Greg_Gifford said:

but... it's a link in a text message. They don't need to type it in or remember it, they can just click the links. who cares if the link is bestaudidealerinvirginiabeachthatsbetterthanalltheotheraudidealersinviginiabeach.com?

but yeah, if you have a long URL and you think people would care, just use a URL shortener. Why go spend $1500+ a year to have a .dealer or .cars TLD when you can use bit.ly for free?

plus, there are massive SEO implications for switching your domain name to something else for non-SEO reasons...

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People are super cautious about what they click on in a text message, and there are character restraints. Nothing I'm speaking of has anything to do with SEO.

DrewAment said:

So close to pulling the trigger....

View attachment 8851

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Now that's funny

We are a .dealer client. I think some vendors should take notice as this is a great way to get a URL that can be used for your dealer clients. Although we haven't put it into practice yet, that is our plan for the .dealer string. It is far easier to use a shortener in a text message like vb.audi.dealer than it is to use audivirginiabeach.com for example.

I get it. Making cold calls to dealerships is a grind. Sometimes, you have to change things up to relieve boredom.

Buuuuuuuuut... that ain't the way!

Thanks for sharing, Aimee. This is the perfect place to put this, as many vendors watch DealerRefresh. Regardless of whether anyone at Milestone Marketing gets this, others will heed warning from your experience

Greg_Gifford said:

people immediately recognize the purpose of your site.

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So close to pulling the trigger....

JDHigginbotham said:

Thank you for your participation, Drew. Great points.

1. What is your sentiment on the experience/capability you have with where you listen to calls today? What platform do you use to listen to them? What is missing?

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My overall opinion:

All the call recording.tracking companies do the basic function of listening to calls all the same. I don't know of a "perfect" system. I personally believe that a lot of the "scoring" systems need to be able to be personalized based on the dealer needs.

We are "over alerting" our managers with emails/texts/popups, etc. I had one desk manager tell me that she received WAY TOO MANY "alerts" to keep on top of them all during her day. Over ~140 emails and ~50 texts a day to filter through according to her.

The person that performs badly on the phone consistently will do so day after day. IMO = Spending a scheduled ~15-20 min listening to 10 random calls a day will tell you the same thing as filtering through and wasting time trying to keep up with all the alerts, dashboards, logins, etc etc.

On a side note: I have looked at most, if not all of the systems. CarWars, CallRevu, Marchex -- etc etc etc. The incentive structure on those programs and keeping the dealership signed up are dependent on sending alerts, and saying you are doing a bad job == scare tactics. Just look at a recent OEM change with their call tracking provider causing fail call rates to go UP. Was that change made because we got to good on the phones? Fail rates were down? Needed proof that we needed them? Yes, a little conspiracist.

BillKVMotorCo said:

The exhausting reality of overposting AI bots.

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No - that's pure Vitale there. I'm scared to think of what would happen if Chris used a bot

Carsten said:

Use WordPress if you want to be a hacking target.
Adding plugins is like buying oil at Dollar General. They may work ... but good luck!

ecommerce is always going to look stale to some extent. Amazon hasn't changed much over the years.

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State your case and examples on the hacking comment @Carsten
We've been running WP sites since 2010 and been able to avoid hacking.
@jeffspreen I can put you in touch with our WP dev if you'd like. DM me if you want his contact information.

GrayScott said:

I have a tool I created with a friend that does just this. It will work to remove your negative reviews that you may struggle to have removed

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@DaveNovotny I book marked Gray Scott's DR podcast. It's bad ass
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Alex Snyder said:

If the FTC gets their way, transparency will be forced on dealers overnight.

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"just get them in here" is ​

I have seen Alex Snyder's FT mock of fully embracing the FTC compliance mission. I am pounding the table, this rule will like turning on a light in a dark room... the cockroach dealers will run for their lives, the pioneering dealers will embrace it.

I believe it will create a more informed internet shopper, which will create less distrust and less friction in the sales process.

DaveNovotny said:

We are dealing with a few reviews from someone that hasn't visited our business. We look in the DMS and CRM, nothing to be found with their name. As well as nobody in service recalling the situation. We have replied and asked them to reach out to us with their concerns and reported to google. Still waiting on google's "pending decision".

I am hesitant in wanting to deal with a company like this as well due to the same concerns you all have with access to the business profile etc.

I was asked to look into these companies, and I appreciate all of your feedback and thoughts!

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My advice would be to respond publicly with that information if they refuse to reach out. A potential customer seeing how you respond to the inevitable negative review is just as important as them reading your good reviews. It is okay to reply with "I have no record of you ever communicating with us or visiting our business". In the past, I been very direct and called out how rude a customer was to our employees and how they took our car overnight and smoked in it, etc. If all your reviews are perfect then customers will just call BS.

Just roll with it.

I have never disputed or attempted to have a review removed. I have replied to a few that I believed were posted in error or that I disagreed with.

What are you dealing with Dave? Did you have someone hammer you with 10 different email addresses and have all of their friends hammer you as well?

Alex Snyder said:

If the FTC gets their way, transparency will be forced on dealers overnight.

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It is long overdue. Well, in my opinion it is long overdue.

Ryan Everson said:

Or I guess we can just wait for the CARS rule

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RE, @Alex Snyder showed me his full transparency 'out the door' UI and I jumped out of my chair. With my car-shopper hat on, the completeness of fees was inspiring (i.e. the unknowns are now known).

Alex Snyder said:

Happy Birthday DealerRefresh! What were you doing 19 years ago?

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We have two salespeople that are the same age as DealerRefresh...

joe.pistell said:

haha, alex, I was hunting thru Archive.org to find CF's "buy your car in your PJ's" and found this old school avatar
https://web.archive.org/web/20060713150122/http://www.checkeredflag.com/

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Wow! Our DealerOn site prior to moving to Dealer.com (when the pajamas stuff came out). This was the time when you were not cool unless you had a talking lady on your website

Alex Snyder said:

May of 2005, I was the Director of Ecommerce at Checkered Flag

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haha, alex, I was hunting thru Archive.org to find CF's "buy your car in your PJ's" and found this old school avatar
https://web.archive.org/web/20060713150122/http://www.checkeredflag.com/

Back in the day, I had left Bresee Chevrolet and moved to Sun Auto Group as marketing dir.
Here's the home page I inherited

https://web.archive.org/web/20050209124636/http://www.usedcarking.com/

I helped Homenet improve the platform so much, Jesse Biter, Homenet CEO gave me a dev team to build UsedCarKing from my photoshop mocks. (be nice, I'm not an artist!

https://web.archive.org/web/20110808060847/http://www.usedcarking.com/

I was the cradle-to-grave "Internet Sales Manager" at Williamson Honda in Lincoln, NE. I carried three phones. My cordless office phone on one hip, my personal Razr in my pocket, and a Palm phone on the other hip that was tied to the phone number on all my AutoTrader and Cars.com listings. I'm totally getting cancer somewhere in that region soon SMH.

If the FTC gets their way, transparency will be forced on dealers overnight.

In May of 2005, I was the Director of Ecommerce at Checkered Flag living in Virginia Beach.

I found this in my archives. It's a mock of a new search UI (created while I was Head of Marketplace at CARS.com). It never saw the light of day but I still like the concept

User story: I know the YMM of what I'd like to buy, I have some fav features, but IDK much about the trims.

The mock attempts to display the trim hierarchy and help the shopper visualize, as you move up or down the trim list, display what changes. The shopper picks their favorite trims and clicks submit....

Result:

A new search UX

My mission was to get creative and think of new and unique search experiences. My design goal was to assist the power user. This mock would be easy to Improve by adding price filters (i.e. under $xx,xxx) , add deal bucket filters. Then to stimulate repeat use, add new arrival filters (i.s. VINs you haven't seen yet), price changes since your last visit and 'likely to sell soon'.


p.s. inspired by the Kayak 'multi-date' power shopper Grid UI...


It was a 1st draft, be nice to me hahaha

Good convo/insight --

I also have 2 comments to expand a couple made on the show:

1 - No one is listening to ALL these calls. And, I support my statement during the show yesterday... randomly listening to 10 calls a day was probably one of the best things you can do. You will find patterns and problems == voicemail abandons, 22 transfers to talk to someone, little Billy not asking for appointment, etc etc.

2 - If you are a person that values call recording, pay attention to legislation in Congress that is attempting to do away with automatic recorded phone calls - even for announced calls ("the following call may be recorded" ...). They are attacking this from 2 angles == consumer privacy //and// workplace surveillance. The workplace surveillance angle is basically saying "we don't like you holding your employees accountable".

Its actually a great concept - as the old way of "please enter your PIN" at the end of the call was fraught with problems, mainly salespeople forgetting to enter their PIN/Code.

I think the real pain is going to be the logic for a new event/lead vs matching it to an old one. Like, do all calls from same caller ID match and event/lead? For how long? Does it match to unclosed/lost events? Or also to closed/sold events?

Here’s another take:

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