What VW dealers need to know about the "Response Rate Report"

[Dave Erickson]

If you work at a VW dealer like I do chances are your area rep sends a report called "Lead Response Time Report" every single month to every GM and owner in your area (or at least in mine). This report can make or break your afternoon. I'm personally not a fan of lead response times as a primary indicator of how well a dealer does with leads, but I've learned to live with them. They exist, they get passed around, they are probably even used in presentations. What worries me is that if you're having a slow month (or the area or even VW as a whole) this report can incorrectly be attributed to as a cause.


Needless to say, our standings are usually in the top 4, but this month we had a new person in our internet sales department and he incorrectly stopped the clock on service leads by simply assigning them to service (our service department doesn't use the same CRM, so this obviously led to ongoing clock counts on the few he did this on).


If you work at a VW dealer you know that status changes don't "stop the clock" on VW provided leads, you actually have to log in your CRM an email or phone call event, even if you need to enter a fake number to do so (insane I know).


Though we had responded to 88% of leads in under 15 minutes our average response time caused us to be in last place because the few service leads weren't correctly stopped.


All hell broke lose. My GM wanted to know why. I figured it out and corrected the situation, but in doing so I began to look closer at the VW lead program managed by Urban Science and here's what you need to know:


If you received a lead last month and a duplicate lead the following month the duplicate lead response time is NOT reported even though duplicate lead is in your report for the current month. To make matters stranger the actual time it took you to respond to the new lead is the same time to respond time as the older duplicate lead (not the actual time).


This means if it took you 25 minutes to respond to the lead last month, but only 4 minutes this month it doesn't report the improvement. The newer lead will show 25 minutes and not 4. According to Urban Science they didn't want to confuse dealers with a second column called something like “new response time” and factor it in (personally I think we can handle it).


It was my fear all day that duplicate leads were reporting with inaccurate time to respond times, but Urban Science assured me they are not factored in and are just displayed for informational purposes. Displaying them for informational purposes only when they aren’t actually called that is also a problem because your GM may print the report and show you some of the leads and want to know why you aren’t doing better and if the lead is one of the duplicates that have an incorrect response time (about 13% in my case) then that’s a problem that’s much better solved by telling him to ignore it and pull up your own CRM report instead.


Or better yet just sit down with your GM and pick a lead or two from each day and personally evaluate it for not only acceptable response times, but also quality responses and successful engagement that lead to sales.

Because after all, that’s what it’s all about. Not how quickly you can stop a clock.

 

[Alex Snyder]

We're at the beginning of a whole slew of new asks around lead dispositioning. I'm deep into it with a number of lead disposition companies for different manufacturers, so I'm grabbing my popcorn with great interest.



P.S. What frustrations the dealer goes through is rarely mentioned in these conversations.

 

[yagoparamo]

The systems are fine if used as a way to somewhat measure what we do, find gaps, and get better at it.

The problem is when management just takes the data without understanding it and the value they focus is just on the negativitty of the time.

What of I respond really fast but I suck at selling cars?
What is I'm persistent and engaging the customer so I'm busy but I sell some?

Tools must be used to improve what we do not as a means to punish the ISM.

The problem is management not the tool.

 

[Dave Erickson]

Hi Alex,
Frustration wouldn't even begin to describe how this report completely sidetracked me and the department for a few days.
Everyone seems to misread this report including our area manager who said with an explanation mark I might add "1st two leads took 49 hours to respond to!" It was one of the duplicate service leads that got incorrectly stopped the first time, but not the second time.



I honestly don't care how Urban Science wants to report their data as long as they let everyone know about it. What worries me also is that the data can be repurposed incorrectly and shit always rolls downhill to a lowly internet director such as myself.


It's time for me to my morning coffee down, ride my scooter 4 blocks to the franchise and sell some cars.

 

[Alex Snyder]

The problem is management not the tool.

On the surface it sure looks that way, but reality is there are a lot of things at fault....including the tool. At the heart of all of it is that there isn't a standard measuring stick between every OEM, every ILM, every CRM, every dealership and absolutely no way to consistently educate traditional management to the fact that everybody does it different. So you end up with Dave getting yelled at for something that wasn't fully in his control.

Overall, it sucks for Dave but it sounds like he was able to get things straight. Yeah, that's one of those "ends justifies the means" statements.

But I totally agree with Dave that the tool should more accurately reflect the measurement and the measurement should be more detailed. On the plus side Dave, companies who handle lead dispositioning are making moves to require more information be sent back to them from the certified ILM/CRM tools out there. Hopefully you will begin to see more detailed reporting soon.

 

[yagoparamo]

On the surface it sure looks that way, but reality is there are a lot of things at fault....including the tool. At the heart of all of it is that there isn't a standard measuring stick between every OEM, every ILM, every CRM, every dealership and absolutely no way to consistently educate traditional management to the fact that everybody does it different. So you end up with Dave getting yelled at for something that wasn't fully in his control.

Overall, it sucks for Dave but it sounds like he was able to get things straight. Yeah, that's one of those "ends justifies the means" statements.

But I totally agree with Dave that the tool should more accurately reflect the measurement and the measurement should be more detailed. On the plus side Dave, companies who handle lead dispositioning are making moves to require more information be sent back to them from the certified ILM/CRM tools out there. Hopefully you will begin to see more detailed reporting soon.

Alex,

I totally agree that the tool should get better--we should aim for everything to get better. Including the management misreading the data the tool provides.