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Stuck with expensive tool

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#11
Rick Buffkin said:
ya know... I'm still thinking about my appt idea here guys. With all the text and chat widgets and providers for these type of comm's, None of them have a solid appt section for sales when you open up the UI. NONE!!!!! The Chat or text agent can set the appt for you. But, the visitor isn't able to set or share the appt from the UI. You can't see a cal. or there's nothing like "Send Appt To Phone" or "Schedule your visit here", nothing. What you should do is make a freaking solid Appt app and then have integration set up between the Chat and Text providers and your application. That's what should be built. Give the dealer a dashboard of some sorts to load employees info into it. Or, set it up so the employees have their own access to it and when an appt is made with that employee, it sends a txt message to that rep letting him know that Joe Customer has set an appt with him. Maybe it can send a profile text, email, video or something letting the customer know something about the rep they set the appt with. Maybe the Chat operator would have the option to send the appt to the customers mobile phone or something. I don't know. Once again, I'm just thinking out loud here. Most of you guys here on this thread are pretty aware of products and solutions in the auto segment. Can you guys think of a chat or text provider that offers something like this??? I can't think of any.
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Rick, what is the problem this tool would be helping with? Making it easier for the customer to schedule an appointment through various communications?
 
#12
BenAdler said:
Rick, what is the problem this tool would be helping with? Making it easier for the customer to schedule an appointment through various communications?
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Absolutely! Think about the Leads / Phone up process right now. All the training for reps is geared to set an appt. Lead counts are dropping year over year and more and more ppl are simply just showing up at the dealership for sales. Over the years, Service schedulers have been added to more and more websites and guess what??? More and more people are using them to schedule service!!! I think you would have the same results if the same focus was put on a Sales Appt scheduler instead of a simple schedule test drive form.

Keep in mind this as well... We think of an appointment as a face to face meeting with a customer right! An appt is simply a reserved block of time! Thats all that it is! Why not have an option for a phone call appt as well??? Ex: Customer is at work and can't talk on the phone. They visit the site and would like to talk about the vehicle later this evening after the kids have gone to bed or something. Why not have it have so the customer can maybe schedule a phone call appt as well with a specific rep as an option?? Once again, I'm just thinking out loud here! What if the customer has questions for a manager and doesn't need to visit the dealership? Maybe questions about their deal with the F & I Mgr. Why not have something on the website so they can schedule a phone call appt with the F & I mgr???
 
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#13
Rick Buffkin said:
Keep in mind this as well... We think of an appointment as a face to face meeting with a customer right! An appt is simply a reserved block of time! Thats all that it is! Why not have an option for a phone call appt as well??? Ex: Customer is at work and can't talk on the phone. They visit the site and would like to talk about the vehicle later this evening after the kids have gone to bed or something. Why not have it have so the customer can maybe schedule a phone call appt as well with a specific rep as an option?? Once again, I'm just thinking out loud here! What if the customer has questions for a manager and doesn't need to visit the dealership? Maybe questions about their deal with the F & I Mgr. Why not have something on the website so they can schedule a phone call appt with the F & I mgr???
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I think this is a great point Rick! I just don't understand why phone appointments are common between dealers/vendors but not as popular between dealers/customers. You're right, there's an obsession with getting the customer inside the store for a test drive - which is completely reasonable and a sales person should always go for, but if that doesn't work out, a phone appointment should be a fallback plan!

You also have a great point on sales appointment scheduler. You got me curious and I even googled "sales appointment scheduler for dealerships" and most results were focused on service appointments or non-automotive sales appointment schedulers. Sure seems like a great opportunity!! I know HubSpot offers a similar feature for non-automotive customers, but not sure if anybody has heard of an option for dealers?
 
#15
Rick Buffkin said:
Absolutely! Think about the Leads / Phone up process right now. All the training for reps is geared to set an appt. Lead counts are dropping year over year and more and more ppl are simply just showing up at the dealership for sales. Over the years, Service schedulers have been added to more and more websites and guess what??? More and more people are using them to schedule service!!! I think you would have the same results if the same focus was put on a Sales Appt scheduler instead of a simple schedule test drive form.
Click to expand...
We had something similar on one of our websites...appt.JPG
 
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#17
BenAdler said:
Ryan, did you find that the scheduling page helped?
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The majority of users left the default selection that they do not have a preferred salesperson. We created this in-house and it ultimately became too time consuming for us to manage to justify retaining on our new website currently in development.

We found that most repeat or referral customers just reached out to the salesperson separately. The customers who tended to use the feature were ones that had read reviews about a particular person or had a gender preference of salesperson (ie: female customer wanting female salesperson).

I definitely liked the idea when I came up with it 4 years ago but will have to revisit on how to improve and re-implement it when I have some free time to dedicate towards it, right now I just have bigger fish to fry.
 
#19
A sense of urgency needs to be created with the application. Showing "x number of ppl looked at the vehicle" and "x number of REAL TIME appt's are scheduled for this vehicle" and maybe put logic into it that once a certain number of Real Time appt's are made, highlight a call / text now to confirm availability. Or...you could some how roll into it "x number of appt's scheduled" and "x number of confirmed appts" thats powered by a sales mgr confirming the appts set.

Also, on the Rep's details / info why not maybe roll some recent reviews from Dealer Rater for that particular sales rep there? They can see actual confirmed customer testomonials / reviews for that rep. That would definitely put ratings and reviews front and center for sales reps. You could even have reviews built into the tool so the customer could rate the sales rep on how well the appt was handled and bypass Dealer Rater all together!

Also, if the sales rep has 1 or 2 appts for a particular day / time slot, don't show his pic to the customer for that particular time slot. If they select a diff time slot, you can show them as available if the rep is available to prevent over booking.
 
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