Dealership Phone Systems? From apps to CRM Integrations, what you got?

[Dan Sayer]

That's what we use. I do everything I can to keep away from it.

@Jeff Kershner what issues are you having with GoTo?

 

[Zhendrix]

I've been impressed with Invoca. They aren't a complete phone system. but are a call-tracking provider that can provide some actionable insights, especially if you have a centralized BDC.

Invoca | Automotive Call Tracking & Conversation Analytics

Invoca's automotive call tracking helps marketers drive more calls, showroom visits, and sales. Track calls from your automotive marketing and convert more callers to sales.

www.invoca.com

Thanks for the kind words Ryan. Invoca integrates with ALL phone systems but our jam is conversation intelligence for multi-location businesses.

Most of Automotive has indexed on improving QA or call handling performance via SaaS + managed services. A lot of the efforts are focused on what to do post call to improve agent handling. The importance of improving call handling will never go away.

Beyond call handling/QA - Of course I am a bit biased but the ability to integrate pre and post call data back in marketing, CX, and sales enablement is where the juice is worth the squeeze.

For revenue teams (Sales, Marketing and CX) - being able to dynamically update campaigns, audiences, and PII dynamically inside CRM or CDPs based on pre-call journey or conversational elements has been what I'm geeking out on. IMO - Phone calls for consumers could be considered escalation points because, "I couldn't find what I was looking for online". The number consumers dial is no longer as important as how they found the number.

For example - Here's what marketing and advertising partners should be doing with call data partners like Invoca. I believe there's other automotive call tracking providers doing this too?

1. Customer calls dealer to inquire about a car they found from a quick google search.
2. Invoca uses voice-print (biometric voice AI) to identify the agent and update CRM.
3. GPT call summary indicates customer is interested in a new or used Grand Cherokee, has a trade, has a less than perfect credit score, and has specific payment bands that must be met. Also asks about rebates.
4. Post call - session level data is sent to ad platforms, martech, CRM, etc.
5. Customer is served a facebook ad from advertising partner based on conversational details + their organic keyword search
6. Customer converts and buys car

FullPath + Invoca Example from above:


While the importance of call handling will never go away - It gets easier when you help customers from calling who shouldn't have to call (self-serve) along with smart routing customers to the correct personnel with all the pre-call data in front of them to handle quickly.

 

[NIOMARVIN83]

We use the Webxloo CRM for incoming and outgoing calls. It's a great system and we're very happy with it. It integrates with WhatsApp and records calls for monitoring.

 

[andwrig]

So your issues are within the GoTo Contact Complete product mainly or within the Connect product? We have 7 main campuses of stores and service centers and an all-remote team of Service BDC agents working for all locations. They're currently on Volie but that product is severely overpriced for a small Service BDC. So it would be nice to have those 7-8 people within our own phone system but still have the functionality of a contact center tool instead of straight Connect. If GoTo's Contact tool is sub-par in reliability, that would be an issue for us. Jack's contact center/BDC tool is a 3rd party add-on, with a similar feel to Five9's. You're going to use TotalCX for your call center or you're using TotalCX for VoIP and tracking and adding their 3rd party tool for the BDC functions?

Dan - Sorry for my delayed response. We would use TotalCX for everything, yes. I have several multi-store groups in my 20 group using TotalCX in a similar set up and they are very happy. I'd strong encourage you to connect with Phil Sherman at Telecom Solutions if you haven't made a decision yet. He's extremely knowledgeable and will save you money. Worth every penny in my opinion.

 

[JDHigginbotham]

Getting closer to Auto again, this thread is evoking a broader strategy for me than just selling standalone APIs.

More than ever, I'm aligning to the UCaaS side of our business, Vonage Business Communications (VBC). I'm learning we have a decent footprint with dealers using that offering. I'm learning that platforms want to integrate with it.

I see a lot of creativity in here in leveraging UCaaS, SaaS, and APIs from different vendors. One wonders what the value would be to this group getting consolidated support from Vonage across all of those areas.

Give me brutal feedback.

Has anyone here had experience using VBC in their dealership?

How does it compare to GoTo?

With the consistently negative sentiment of GoTo here, do you care that many large SaaS platforms are white-labeling their service?

What do you think Vonage needs to do to compete with GoTo and Twilio both directly with dealerships as well as subprocessors of SaaS offerings?

Happy to take some of those conversations offline, too.

 

[jeffspreen]

We have 4 stores, 300 handsets, all on a on-premise system that sends all our calls up to 1 cloud system, we self-host.

The license fee is like $1000/per year. 3CX Phone system. It is amazing. We manage it all ourselves.

We run separate VOIP SIP Accounts for each store, then hook those up the "3CX Phone System"

You guys are all getting jacked with those cloud systems when they charge you $XX per user per month. This is a game changer, and we can transfer calls between stores, monitor flow, have Service and Sales BDCs pick up anywhere in a multi-city\multi-rooftop format.

Best of all we control the flow, the system, the expense, and best of all our data.

Jeff Spreen
Spreen Automotive