To stand out from the competition and make more sales, automotive dealers and marketers need to deliver an excellent customer experience at every level of the car-buying journey — from online research and initial customer interactions to the day of purchase and beyond. Conversation Intelligence empowers dealerships to provide these experiences.
Voice of the Customer helps create a stronger sales experience
In its simplest form, Voice of the Customer (VoC) is the feedback you receive from your customers. VoC research centers on understanding how a customer thinks, speaks, feels, and behaves when addressing their problem (in this case, searching for a new vehicle) and interacting with a business.
As a result, VoC data often highlights customers’:
- Wants and needs
- Specific questions
- Pain points in their search or sales process
- Sales objections
- Overall experience with your dealership
Dealerships need to understand their VoC data if they want to create stronger sales messaging and position their dealership as the most customer-centric option for potential car buyers.
As a power-up to CallRail’s Call Tracking solution, Conversation Intelligence uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate the capture of VoC data from each of your inbound calls in real time. It can both identify frequently spoken keywords and phrases used by your customers and, with Automation Rules, be programmed to identify any specific keywords you may want to monitor.
This data can help you:
- Optimize your pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns to save on ad spending by aligning your ads to your customer’s voice.
- Compare your current marketing material with the VoC data to ensure it’s relevant and helpful to the customer journey.
- Speak directly to customer pain points with relevant blog posts, social media blasts, email campaigns, and sales conversations.
Source: CallRail Call Highlights and Key Terms Spotting
Let’s say Conversation Intelligence identifies the keywords “gas mileage,” “safety ratings,” and “more space” in several customer calls to your sales team. These calls may be coming from families looking for bigger, safer vehicles. Sales and marketing teams might use this information to:
- Make sure your website is search engine optimized to reflect your inventory of family vans and family-focused services.
- Create keyword-optimized Google or Facebook Ads to showcase your inventory of spacious, safety-rated minivans with good gas mileage.
- Write blog posts or social media posts about the newest safety and quality tests your inventory goes through.
In this use case, the VoC data uncovered by Conversation Intelligence software allows you to proactively create excellent customer experiences, especially for young families — even before they pick up the phone or visit your showroom.
Create sales training materials with automated phone recording analysis
In a study on the importance of call handling, Marchex discovered 57% of callers who contact a dealership’s sales department have intent to purchase a vehicle. Additionally, the study discovered that top performers on sales teams are “12% more likely to set an appointment over the phone” than low-performing sales reps. In other words, the sales team that better engages with customers on the phone, overcomes pricing and sales objections, and convinces callers to visit the dealership will ultimately close more deals.
How can you hone the skills of your new automotive sales reps if you have limited time and visibility into their work?
Conversation Intelligence allows sales managers to leverage AI to automatically record, transcribe, and flag inbound phone calls so sales teams can review which sales methods move a lead closer to (or further from) converting to a customer.
These recordings and transcripts can help you:
- Understand the specific language used in each stage of the car buying journey.
- Identify common sales objections in calls and create training resources for your sales team on how to overcome them.
- See which sales tactics (greetings, promotional mentions, questions, etc.) create a greater opportunity for lead conversion.
- Fine-tune new sales scripts and marketing messaging.
To create your sales call training material, first identify which sales calls led to a customer visiting your dealership. A simple way to do this is to use Automation Rules to flag calls where a customer specifically says, “set up an appointment” or mentions a time phrase like “in the afternoon.” Then, you can review those specific calls to discover how your sales leaders engaged with customers, overcame their objections, and got them to sign up for the appointment.
Source: One at a time view for call recordings and transcripts
With call recordings and transcriptions, you’ll no longer have to rely on third-party training material to improve your sales team performance and workflow. You’ll have actionable insights directly from customer conversations in your dealership.
Related reading: Learn how CallRail’s Lead Center organizes all of your lead and business communication in a single inbox, letting you quickly identify and communicate with ready-to-buy sales leads.
Conversation Intelligence helps improve your dealership’s service quality
Your sales reps probably aren't the only ones using the phone to interact with customers. It’s critical your dealership implements and maintains a service quality program to make sure each customer gets the highest quality experience — no matter who they're speaking with. After all, if leads are met by indifferent or unhelpful staff or sales reps at any point in their car buying journey, they will quickly take their business to your competitors.
In the same way Conversation Intelligence can be used to discover and capture VoC data, you can also use it to identify and monitor specific, pre-defined keywords or phrases that indicate a successful or helpful customer call.
For example, you could monitor whether your front desk staff gives a dealership-specific greeting, properly collects a caller’s information, or mentions specific sales and promotions. Managers could then use the same reporting engine to find call transcripts and quickly analyze all of a staff member’s calls to see how well they fulfilled the customer service program.
Managers can also listen to a specific employee’s call recordings to gauge their correspondence with customers. Did the sales rep sound engaged or bored? Did they offer assistance and answer customer questions? Customers are looking for an excellent experience with your car dealership, and you can implement a service quality program to provide it.
Related reading: Download CallRail’s Call Quality Scorecard to learn which metrics you should measure for your QA program
The exponential benefits of excellent customer experiences
The benefits of excellent customer experiences go beyond the initial sale. American Express found that the average American tells nine people when they have a good customer experience and 16 people when they have a poor one.
With 73% of customers reporting that they value consumer reviews when considering which car to buy or where to buy it from, the better experience you provide your customers, the more you equip them to be your brand advocates — providing you with business well into the future.
Improve your dealership’s customer experience with CallRail's’ Conversation Intelligence platform. Sign up for a free, 14-day trial of CallRail today.
