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Top Dealer CRM/ILM Concerns for 2010?

Integration with ActiveDirectory would be a biggie for me. Along with that, the ability to make forms out of the CRM for embedding on websites.....sooooooo sick of not having separate systems for credit application retrieval.
 
Oh, here's one for your sales teams. Print up all your actual data security measures in place and hand it to all your salesmen. I called about 7 CRM's back in april and NONE of them could answer what type of security they were using to protect my data without asking the IT department. Fortunately most came back with good answers, but it was very off-putting to hear that "No one else asks that question so I don't know the answer off the top of my head"

edit: Ahh, I'm feeling talkative today.. here's some more stuff that you may or may not do that I think is important for a CRM

pre-fab ticketing system for software problems
web chat that links to the ticketing system
training available in 3 forms: onsite, pre-made videos, online classrooms
Easy to use opt-out system for emails ; ability to create different sections to opt out (service vs. sales vs. body shop for example instead of just one big lump)
search customers by VIN with wildcards for recalls
ability to attach photos to customers. this can be used to take a picture after the sale, as well as take pictures as cars come into service with dings and dents
save drivers license photos securely in the software somewhere, ability to delete these after a set amount of time with no activity ; ability to read drivers licenses to pre-fill customer info
ability for salesmen to email through the system using their work email address, not a @CRMcompany.com email like the incoming leads.
used car wish lists; attach salesmen names and notes next to what they are wishing for and then the buyer can maybe find some good stuff on auction
ROI reports on leads coming in
reverse phone number look up
AD integration (like I said before)
Ability to attach people to other customers in a family or group setup. This is for many many reasons. First of which being simply allowing one salesmen automatic assignment to a family member. Second being mass emails can be worked around sending to the same family members multiple times. etc. I'm sure there's other stuff people could think up if the functionality exists.
Attach service records and previous financials to a customer record. I envision this as a mini-report showing a customer or family's worth to the dealership. If that family has bought 7 cars here in 10 years and always services here with premium service.. they'll get that extra 500 for their trade no problem ;)
Pre-made templates for eeevveryyythinggg. And sort/categorize them a few different ways so each person can sift through the list in their own way.
Ability to put new templates in a folder by default and limit access to root folders. This way a folder could be made for each team or even each person and they don't have access to create forms that everyone would have to sift through.
Ability to customize reports. every single field should be customizable but it has to be easy to use.

and last but not least:


Everything has to be incredibly easy to use and yet have powerful behind the scenes administration. The last few items on my list emphasize that most easily, but it applies to all other parts of the software too. If a salesman has to sift through 5 different popups/windows to enter a customer then it's not designed correctly. Add a customer and add a vehicle can and should be done on one screen only. Just click through your software and find anything that either opens a whole new window or refreshes the entire screen and fix that.
(and get rid of memory leaks, because that advice will cause a few, especially if you use javascript LOL)
 
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A question as we head into 2010.

If you could wave a Magic Dealer Wand in 2010 and get your CRM/ILM to do ONE thing it currently doesn't do, what would it be?

Thanks in advance for your responses!

Shellie Pierce
www.dealersocket.com
[email protected]

Uh- be able to respond to the customer from my cell phone and the response attach to the customer record. That's NUMBER ONE! Next would be to set up and "text blast" like we do already with email blast from DealerSocket- again having the record in the file. Oh, and no additional fee for this....
 
As an Internet Director and DealerSocket customer myself, I have plenty of suggestions. This list is just what I feel is inadequate/wrong/broken about DealerSocket as it is... I could list a bunch of other things that I'd love to have in the ideal CRM. Think social integration, etc.

1) Either the DS server is extremely slow, or the application itself is designed in such a way that it uses way too many resources for the task at hand. This dovetails into:

2) There are WAY too many steps for each part of the sales process. Combined with the slow loading time, this makes a simple task such as sending a customer an email take 4-5 times longer than it should. When sending an email, why doesn't it automatically log a "to do" such as "send email" if there wasn't one beforehand?

3) The "To Do" notes and "Work Notes" sections should be combined. It is frustrating that you have to look in two different places for notes.

4) The customer information section should be exactly the same in the "view lead" screen of the employee dashboard as it is in contact dashboard. Having to switch panes, again since it is SO SLOW, to merge duplicate leads, for example, is a waste of time.

5) Give Admins more ability to assign rights. Don't lock up things like email signatures and auto-responders so that admins can't even grant access to them without giving a user some undesired admin rights.

6) The "email" tab is a disaster. It is essentially useless, as it doesn't seem to offer any other functionality than what can be accomplished in individual customer records.

7) There is no logical reason why I should have to put automatic emails in "document manager" but I have to put templates for individual emails in "email templates". Again, huge waste of time.

8) NO POP-UP WINDOWS! Come on guys, have you heard of web 2.0? Use CSS, PHP, use something. There are so many options other than obnoxious pop up windows, especially when your page doesn't scale to monitor size, which is inexcusable in any website in 2010, speaking as a web designer myself.

9) Mobile site. Enough said. Every Internet salesperson in my store uses an iPhone, and at other stores they mostly use either an iPhone or BlackBerry.

10) Multi-browser/operating system compatibility. Not everyone uses Internet Explorer and a PC! IE is losing market share dramatically to FireFox, Safari, and Chrome, and DS compatibility with these other browsers is terrible. Don't even get me started on my Mac at home. DS is practically unusable on it.

Sorry to sound so negative, but as someone who has spent hours a day every day for almost a year using your site, these are essential changes. It seems like no one can get everything right with the CRMs I've used (iMagicLab, Autobase, and DealerSocket). Each one is pretty good at some things, but there are always a few areas in which they are just AWFUL. Well, AutoBase is terrible at everything. Its user interface is about 15 years out of date as far as functionality, efficiency, appearance, and everything else. It makes me think it's designed to be used with Windows 3.1.
 
Thank you so much for taking the time for such a detailed response. I will forward your feedback directly to our CTO, VP of Engineering and our CEO. I can't make any promises, but this is exactly what I was looking for and I we really value your honest and direct feedback. We really do work every day to improve our product and work do so based on what our customers need most.

Regards,
Shellie Pierce
[email protected]
www.dealersocket.com
 
I'm completely out of the loop in using a CRM at the dealer level and will not pretend to understand exactly what's going on these days. Wondering, do the big boys have tools like this inserted into their system? I remember FlickFusion being able to do it.

Build trust, convert leads, and rehumanize your communication with simple videos.
https://bombbomb.com/tour/automotive

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Build trust, convert leads, and rehumanize your communication with simple videos.
https://bombbomb.com/tour/automotive

CRM is definitely the technology I'm most passionate about. It is one of the few solutions that can measurably change lives overnight. So, to answer your question, no. Mostly no. Most automotive CRM solutions do not have a good video recording feature embedded into their email system.

Most of them struggle to simply get an email to the recipient's inbox. I believe that is due to most of them being developed prior to 2003 and have some baggage they can't lose.

As for bombbomb, it seems their speciality is in video creation with email deliverability. The graphic you have here certainly caught my curiosity in regards to all these "integrations." After spending some time on their website it seems they're just using email clients within those platforms. Admittedly, I expected more just on the context of that graphic. My bad.

It would be cool to get a company like bombbomb chatting it up with us on DealerRefresh. Do you know anyone there @Alexander Lau? If not, I can reach out.