TAKE POLL Is Mystery Shopping your Dealership Enough? Good- Bad?

[Steven Buesink]

We measure each call based on the following criteria. Having to occur in no particular order (except the intro), each category is scored 1 for yes and 0 for no.

1. Proper, polite introduction
2. Ask customer fact-finding question(s) in order to broaden their interest and illuminate other vehicle options
3. Verify correct spelling of customer's first and last name
4. Ask for 2 phone numbers [only required to get 1]
5. Set a solid appointment [solid = date and specific time]
6. Employee gives own full name and contact information
7. Get customer's primary email address
8. Send a follow-up email within 30 minutes of the call
The follow-up email sent should include any or all of the following info:
-Appointment confirmation
-Directions to the dealership
-Additional pictures of vehicle of interest
-Additional pictures of similar vehicles

We track all employees and all stores so we can show trends over time. This must be a consistent and standardized analysis. Please let me know if there is something you would add!

 

[dm18k]

@Steven Buesink

I like the process... I am a strong believer in "People don't fail, Processes Fail" Coming from a call center background of six years, I was really surprised on how laid back dealerships are on metrics. I spent three years inside a call center as a team lead, and three years for the same company in retail as an assistant manager. During my time I took part in holding J.D Powers award for customer service 3 years in a row. The company set up very strong processes, goals, and accountability to every employee. Once the processes took place we noticed a decline in bad surveys, happier customers, more sales, referrals and more repeat business. This is no easy task but with a lot of planning and setting up the processes it was hard to fail...

Using Mystery shoppers only show you the surface of the issues...

 

[dm18k]

Here is another example of a bad/poorly put together questions from a mystery shopper

"I am in the market for a new vehicle. I currently drive a 2013 Hyundai and my lease ends in 2 months. I am looking at either a Cruze or a Malibu. I know the size of the cars is different, but can you let me know the differences in available features and pricing? Thank you." we ended up scoring a 90 out of 100 because of the lead time response was 1 hour

 

[Bill Simmons]

Is it good? Yes.
Is it enough? No.

Our guys get mystery shopped enough from our various manufacturers and it can wear them out getting those reports. Even when they did a great job! It is sort of deflating to them to find out the manufacturer was wasting their time.

Instead of my managers mystery shopping their stores, I would prefer they "shop" their staff by monitoring the leads that are already in the CRM better. Pay closer attention to those and you might actually save a deal and sell a car!

 

[dm18k]

@Bill Simmons

I agree with you, It's not enough, outsourced mystery shoppers this only shows the surface of the dealership. I set up a BCC on all outgoing emails from my BDC and also from my sales team. We also setup once the emails read, any click data from the email, and replies. They are all aware of the copy being sent to managers some dislike it. At the end of the day, I know I have quality contact going out and can step in and coach when needed.

 

[Steve Stauning]

I'm not advocating for outsourced or in-house Mystery Shops - if you can DIY properly, go for it!.

But, don't think (as some Internet Managers I know have said) "I know everything my team is sending out - I am in the CRM all day," because this text message (sent from a dealer's BDC Agent to a mystery shop prospect) never showed up in any CRM:

“If we play pathfinder, Will needs to play a bard with the blistering invective spell so that he can literally burn people with his sick rhymes.”​

Moreover, this dealer didn't even know his team was using their mobile devices to send text messages to consumers (a clear, rampant and potentially costly violation of the TCPA). To learn a couple of other things we found recently that never show up in your CRM, be sure and read the latest DealerRefresh post: http://www.dealerrefresh.com/mystery-shops-dont-know-could-be-dangerous/.

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