Bobby-- No matter the method you choose, there is so much value in objectively measuring what up to now has been the immeasurable, that to stay ahead of the curve and to serve your clients well, its a critical step. This process is not for every dealer however. To gain the benefit of this view of the performance of your dealership, one has to be willing to be objective...to look in the mirror and to be willing to accept what one sees. It is often not expected. This is a measurement that far surpasses what it is typically known for; the "Real Time Alert" to an issue....this is about knowing your Caller's Journey....every customer is a caller and every customer has a measurable experience that dictates their future interactions with you.
Did you know for instance that across the country, 24% of callers that ask for the sales department in dealerships never reach a sales agent? Would it surprise most dealers to find that half of the callers sent to Voice Mail elect to hang up instead of leave a message? That on almost half of the sales calls that do connect, the customer's contact information is never obtained? That only 23% of calls to sales departments result in an appointment set on that call? 35% of all calls to the website sales line ask for Service?
Regarding making the choice of strategic partners to mine this data for you, I recommend you get a presentation from each vendor in this arena now. Indeed Call Source is now monitoring, and has been a great ad tracking company for a long time. Callbright has recently entered the arena as well. There are significant differences in focus and it is important to understand all to choose the data that fits your initiatives. Regarding cost, when you do a comparison you will find different approaches, but all will be very close --- whether you pay for lines and minutes, or they are included, if there are fixed monthly fees etc are the various approaches to pricing "models".
I am hopeful you will get the feedback you are looking for on CallRevu--- we are happy to provide you the entire list of clients for you to seek reference on the service.
You should demand that your pricing can be set with "caps". Most dealers get about 4 calls for every vehicle sold- measured on ad tracking lines only-- hence if you do not limit you budget, your will spend about $1200 total for every 100 vehicles sold. If you choose to limit the budget, be sure to request the vendor to measure your tracked lines by call volume and propose a daily volume that will ensure you get every day of the month inside your budget. In very few cases is the call volume low enough to consider monitoring local lines---this can get very expensive very fast and leaves out an important measurement---what ad source is in play?
I am glad to see that you are considering bringing light to this huge part of our business. And I agree with your Dad---it often seems that we just keep adding new thing after new thing without an impact on volume or net. The process of measuring your performance will add sales and customers via the alert to things gone wrong---no doubt about that---but the real ROI is based on what you do with what you learn---once you shine a light into this formerly dark hole, the hard truth is you will see that your are not done yet, and there may be yet another focus and $pend required--training/BDC/telephony/hardware---exactly what we all went through when we began to measure our e-commerce!!
