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We've found over the years the built in crm in the dms is lacking. Seems the 3rd party bolt on solutions dont integrate well and before long your dms is an outdated address book and the bolt on is now a silo for your relevant customer info and history. You fall out of love with the bolt on and 'poof' goes your customer data.


For us, building our own tool and integrating it to our dms has been the best solution for our 60 stores. Getting rid of rapid response saved well over 150G per year on its own. From initial lead capture, smart distribution, catching responses, reporting, pushing ALL data/messages/convo back to our DMS and providing our reps with a mobile first application to manage their customers/leads from has been a game changer. They make/receive calls, text message, send video and email from it. We worked around the short sighted OEM requirements to force feed certain response tools as well.


I realize not everyone has the luxury of 'roll your own'. But for those that do.. its worth it. Reps each have an assigned phone number they use which we own. They leave, the number is ours and reassign it. Our DMS is totally up to date on customer interactions and history and we can build in additional communication channels as they become relevant. We can distribute leads on 'new, used, FB, EV, Previous customer, sales, finance, service and even language detection and redirect to a rep who speaks the language. Manual assign, round robin or 'gladiator'.


For us anyways, its been the way to go.