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GM 1 Source Leads

42% of the leads come into AVV Web Control between 9 PM and 9 AM. Luckily with Web Control, dealers can respond via their mobile device and stop the GM response clock. Unfortunately, that means you may have to sleep with it under your pillow.

The real question becomes is do consumers expect to be responded to at 11 PM at night. I would be thrilled to have one by noon the following day.

Ed, I'm so glad to see you here! Hope you have an awesome 2010!
I miss this aspect of WebControl right now using DealerSocket at a Ford dealership- I have no way of responding thru the ILM/CRM to stop the clock by email...and when I was using AVV/WebControl, the email sent would even change the status to start the preloaded process. Also, I have no "pager responses" that are logged into the customer history record...it's a bit frustrating.

Because of how WebControl was set up, when I worked for GM, whether we used any type of Blackberry, iPhone, or even an antiquated text receiving phone, as long as we responded with something- whether it be "I'm not in the office right now, I'll get back with you during normal business hours" (that was sent at 3am) or it be a text version of answering their question- which AVV does need to improve that section of what's sent to the Blackberry to include the question- we had anywhere from an average response time of 15minutes to right under 2 hours.

AVV/WebControl can either send you a text notice of a bare bones (name, number, email and vehicle) or send an email to the stores email account- most use Outlook- which a BlackBerry, iPhone or any other "smart" phone that is going to be used to respond to leads. This eliminates the need to log into an ILM/CRM system from your phone- save that for your PC/MAC/laptop/netbook and do process changes from larger equip- not your phone. Too easy to slip.

The only cons I had with AVV/WebControl, was as the overseer that sent the time stopping email after-hours, WebControl could not tell me who the lead had been assigned to in the e-lead notification.
Also, Reynolds locked out WebControl from polling- I'm not a big fan of inexperienced people setting up FTP's, which is what I had at the prior dealership I was at. The other issue was the batching- GM would not go back and update their records once AVV corrected any issues they had- we'd had a big time glitch with our server, which AVV corrected all the times, yet GM would not go back and update the corrections. I was stuck with a 5 hour response time...and hence why technology will keep me in a job at times. There's one more con, yet for the life of me, coffee has not revived what it was...

The pros of having accurate response times and the "pager response emails" being logged into the customer history beat out all the cons though.

VinSolutions is the only one that comes close to offering a stepped up version of WebControl that I've seen from the demos I've sat thru- I'm sure their are others- AutoBase not being one though!
 
Also, Reynolds locked out WebControl from polling- I'm not a big fan of inexperienced people setting up FTP's, which is what I had at the prior dealership I was at. The other issue was the batching- GM would not go back and update their records once AVV corrected any issues they had- we'd had a big time glitch with our server, which AVV corrected all the times, yet GM would not go back and update the corrections. I was stuck with a 5 hour response time...and hence why technology will keep me in a job at times. There's one more con, yet for the life of me, coffee has not revived what it was...

Good News!

We've resolved the polling issue by leveraging the SelectQu software to send us the data. It's been very reliable and doesn't rely on the state of the art 'modem" :)

Regarding the batch response reporting, we are planning to change to real-time within the first quarter of 2010.

Thanks,