Our last article shared a surprising finding from the 2022 Automotive Benchmarks Report: 41.2 percent of qualified leads are being “mishandled” in automotive dealerships. The specific problems identified in the report include:
- Missed Calls: 6.5 percent of calls from qualified leads are missed.
- Hold Times: The qualified sales calls that were answered experienced a 74-second median hold time.
- Follow-Up: 65.4 percent of returning qualified leads experienced a delayed follow-up.
- Call Logging: 11.7 percent of all leads went unlogged by auto dealerships, and 27.5 percent of calls were unlogged.
This report indicates that auto dealerships are having problems managing leads that come into the business, particularly those that come in via phone calls.
And today, we want to talk about solutions.
12 Ways to Improve Lead Management
As we outlined these lead management problems in our last article, we also mentioned that you could solve them by switching to a cloud phone system. Sounds like a pretty big claim! So in this article, we want to back up that statement by discussing 12 features of a cloud phone system like DealerPhones and how these features can improve lead management.
Understanding the Problem
The following feature will help you diagnose your call-based lead management problems.
1. Call Analytics
Whether it’s missed calls, hold times, or any other call-related problem happening in your auto dealership, before you can find a solution, you must know if the problem is happening and to what extent. Cloud phone systems like DealerPhones improve lead management by giving full reports, including:
- Average Hold Time (avg time a caller is put on hold by an agent)
- Service Level (% of calls answered within a specified time)
- Average Handle Time (avg time an agent spends talking and putting customers on hold)
- Average Wait Time (avg time a caller waits in the queue before ringing an agent)
- Missed calls (how many calls went unanswered)
- Abandoned calls (how many times a caller hung up while on hold)
- Number of rings before an answer
- Number of call transfers
The data is presented in easy-to-read charts and graphs, giving you an overview of what is happening in your auto dealership so you can understand the problems and find solutions.
Avoiding Missed Calls
These features will help you avoid missed calls from leads and customers.
2. Unlimited Lines
Every call you miss could be a missed sale. Because cloud phone systems like DealerPhones provide unlimited lines, your customers will never get a busy signal. While on hold, they can also hear custom promotional messaging (which we will discuss in #8 below).
3. Failover
Even with unlimited lines, if you lose power or your internet service, you could be missing calls while the power/service is out. With Failover, you can route your phone calls to an external number of your choosing (a second office location, a home office, a mobile phone, or any combination of alternative phone numbers).
4. Taking Calls on the Go
Another reason you may miss a call is if your salesmen or customer service team members are out of the office. This will never be a problem with the array of call routing features offered by cloud phone systems. Features provided by DealerPhones include:
- Call Forwarding: Redirect calls to your mobile phone when you are out of the office.
- Call Flip: Transfer the call from your office to your mobile phone if you have to leave.
- Simultaneous Ring: The call will ring on multiple devices of your choosing so you can answer wherever you are.
- Call Transfer: Answering an office call on your cell phone, then easily transferring the call back to the office.
5. Data-Based Staffing Decisions
As mentioned in #1, cloud phone systems like DealerPhones offer robust call analytics to help you understand how calls are handled and diagnose problems. Therefore, you have the data to determine how many employees you need to take calls, so you are never understaffed or overstaffed. Learn more about how to do this in our article Using Call Analytics to Determine Staffing Needs in Your Business.
Improving Hold Times
These features will help shorten, avoid, or enhance call hold times.
6. Call Queue
Call queue is a simple cloud phone feature that will help you improve lead management because it ensures that calls are answered in the order they are received. This means that no one gets ‘lost’ in the system or experiences a longer wait time because other calls were taken ahead of theirs.
7. Queue Callback
Your leads and customers have better things to do than to wait on hold. The queue callback feature of DealerPhones enables callers to avoid waiting on hold by offering to call them back in the order their call was received.
8. On-Hold Messaging
When you must place callers on hold, you can share relevant information via on-hold messaging. DealerPhones allows you to create custom messages based on caller type (new lead, active customer, returning customer, prospective employee, etc.). You can also have different greetings depending on the time or day of the week.
Enabling Quicker Follow-Up
These features will help you follow up with missed calls from leads faster.
9. Missed Call Notifications
If you miss a call, you can improve lead management by following up as soon as possible, which is much easier to do when you get missed call notifications. DealerPhones allows you to choose from email notifications or SMS text messages that include the caller’s phone number, day, and time of the call.
10. Voicemail Notifications
Similarly, you can be notified by email or text when a caller leaves a voicemail. DealerPhones has features that allow you to receive a playable v-mail file to listen to the voicemail from your email, or you can read the voicemail message in a transcript.
11. Unreturned Voicemail Reports
We have mentioned how call tracking and analytics can help improve lead management regarding missed calls, but you can also use them to ensure that you handle follow-ups promptly. With DealerPhones custom data reports, you can create a “New Voicemail” widget that reports the number of voicemails not returned within 24 hours of the initial call.
Logging Leads Every Time
This feature will ensure that you log information about every lead on every call.
12. POS and CRM Integration
Not logging leads is a problem because you can’t follow up and continue the conversation without critical information like name and phone number. With a cloud phone system like DealerPhones, unlogged leads will never be an issue because calls are integrated with your POS or CRM.
Improve Lead Management with a Cloud Phone System
When leads come into your auto dealership, you want to have the systems and technology in place to handle them quickly and effectively. The above features demonstrate how a cloud phone system can help you improve lead management. It’s true—the right phone system can greatly enhance the customer experience!
If you’re experiencing problems like missed calls, long hold times, or unlogged leads…or if you have other questions about how a cloud phone system can help your auto dealership…reach out to request a demo, a quote, or just say hi.
