Fantastic, informative & Dead-On post!

Heyy :]
Someone talk to me

Heyy bitchh :]

Hello Everyone,
Personally being in the industry since 2003 on the Website/ SEO/ SEM side the one major thing I found is customer service is always the number 1 priority, as well as make sure to be open and honest about the products and services being offered and their capabilities. I believe the company I am currently with has addressed this issue by having customer service and support staff available 24 hours a day/ 7 days a week. Happy New Year!

Ron

Customer Service Thoughts From the Blogosphere

Here are some interesting things I read around the blogosphere today... A frusterated USPS worker: We are not a hand holding service or even a true customer service department. We will document your service complaint, we will tell you...

Maybe we should start a thread about the vendors who continually frustrate us. If anything, it may get them to start changing their tune. What do you all think?

Yeah...they already hit our dealership up for more fees a month prior to me coming back on board. And there really is no difference form what we had before...less then stellar search engine listings.

And adding text to the bottom of a page...isn't that sort of black hatish? Just asking. What I have done in the past was separating the flash content into a XML file so at least the content had a fighting chance to get indexed...(that is if a client wanted flash..)

These automotive web design providers need to embrace web standards..plain and simple. Semantic markup and separating content from style and behavior is the way of the future. And they are not telling us this (us meaning car dealerships) They know that dealer principles want things flying around the screen...so that is what they sell them. And that is poor...poor customer service in my book.

Whoops.....there I go again!!!

Dan G,
You're so right, flash sites are nearly invisible to search engines.

As you know, there is a "work around" where they can add text into the bottom of the flash pages. In these early days of SEO*, this solution works fairly well. BUT... when your competitors wake up and hire SEO specialty firms (like mine), your provider will need a full blown makeover to keep your site in the front pages (sniff... sniff... I smell more fees coming).

If you and your mngt. team ever want to become visible in search engines, rest assured that you're not limited to working with your current web site provider only. Shop around, there are hybrid solutions that can "surround" your main site and point all traffic back to the home site.

G'Luck!
Joe
*Search Engine Optimization

I hear you loud and clear!! I can't seem to get away from horrible CS with the majority of my major vendors.

Our website provider (I SO want to publish the name...but wont...its a big one too) never takes care of issues in a timely manner. I usually have to call numerous times and speak to a few different people to get something done. Very frustrating. I have been a web designer / developer for 10+ years prior to becoming an ISM...and I can tell you they flat out lie to us..even their sales reps. (case in point....100% flash driven sites are NOT what customers want...and no...search engines have not truly found a way to index 100% flash sites...grrrrrrrrrrrr) Problem is..they talked upper management into signing ridiculous contracts..so we're stuck with them...even though we haven't sold one vehicle to any of the "leads" we get from our site (only 5 leads last month!!!)

Our CRM isn't much better. Buggy....goes down at least once a week..usually during the busy hours. CS there is horrible...calls get transferred from one department to the next...calls don't get returned... problems take FOREVER to be fixed. And the same thing...their sales dept talked upper management to sign a multiple year contract.

I hate to think it's the industry as a whole. But I'm leaning that way. Can you tell im frustrated today??

I feel you on this one Jeff (and everyone else)! I love dealerrefresh and all the information I get from this site, but I have never really felt the need to post until now.

Our dealership just signed on with a local company here in IL and its been nothing but a joke. I found this company by reviewing one of the best sites on the net (Hummmmmm?) but maybe he paid more for the site/service than I did. I wont give out my site or give out the outstanding site that drove me to this company. But its been nothing but a bunch of lies and patches. They could have told me the truth and I would have managed with it to get what I want. Its a huge let down. I am thankful they have no contracts. But enough about them and their VM box only service.

The industry as a whole is a mess. I come for a very process driven industry and actually did CS for 8 years. Had I preformed like the vendors I use today, I would have been fired. Or my boss for that matter. I have to admit that the size of the company does not matter in this industry. I figured that the larger companies would have had better service, but that has not held true. I can understand the smaller companies trying to make it big, but these larger companies with deeper pockets need to get it together. Come on. The automotive industry is quickly getting with it and IMs are becoming smarter and expecting more. We deserve it and we PAY for it.

Thats just my two cents. Thanks Jeff and the dealerrefresh community for letting me get this off my chest. I cant go to management and say these vendors are a real pain because I'm the one that stuck my neck out to get them in the door. I could lose my job as sad as that is.

There are many companies in the market place worldwide that are great CRM service Companies so the examples are there for the rest of us to follow.

The problem is most do not want to follow.

You look at dealerships such as Jeff’s MB Dealership, 6years running they win the best of the best awards. This required luck, hard work as well as a commitment from the owners, management and staff.

You look at Jeff’s site, an ideal example of a boutique site without the “Pimping and Cookie Cutter” approach. I loved the image of the living room viewing the vehicle in the driveway. The site was an invitation to come in which is what a site should be.

There was a wise man, Walter Deming; W. Edwards Deming - Wikipedia

Mr. Deming ( it is amazing how few in dealer management country wide even know who this person is) laid out his thoughts many years ago on quality control; which was embraced by the Japanese Industry. As we can see the principles were well founded as the Japan Auto Industry has done well.

In Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China it is mandated that his thoughts and ideas are studied in business schools.

The examples are there, LL Bean, Costco, Dell Computer and many others to follow. Customer Service/Satisfaction is the focus throughout the organization.

I think the gradual move of some of the OEM’s to centralize their sales and supply channels, IE: Toyota, Honda through ecommerce and the Internet will help the industry achieve greater CRM with their clients. When you look at the strengths of successful OEM’s they have a strong, two way relationship with their customer base.

Behavioral Science and CustomerBehavior

Harvard Business Review On Point republished a great paper on customer service by Chase and Dasu that uses behavioral science to explain how people perceive service. The paper is chock full of goodness on how to make customers feel better about a compa...

Great timing of the article Jeff...

Upon returning to my hometown dealer group six weeks ago, the Owner and GM's of the group entrusted in me to choose the ILM and Vehicle Management Tool (VMT) that I felt would be most productive for the Internet Departments success. What an honor, I didn't want to let them down.

Two weeks and much research later, I proudly sat in the owners office presenting the features and benefits of the company I chose, and how their product would seemlessly integrate the VMT with our ILM and most important of all... ROI from all of it.

Entrusting in my decision, the owner immediately had his secretary process the credit card payment to get the set-up rolling.

Fyi for all, I did not dispute any of the set-up fees or monthly charges as I thought they were fair for what I thought the dept could show in ROI, and may hopefully get in return for tech support service afterwards. Nor did they have to travel, present, or close the deal. I did that for them.

They said I was fortunate they were not charging more since it was a dealer 'group' even though it was only one DMS dial-in number to ADP and one outgoing vehicle feed for all websites and vendors.

Four weeks after payment for first month and set-up, I feel as I was LIED to by my sales rep and am now a beta tester for their product.

Product Issues: Lead routing between only two of us receiving leads is still not consistent, vehicle pulling is 80% without stock photos of new, the 'vehicle brochure' just sucks, and again most important of all- ROI... The reports do not show it accurately.

Customer Service Issues: The ONE tech support guy is knowledgeable, responsive, and helpful but all he can do is put a bandaid on the functionality issues that the sales rep LIED to me that the tool could do well, and now won't even return an email. Good luck calling the main company number without knowing an exact extension, all one will get is voicemail boxes.

To my fellow ISM's craving to know this VMT/ILM company's name; I don't want to use DealerRefresh as a resource to slam anyone, but at the same time what would you do in these circumstances?

All responses welcome!

Wow. Had a bad experience lately (I mean regularly)?

It is SO true. The only truly excellent customer service vendor I ever came across in the industry was Cars.com, and even with them I am sure it was that I had the best rep in the company in Oklahoma City -- Jojo. HE (not they) would take care of everything for me. If it was something that he had to pass on, he would always follow up with me to make sure it was done.

I think the point of origin of the problem is that people in the industry are so used to the issue, they don't make decisions based upon it. In other words, poor customer service is almost expected.

You mentioned website providers. In my opinion, dealing with most of the top 10 at one point or another, I think the problem is pretty much across the board. You can find glowing testimonials for any of them, and you can find hate-blogs for them as well.

I recently started working for one, and I can say that an emphasis has been placed (and a department created) to bring customer service to the top of the priority list. Just like with selling cars, it's much less expensive to retain customers than it is to bring in new ones. We recognize this and it is tops on our list of goals.

For other vendors, it seems that all of the "customer service juice" is used up during the sales process. Because almost everything is done through long-term commitments in our industry, the focus has been put on getting the contract signed.

It's just like in baseball. How many players have stellar performance during contract years, sign a 6-year deal, then coast through the next 4 until it's getting close to sign another. Same holds true in automotive. It's sad.

Right on. I barely give my legitimate text messages any attention, so the very idea that I would subscribe to receive solicitations by text message is completely ridiculous.

Brandon Watts
Criteo Evangelist

No crap! I can think of few more annoying things than text message spam.

Few quick thoughts:
About dropping autotrader.com - I would simply track my referring links from their site, setup goals in analytics to track if they are converting at all. You no doubt know how many people contact you via autotrader. If running any banner ads on their site, you should be tracking the results with 'google' analytics as well.
Add it up and see if your ROI is worth it. If not, drop them. Same with any other sites.

tj

I would suggest you encourage your boss to get on cars.com and Auto trader both great sites. With 80% of shoppers starting their searches online you would be in a great position. Cars.com would be my first choice since you don't have to pay for top positioning, on Auto trader you pay to be on top -- really pay, but if you have the budget then I would get on both sites ASAP. Start with cars.com, Once you get started and it reaps the benefit you'll be able to show cold hard numbers to support internet marketing/advertising. Where else could you get your entire inventory seen by millions of car shoppers 24 hours 7 days a week. Internet advertising is Priceless

Hmmm....lightnup on cars.com????

Obviously AutoTrader.com is the logical choice. I have had my ups and downs with them over the past couple years but we meet in the middle-EVERYTIME. They employ some of the best consultants that I have ever worked with. Cars.com is constantly coming into our dealership and begging me to switch to them and cutting out ATC. I asked the cars.com rep, "why would I cut out ATC for Cars.com" her reply was- we have a larger audience, we provide more leads, we are better, we are the best, we PROMISE double the calls (Promise???)---- I asked my ATC rep the same question- His reply was- "I would not suggest cancelling ATC for CARS.com I would try to take a little something away from other media and incorporate both audiences, bottom line ...sell more cars". WOW what a difference- he made the remark-"Competition is a good thing for all of us-my job is to make you successful"

Cars.com is about 4 years behind ATC with their product and their staff- they will grow up one day but I am afraid that by that time they will be owned by AutoTrader.com.

Hi Paul,
I have been employed for an auto manufacturer as a sub-contracted trainer / consultant with dealerships across the mid-western and northeastern states of the US for the last 7 years. (Spent 13 in automotive retail prior). I just want to offer info based upon 3 things you had stated in your original question. The 3 things that stand out to me are "...The dealer was very negative about internet marketing – had a manager that was sharing a dual responsibility - internet marketing and the Hyundai manager", "...die hard, old school used car guy" and "...maximize what you have".

My statements aren't really too profound, but to start, I have found that the old school guys I have worked with in recent years are obviously still very loyal to profitability no matter which dept it comes from. Hence, while they may not admit that they have a sales philosophy which is antiquated or unique, and an internet philosophy which is in left field somewhere, I believe that deep down, they truly want to pick up new ideas on how to be profitable in a volatile marketplace. There are great dealers, good dealers, dealers who pretend they are good, dealers satisfied with mediocrity, and then there are just bad dealers. Before I ever go to work for anyone, I need to know who I am working for to start with, what challenges they face, how long have they been in business, why do they face these challenges, how do they treat their employees, how committed are they to their company's financial success, what evidence do they have to back that commitment, and how open are they to hiring someone for a dept that needs help who is an innovator with logical, statistically proven ideas, and then go out on a limb to invest company capital in such solutions to help overcome the problems?

If this guy is old school, and he is negative on the internet, then it’s obvious he wasn't raised selling on the internet, probably doesn't understand the internet, and he has had people working for him who also do not understand it, hence giving him the impression which he currently holds fast to. Now that the internet marketing has not proven itself out for your dealer, and this based on bad experience, he has his guard up. After all, he has already come up on the short end of the stick because he threw his New Car Manager to the lions by asking him to manage another department which he WANTS a piece of the action in, but had no idea how to approach it. The NCM now has too much on his plate, and was obviously a beginner at internet marketing himself, and the formula for disaster has begun.

Hence, the solution in my mind at this juncture, is not necessarily to drop one or the other remembering that our audience is not necessarily limited to the local geographic Mason-Dixon line scenario, and the frame-in partnerships between the 2 sites give you effective exposure on over 300 sites nationally. If committed to success, how persuasive can you be, and how stubborn can your dealer be? Is he strapped for cash, or just plain stubborn? Stubbornness is a lot easier to overcome than cash flow problems. I can share that, as I have learned from reliable sources on corporate perspective, Cars.com has been a very good investment this year for what I will call "Manufacturer A", and this on a national level in the specific arena of used car marketing. Now I'm not sure how far out of Atlanta you are, but I'm guessing if you're not far off, you probably need a premium listing with A.T. there because of the intense competition. So I see that you are between a rock and a hard place.

One solution might be to present an "old school car guys" version of an in-depth data analysis of what you are working with now (short, sweet, and to the point), how it has fallen short, why it has fallen short, and then cross referencing with ideas that you know will work, and how you could begin to prove that with an objective performance prospectus. I think you also need to surf the net with your dealer too, put in your ZIP, and show him where your cars come up in the search with what you have now. I’ve had pretty decent success getting an old school guy’s attention when all he see’s in an online comparison is his competition. Someone as yourself, who has been around this business a while, I'm sure you'd agree that you need to talk to him in language he concurs with, unfortunately for you, I realize a die hard isn't easy to deal with. I'm a firm believer however that if you do what you always did, you’ll get what you always got in terms of dollars and cents or otherwise.

I personally believe that a very high percentage of good dealers want to find people they can trust amongst other obvious qualifications. Here lies the dilemma-can you trust him, can he trust you? Experience and education typically doesn’t reveal the trust factor. How often have people let him down in the past? I think that this is the biggest issue of all issues because people always project what looks good on the outside to someone they want to impress in interviews, business relations, etc. I have to say that your dilemma is not simple to produce the best results possible given the budgetary limitations, but if it’s not considered beating of a dead horse, I might take another run at getting him to spend a little more on his dealership’s profitability. He could never expect investment returns from the stock market without investment - Do what you always did, get what you always got.

Blessings-
D.D.

Learned a lot over the last week

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I had a question recently posted over at DearlerRefresh.com that caused quite a stir at the dealership and with some vendors. I obviously dont like the current...

Hi Paul,

The Internet is very different now. Selling cars on-line is a very competitive business and most of the dealerships rely on pay-per-click or pay-per-lead via third party vendors. The missing element to greater success is making your web site or web sites rank high organically. People are researching Vehicle Models, not necessarily a dealerships name. They know the vehicle thay want to buy, and so they are researching specifications and prices. So Micro Sites are a very vital option to providing you with organic or natural Search Engine rankings while providing IN-HOUSE leads at no extra cost. This is huge for your dealership. These Vehicle Specific Micro Sites also help raise the ranking of your main dealership site through link popularity. The combination of multiple Micro Sites, organic search ranking and PPC for this industry is the answer you are seeking.

Keyword "2007 Tahoe" #2 Site Courtesy Chevrolet http://www.2007tahoe.com
Keyword "2007 Suburban" #4 Site Courtesy Chevrolet http://www.2007suburban.com
Keyword "2007 Avalanche" #5 Site Courtesy Chevrolet http://www.2007avalanche.com
Keyword "2007 Silverado" #2 Site Courtesy Chevrolet http://www.2007silverado.com
Keyword "2008 Chevy Camaro" #1 Site Courtesy Chevrolet http://www.2008chevycamaro.com
Keyword "2007 Chevy HHR" #6 Site Courtesy Chevrolet http://www.hhr-chevrolet.com
Keyword "2007 Dodge Caliber" #4 Site Hartzheim Dodge http://www.2007dodgecaliber.com
Keyword "2007 Dodge Charger" #7 Site Hartzheim Dodge http://www.haywarddodgecharger.com
Keyword "The Audi Q7" #12 Site Page 2 Fairfield Audi http://www.theaudiq7.com
Keyword "Mercedes GL450" #3 Site Nanuet Mercedes http://www.mercedesgl450.com

If you know Ralph Paglia of Courtesy Chevrolet in Phoenix or Jeremy Beaver of Hartzheim Dodge in San Jose, they will testify that our Micro Sites really do work. Courtesy has received hundreds if not thousands of leads from 20-25 Micro Sites as well as other dealers across the country who have used our successful techniques building Micro Sites.

David Jackson
Fresh Start Studio, LLC.
480-703-6377

Paul,
Welcome back!! I see where your coming from with cutting off sources, I am an Internet and BDC Director for two large Dodge Dealer's in the California Bay Area. An excellent way to produce great quality leads is building Micro Sites, the top Internet Dealers in the country are doing it. Take it from Ralph who created the Courtesy Chevrolet Masterpiece. They are inexpensive to host every month and if you hire the right guy, they dont charge on a per lead basis. Craigslist is always good for 25 cars a month between my two stores as well. Any place you can produce your own leads and have brand recognition is awesome. I have worked as a consultant, a lead vendor, and running large internet departments. The key still in the end is to get quality leads that will sell. I still feel some exposure on both Autotrader.com and Cars.com is best.

Another idea is Specials, most dealers have the buttons on the website but never use them. I have many dedicated specials pages backed by a strong SEM campaign.