It was great speaking with Veronica Dunford and Mike Correra with DealerBuilt!
They recently announced that they partnered with Parker Gayle that’s the perfect fit for their company in terms of culture, mindset and goals. Just bettering what they’re already doing to make them better with an increase in resources and advising.
Veronica and Mike also came to announce the new ceDMS. CE meaning “Consumer Experience” which flows with the shift in the industry to focus on fixed ops. Mike The Car Guy explains, “where there hasn’t been a lot of attention on fixed ops for so long. I started in the auto industry 30 years ago as a tune-up tech… Sales is the focus of the automotive industry, but service is what keeps it afloat and its so often ignored, but recently companies like FIXED OPS DIGITAL, companies like DealerBuilt have shifted their focus to make sure that dealerships are gaining their strength in their Service Department and their Consumer Experience ceDMS system that we offer now includes a suite of tools like texting for customers, video and photo enabled MPI (multi-point inspections) that allows Service Advisors to send pictures or videos of customers vehicles to them in a much easier fashion, mobile bill pay, an appointment scheduling system that’s phenomenal truly the unique thing about it, its not a separate system anymore. So a Service Advisor that’s working the DMS will create an RO they don’t have to minimize and go to a website to send a text to their customer and hope to get a response and go back to into their DMS and complete the RO, its all in that same session they’re already in. The window that they’re working in all day, every day all those components are now in it. We embedded all that technology into our DMS. So all that customer efficiency, customer satisfaction, gross per RO, sales efficiency it all just works. No one answers a phone call anymore so now if a vehicle is up and the tech sees it could use brakes he takes, he takes a picture and sends it to the Service Advisors, they can then text the customer and they can respond. This allows the car to still be done on time. It’s an easier way to keep customers informed on what is going on with their vehicle and keep the service retention as high as it can be.”
How is the staff implementation with the new ceDMS?
Seamless, because it is easy. You get resistance when you’re adding extra work for people. This is in one central location and we make it easier. All we are doing is enhancing something they’re already in.
Veronica adds on her take of the fixed operations departments getting more mainstream focus, “if you start with a bad experience in the Service Drive, which is where I’d say half to 75% of all customers starts at a dealership whether it be by need, want, whatever, they come into that Service Drive and they have a bad experience that person’s going to tell 10. So by increasing the attention to the Service Drive to the marketing and customer experience itself. Forget trying to get a customer out in an hour or less, which is everyone’s magic goal, but the reality is if you rush it and don’t actually treat them well, no matter which department they touch. You’re not going to have happy customers. So why wouldn’t we put a focus on the Service Drive and bring them in, treating them right once if they buy that car that’s the place they want to go.”
Data
Are you really using the influx of data to really engage your customers to keep them coming back?
If all your doing is gathering data without really analyzing it to what your customer wants and needs than your wasting money.
Data without application or action is just information!
