The challenge
Responding efficiently to enquiries
Steve realised that the FJ Chalke’s dealership were not responding to enquiries efficiently or effectively. Consumers’ attitudes to response are changing. Research shows that customers will buy a car within 48 hours of their initial phone call, so they want dealers to respond quickly.
For a dealership, being on top of your response gives you a significant advantage over your competitors.
The solution
Scoring calls to gain deeper customer insight
Call tracking software provides essential marketing response information. Listening to calls and scoring them allows you to get even more granular with your reports by linking the calls to performance and sales.
To understand how FJ Chalke are performing, they have employed someone to listen to calls, attribute them to the correct media source, allocate them to the correct internal department and score the quality of the call. The daily results provide the management team with a deeper understanding of how customers interact with the business, enabling them to find ways of eliminating the pinch points in the sales process.
Looking at over 4,500 tracked calls from the beginning of the year to the end of April, FJ Chalke can break their enquiries down by internal department as follows:
Of these calls, 5.9% went unanswered because they rang out or the phone was engaged. Once a sales call was answered, on average 20% did not get to a salesperson first time, resulting in a message taken by reception. Moving this to 10% automatically increases the opportunity to do business by getting an enquiry to a salesperson first time.
As part of the review, FJ Chalke gained a strong understanding of what channels generated sales calls for them:
This information allowed FJ Chalke to allocate their marketing spend more efficiently, by advertising on the valuable classified sites and driving more value from pay per click (PPC) advertising.
However, the greatest benefit has been the ability to focus on the areas where they have the most control and least cost – their own website and the manufacturers’ websites.
The results
Improved customer experience
Scoring and analysis of FJ Chalke’s calls highlighted a number of areas for improvement:
- The current telephony is not fit for purpose, especially moving calls between sites. A new system is due to be put into the business.
- The initial listening showed that the sales staff needed to handle their calls better. Intensive telephone training was subsequently provided to all sales staff, resulting in an instant improvement in call quality which has been maintained.
- Potential lost sales opportunities through inefficient processes. Management focused on making sure that sales opportunities were not being lost by reviewing all sales enquiries identified on Mediahawk and making sure they are being managed properly.
None of this insight would have been possible without the systems and reporting provided by Mediahawk.
