AutoPlay are pleased to announce a partnership with Customer Radar.  Customer Radar allows your customers to provide feedback quickly, easily and directly.  

HOW DO CUSTOMER RADAR SERVICES WORK?

VISIT https://www.customerradar.com/ TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT CUSTOMER RADAR.  

 WHAT IS NPS (NET PROMOTOR SCORE)?
​The NPS is a globally recognised management tool that is used to gauge the loyalty of a businesses customer relationships.  Knowing that promoters churn less means you can invest more in creating an amazing customer experience that turns more 'Passives' and 'Detractors' into 'Promoters'. Detractors are your biggest headaches. Work on reducing the percentage of defectors to improve your NPS and grow your business.
 
WHY DO I NEED TO BE WORRIED ABOUT MY NPS SCORE?
- 96% of dissatisfied customers don't complain. For every 1 complaint you know, there are potentially 25 others that haven't complained.
 - 66% of consumers who switched brands did so because of poor service
- 85% of customer churn due to poor service was preventable.
- 11% of customer churn could be prevented by simple company outreach.
- 67% of customer churn is preventable if the customer issue was resolved at the first engagement.
 - Customer-centric companies are 60% more profitable compared to companies that are not focused on the customer.
​- Research shows that 55% of consumers are willing to pay more for a guaranteed good experience. 
- 86% of consumers are willing to pay more for an upgraded experience. Air travel and hospitality are examples where upselling better experiences can generate incremental revenue and bolster customer loyalty.
- 84% of consumers are frustrated when the agent does not have information.
- Customer frustration leads to the following: 13% tell 15 or more people if they’re unhappy. Conversely, 72% of consumers will share a positive experience with 6 or more people.
- 67% of consumers site bad experiences as reason for churn.
- 50% of customer experience natural occurring churn every 5 years.
- Only 1 out of 26 unhappy customers complain. The rest churn. A lesson here is that companies should not view absence of feedback as a sign of satisfaction. The true enemy is indifference.
- 91% of unhappy customers who are non-complainers simply leave.
- It is 6-7X more expensive for companies to attract new customers than to keep existing customers.
- 65% of companies are able to successfully upsell or cross-sell to existing customers.
- Only 12% of companies are able to successfully upsell or cross-sell to new customers.
- 75% of brands do not know what engagement means - but are measuring “it”

​Contact sales@autoplay.co.nz to find out more about Customer Radar services, pricing and how to sign up.

​What would a new year be without a "trends for 2018" article?  To save you time reading them all we've scoured the web for all the best trends the experts are saying will be big in 2018.

Mobile will dominate digital interactions
71% of all digital interactions occurred on a mobile in 2017 and this is only likely to grow in 2018.  In the US this means not only mobile responsive sites, but also mobile apps.
·         66% of people use mobile apps
·         41% are likely to download a dealer or manufacturer app as part of their pre-purchase research
·         36% find manufacturer apps useful in making a decision
​ (Rebixit, 2017)

Local searches are vital
Most car shoppers are searching for information on their local dealerships including;
·         54% search for business hours
·         53% search for directions to their local store
·         45% search for availability of product at a local store
(Rebixit, 2017)

Video will be the biggest disruptor
Video marketing brings the highest ROI and 4x as many customers would rather watch a product video than read about it (Rebixit, 2017).  Social video sharing is predicted to be very impactful with 69% of people watching Youtube when buying a car reporting they were influenced by it (J&L Marketing, 2017).  It’s reported 1 in 3 online visitors watch car videos at least once a month (Izmocars, 2017).

VIN specific campaigns
In the US they refer the them as “VIN specific campaigns” but you might not recognise them by that name.  These adverts are vehicle inventory specific adverts that display on Facebook and other websites after someone visits your website and views the content.  The adverts are highly relevant which generally translate to better results.  After three months, dealerships experience an average 41% increase in clickthrough rate (J&L Marketing, 2017).

Voice Optimised Search becomes a thing
In 2015 over 20% of online searches were conducted by voice search (Search Engine Land, 2017).  By 2020 it is predicted this will increase to 50% due to services like Siri, Google Voice, Microsoft Cortana and Amazon Echo Alexis (Entrepreneur, 2017).  In 2017 marketers will start to focus more on voice searchable content – meaning more full sentence answers and conversational copy.

Digitise the car buying process
Increasingly car manufacturers are taking advantage of technology to introduce digital aspects to point of sale such as Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR).  Overseas retail space can be scarce or costly so it is not unusual to see dealerships with only a handful of cars on display and supported by digital selling tools like vehicle configurators and 360-degree explorers – the new Audi Virtual showroom in London (Entrepreneur, 2017).  In NZ we’ve seen large format digital screens in airports and shopping malls for a few years now and this is only expected to grow as technology becomes even more entwined in our lives.

Facebook Marketplace
Facebook Marketplace launched in October 2016 and overseas there has been a large up swell in the dedicated vehicles category.  In late 2017 Facebook announced further improvements in the US with used car values pulled from Kelley Blue Book, and inventory listings from Edmunds, Cars.com, Auction123, CDK Global and SocialDealer and expanding search options to include transmission and vehicle types (The Verge, 2017).  When customers show interest in a dealer-listed car on Marketplace they are prompted to contact the car dealer directly via the Facebook Messenger App – giving car dealers a new tool to speak with potential customers on a one-on-one basis (Stuff, 2017).

1.  I WILL BE BETTER AT TRACKING MY LEAD SOURCES AND CAMPAIGNS
Some dealerships are fantastic at tracking the source of their leads and the campaigns that generated them.  These dealers have a fantastic understanding of how both their own, and their brands marketing is affecting in dealership activity (not just sales!).  On the flip side if you are only capturing lead sources for 50% of your leads then you are only seeing half the picture.  Capturing lead sources and campaigns is easy and as of 17.4 you can now hide sources you don’t want to see.  In 2018 managers need to take control of this process to ensure their sales teams are capturing this valuable info.  Some AutoPlay clients make it part of sales KPI’s for their team, whilst others simply make the fields compulsory.  However, it’s achieved, one of your biggest lead management goals for 2018 should be to increase the rate at which you are capturing Lead Sources and Campaigns.

2.  I WILL IMPROVE MY UNDERSTANDING OF THE AUTOPLAY REPORTING SUITE
Besides improving accuracy and efficiency across dealership processes, one of the real cherries on top of the AutoPlay pie is the huge amount of reporting we make available to dealerships at no additional cost.  AutoPlay reports are designed to be easy to understand and digest, however like anything gaining true understanding requires work.  In 2018 whether you are a salesperson, sales manager or dealer principal you should focus on really understanding some of the data at your fingertips.  If you already have a basic understanding of AutoPlay reports then your focus should be on understanding what that data means.  An example of this is knowing that 50 leads in awaiting action is likely to translate to 25 Test Drives and 10 Sales at your normal rates of conversion.  This represents the next level of understanding over your reports which can help take performance and decision making to the next level.

3.  I WILL TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE TOOLS I HAVE ACCESS TO
As a rule, most dealers use AutoPlay Sales Pipeline well – capturing leads, scanning driver’s licences and business cards and completing digital Test Drive, Appraisal and Write Up forms.  With AutoPlay we don’t charge per lead entered, or per form completed.  Most of our services follow a ‘fill your boots’ model – meaning users can really focus on taking advantage of the tools available to them.  One aspect that can yield real benefits is the new Live Leads process which makes it easy to build a database from your captured leads, and automatically funnel any resulting follow up activity back against the customer and lead in the Sales Pipeline.  AutoPlay will typically send one of these emails on behalf of each dealership who wants it, however we place no limits on how many Live Leads eDM’s each dealership can send if they create and manage the campaigns themselves.  As the emails are templates with your branding and vehicle videos it’s incredibly easy to build these emails.  If you are not taking advantage of this already jump on board.

4.  I WILL MANAGE MY OVERDUE & STALLED LEADS
One of the most common issues we see at dealerships is their response to Overdue or Stalled leads.  Overdue leads are those that were due for action -3 to -20 days ago but have not been diarised forward yet.  Stalled leads are more than 21 days overdue without being diarised forward.  These leads are easily filtered to and management is alerted via Daily Health Checks and other reporting.  However, what we commonly see is dealerships paralysed by fear when it comes to this data.  For some reason many dealerships see huge value in their Overdue or Stalled leads and seem unable to make the decision to close the leads as lost.  It sounds redundant, but there is no value in these leads unless you action them.  There are several approaches to handle Overdue & Stalled leads.
a.       Allocate them to another salesperson – nothing is more effective at motivating salespeople to update their system than threatening to give those leads to another, more motivated salesperson.  You can do this individually or in bulk using the ‘Bulk Allocate’ function.
b.       Close the leads as “Lost” – you don’t need to be scared of the word “lost”.  In AutoPlay’s context all “lost” leads are still visible in the Sales Pipeline and can be easily found using the search filters.  Closing leads as “lost” helps keep your dashboards manageable.
c.       Use AutoPlay Live Leads to retarget these Overdue or Stalled Leads by emailing them with Live Leads.  You can do this by selecting Close Lost if you had previously do so, or alternatively you can use the other filters to isolate these Overdue or Stalled Leads.  If the customer is still in the market the lead will be updated accordingly – saving time communicating individually with customers who may be more than 6 months overdue.

5.  I WILL USE THE CALENDAR EFFECTIVELY
The calendar built into the Sales Pipeline enables users to diarise leads forward for future follow up.  As the default AutoPlay dashboard is set to only show activity due in +/- 3 days, this means that you only see the leads you need to be focussing on right now.  A good habit to get into at the end of handling each lead is treat the Sales Pipeline like your manager - tell us where you got to, and what you are going to do next.  In practice this means updating the Lead Progress, then setting a Calendar event for follow up.  This serves multiple purposes;
a.       Keeps your Dashboard clean and makes finding leads easier
b.       Minimises the number of leads falling through the cracks into Overdue or Stalled and being forgotten about
c.       Ensures the Morning Meeting Report contains accurate information about what is happening within the dealership
d.       Ensures the Overdue Lead Report and Daily Health check provide management with an accurate reflection of salesperson activity

Make sure to check back next month to see the most frequent sources of Leads, Test Drives and Sales in January 2018.