How Lengthy Response Times Are Burning Your Best Phone Ups

Do you know how much it costs your dealership to get the phone to ring? Every year, the automotive dealership industry spends billions of dollars to keep the phone ringing. Phone-ups are still a dealership’s number one lead behind fresh-ups, so it’s vital your dealers are prioritizing them to avoid burning your best opportunities.?

? One critical component to optimizing your phone leads is to ensure your agents are responding to missed or mishandled calls in a timely manner. If your agents take too long to call back customers, they’re more likely to purchase a vehicle from one of your competitors. Here are three strategies to optimize your response time so fewer leads fall through the cracks.?

Strategy 1: Establish Response Time Standards?

Establishing an internal process to proactively respond to missed calls within a set time window will ensure your dealership loses out on fewer sales opportunities. According to Car Wars data, it’s best to respond to missed calls within 1 to 2 hours and respond to texts within 10 to 15 minutes. Doing so shows potential buyers you value their business and prioritize customer experience. Furthermore, responding to customers within your set time window gives them less opportunity to shop around and increases the likelihood you can set a firm appointment for a test drive.????

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Strategy 2: Set Up Automatic Alerts?

Another solution to make sure fewer leads fall through the cracks is to set up automatic alerts via text or email that notify your team of missed or mishandled calls in real time. This gives your agents a chance to recapture the opportunity within your set response time window. These alerts are also useful training tools for managers to better understand why leads are slipping through the cracks and coach their agents on optimal phone habits.?

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Strategy 3: Seize Prime Opportunities?

Finally, it’s crucial for managers to review agent-level and store-level reports that measure how effectively your Sales team is responding to alerts and following up within your set time standards. These reports let you see how many missed opportunities are being seized by your team and which agents are seizing them. It’s important to understand that “seizing an opportunity” is more than making a phone call to the customer; it’s about getting connected with the right individual and inviting them in for a first appointment to test drive their vehicle of interest.?

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If your dealership wants to stop burning through valuable phone-ups, it’s important to have systems in place to ensure your agents are responding to customers in a reasonable amount of time. If you would like to learn more useful strategies to get the most out of your phone-ups, watch our on-demand webinar “7 Steps to Stop Burning Your Best Phone Ups.”