffic. And then the, the dealership's booked out two weeks and nobody's answering the phone. And it's like, you need, what do you. What are we talking about? Like that. Let's answer the phone. Like, what, what was those stats in that, that one episode that we had?

It was one out of every four just hung up and didn't set an appointment. Yeah, when they were purposely calling to try to set an appointment. Like, even when you're making a fake appointment, 25 couldn't handle it. That's frightening to me.

Yeah, Well, I think one of the, the things that is lost when you have so many public companies owning dealerships is you don't have that business owner that's calling to make sure people are answering the phone that care about the way people answer the phone. We, we kind of approach it like, hey, if you want a car, you got to fight your way in here. If you want an appointment, fight your way in here. But it's not a foreign. It's not consumer friendly. And it's why dealerships lose 80 of the customers to independence after warranty's up. Like, it's, it's.

Oh, they're making it easy, aren't they?

Yeah, it's a good point. Like, we're, we're working on a thing for, for a video. Well, I'm gonna actually do this at Top Dog this year. I'm gonna talk about AI and how it's going to change the business, I think a lot of people don't really understand how much it's going to change, but I really believe that the industry will end up in a model where sales and service are one in the same and you have portfolio managers managing a portfolio of clients, not service and sales. It's too inefficient the way we're doing it and it doesn't, it, it's just not customer friendly. It's gonna have to evolve and there's too many steps in the way we're doing it. So the, the service or the sales to service handoff is easy. It's just never, it's rarely ever done consistently whatsoever. I, I would say in the dealerships, I've seen that do it the best. It's when they have sales people in the drive and if they take somebody in to introduce them to service, it's one, it's required for the salesperson to get credit for that sale. Two, they have salespeople in the drive that will talk to them and say, hey, this is where you come, this is how you call if an advisor is busy. But what happens most of the time is the reason why it doesn't stick is because the salespeople go back there with a customer. All the advisors are busy because we run with two advisors less than we need and they're writing 20 ROs a day and they don't have time to stop and say hi to somebody. And if they did, they, the energy from that conversation would be, well, I never want to come here if this is how. Oh yeah, it's like, oh, you took me back to the prison, the federal prison in the back. Because the, it's just, the energy is not welcoming, it's not fun and friendly. And how many advisors throughout the day have 10 minutes to sit and talk to a new sales client and really, you know, pet the dog and get to know him. And so, I mean, you know, it's possible to do it. I've done it before. But for the most part with the, with the, you know, mindset that we have in the industry right now, we don't prioritize the customer experience enough. Like, we will spend tons of money on marketing and we won't spend money on a real person answering the phone.

Just hear what you said there. We'll pay to get them to call.

We will pay people.

But we won't pay someone to be there to answer the phone.

I mean, think about our company. We have, we have what, 10 people here? And I don't know how Many people out in the field, but we always have somebody answering the phone.

Always. We have backup plans in case that person is not available.

Yeah, I couldn't imagine. I couldn't imagine that if you couldn't get somebody on the phone.

But it's happened. I've. I've tried to call clients before and just for the heck of it, called the dealership line.

It's so.

It's.

You know, that's a whole man.

Don Crevier was a great mentor, but I remember he. He sat me down and he said, listen, that person answering the phone, because we used to have. So think about this. We had two at the front, and then we had receptionists in every department, too. So, like, imagine you had service receptionists. You use cars. Many, like, they all had their own receptionist. But he used to say, like.

Never would go for an automated system ever. And he. He would talk about how that person was.

You know, very, very valuable. Like the. The. There was one.

Receptionist that we had that we paid her, and we paid her really, really well. And she had the ability to not only know people, so when people would call, she would know. We also had a system where it would say who was calling. Like, it would come up on the screen, but she would know. She could chat him up while she put them on hold, gave somebody directions, and told a salesperson to pick up line one. Like, she could. She could juggle all that. And she did it with a smile, and she made people feel great. And you, like, just think about the situation where you're like, oh, I don't want to pay. I don't want to pay. I want to have an automated thing. And in Don Crevy, his philosophy was pay more for that position. And it worked like he, you know, it's. It's. You're telling people who you are by all of your interactions. And if your first interaction is automated. And then, so making the appointment for the Jet Skis, I tried to do that, and I didn't succeed. And then, you know what. You know what Missy did? So I was on hold. I think I was on hold for 30 minutes. Oh, and then. And I was sitting there in front of Missy and. And my parents. Terrible hold music, by the way. Like, I don't know. I didn't know that Muzak still existed, but it was terrible. How did we endure that for the years that we had Muzak?

I don't know.

It is absolutely how you would torture people if you wanted them to go insane, is what it is. And through the quality of like, how do they make the sound quality so bad, so terrible?

You. Yeah. But anyway, so I. I call, I ask for service. They put me on hold, and then I'm just on hold. And every once in a while, you can hear somebody pick it up and put it back down.

Yeah. Because it's probably ringing on the other side, but they don't want to address it yet.

And so that just happens over and over again. Right. So finally I give up. Missy calls the front desk and just says, hey, nobody's picking up back there. Could you handle my phone number.

And ask them to call me? And then later that day, they called her, and she made. She made an appointment. But just think about that. Like, how many people wouldn't, like, with jet Skis in. In that vicinity? There's. I don't know, there's at least seven dealerships that you could call, and all.

You have to do to get the business is answer the phone. Is that what you're saying?

And my. My only loyalty to them is that I bought it there.

Yeah.

Like, that's it.

Right?

You know?

Yeah.

So just think about how much business you could do if somebody actually answered the phone and knew what they were doing.

Our receptionist at Infinity, her name was Ursula, and she literally was a celebrity. Like, because she talked to people before they came in for their appointments to buy cars or service, and they, like, it was a point to stop and see her. And that reminds me a lot of what you just said. Like, you're.

But the guy running that dealership shared that same feeling about people that we do.

There was no automation possible. I. I would guess that if I called there right now, I'd still get a human receptionist.

Yeah.

He was so staunch about that, and I think kind of in the same.

Like, that same age bracket with Donnie. Like, that's probably why that is.

Tony was older, but I was.

He's.

I mean, I think we share that sensibility.

I would definitely not want automated.

I think that you have an unfair advantage in an automated world. If you can humanize it. Well, that might be coming when you're talking about just connection with people.

It's a good point.

If you do it right. If you do it wrong, it's a.

Disadvantage, but it's still better than what everybody else is doing.

Yeah. Thanks, Rich, for the question. I don't know that we have an answer. We're just talking through it. But remember the numbers. 8333/STR. 8333/STR. And we'll see you next time on Service Drive Evolution. Thanks for watching this week's Drive By. I hope we gave you something to think about over the weekend. 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.chris collins inc.com. that's offers Chris CollinsInc. Com. I'm Chris Collins, and I'll see you in the next video.