This post was originally published on Auto Success
Communication is a cornerstone of everyday life. It’s what connects people to one another, and it’s an essential, often underappreciated, element in a business’ success. In a dealership, phone calls carry the brunt of the load when it comes to communication with customers. With so many dealership employees involved in customer communications over the phone — whether it be sales, service, finance, you name it — it can be hard to conceive of bringing these communication channels together.
Imagine the possibilities if these communication channels were unified! What can dealers learn from unified communication across their dealership? This is something that is possible today, and the insights that can be taken away from it are extremely beneficial in improving a dealership’s workflow.
CallRevu is helping to lead the charge in this realm. By centering their approach on customer engagement and investing in their call technology, the company is helping dealer communications flourish.
How to Unify Communication
When Ben Chodor took over as CEO for CallRevu in August 2023, he wanted to expand on the company’s mission to offer a unified communications solution specifically for automotive dealers. Since he began, CallRevu has acquired Total CX, an automotive-specific phone system that wraps call tracking and analytics into one platform. The company also created TestTrack, the automotive industry’s first AI-powered, immersive, customizable training platform.
These tools can be used across an entire dealership to help unify communication, but what is the secret ingredient behind these tools that drives unified communication? Data.
“If you don’t know what your data says or what the information coming in is, how can you be proactive?” Chodor asks. He notes two important stats about phone communication at dealerships: 35% of all dealer calls go unanswered, and customers think another 25%-30% of dealer calls are spam. Leaning into call data can help fix this.
“You should be in control of your data,” Chodor emphasizes. “You should be able to have access to it. You should be able to take that data and — as it goes into your CRM, DMS and CDP — see how it is working.”
Implementing Data
The main goal of call data when it comes to unified communication at a dealership is to help keep conversations with customers proactive and engaging. Several factors can help facilitate this.
Proper training with call data for employees is an obvious place to start. People need to know how to interpret the right numbers and turn them into a conversation starter. CallRevu’s TestTrack helps with this by training a dealership’s staff with realistic call scenarios that present daily challenges to help them learn when to use their call data.
After training, the real proactivity comes into play when a dealer searches for opportunities to leverage their call data instantly and seamlessly. To do this, it starts with the call — are you capturing all of them? One example Chodor gives revolves around down hours at a dealership — when calls often go unanswered or typically go to voicemail — could signal an opportunity for dealers to scale up with an AI-powered attendant, a virtual agent capable of handling calls, scheduling appointments and acting as a responsive receptionist around the clock. Instead of hiring additional staff or redirecting calls to a business development center, this intelligent agent seamlessly steps in, ensuring that no call is missed and appointments are scheduled efficiently. CallRevu wanted to solve for this because data is every dealer’s currency, and so we did.
Outside of sales, it can also show a service department that is scheduling numerous oil changes that they should start asking customers about getting a tire rotation too. It can even lead a salesperson who’s interacting with a customer who has one year left on their lease to explain what deals are available on new vehicles. All these examples involve turning call data into positive results for a dealership through this unified communication.
“Any advantage I can get from any of this data, that could be the key of selling another 10% of cars or having more satisfied customers on your service side,” he comments. “That’s what it’s all about.”
AI’s Role
We all know AI is becoming engrained in every aspect of our world today. It’s becoming an impressive tool in the workplace, especially for dealers, providing instant information. Chodor says this is currently coming in handy for dealers on their phone calls.
“For example, say a customer just said one thing on a call while the agent might be thinking of mentioning something else,” he explains. “Using call data, AI can suggest a third related thing that the agent should also let the customer know about. AI allows agents to focus on the customer. It allows them to focus on the task at hand and let AI give them more information.”
On top of AI giving employees instant information, Chodor says AI is just as good at recording information and immediately acting on it.
“One of my favorite parts about how dealers should be using AI is knowing that there is an opportunity for a manager to hop in and either barge in on a phone call, integrate into a phone call or follow up with a customer afterwards,” he claims. “Not a week later, not a month later, but moments after or during a call. This has a huge impact because we all know — as a customer — if I call and I don’t get the answer I want, I’m going to call a dealership down the road.”
AI is supposed to help dealers constantly engage with customers. However, that doesn’t mean it should be identifying as a person.
“If a dealer called me as an AI without disclosure and I realized it was an AI, I’m not going to want to do business with that dealer,” comments Chodor. “At the end of the day, we’re buying cars from human beings. We’re getting service from human beings. The human beings are going to be working on my car. AI needs to better equip them, not replace them.”
Automotive Retail and the Future
With all this technology at dealers’ fingertips, where can the industry go from here? Amid all these new advancements, Chodor says moving forward starts with a sound proficiency in the older technology that will enhance the new technology.
“Get better on the phone,” he emphasizes. “Dealers need to train their service, sales and F&I more about the customer than ever before and understand how they can help employees get better on customer interactions.”
The call tracking and analytics tools that surround the phone are the catalyst for improvement. The data that comes from these tools is vital to learning how customers interact with a dealership and vice versa. Looking ahead, the phone and the data that can be obtained from calls are constantly going to be relevant in the auto dealer industry.
“2025 is still going to be the year of the phone,” Chodor claims. “As the market gets tighter, it’s important for dealers to know is every dollar they’re spending bringing in the right type of leads?”
Chodor adds that dealers will only know if this is working when they know the data behind the contact with their customers. This can lead to intelligent dealership decisions.
Even with copious amounts of data in the auto dealer industry, it is vital that dealers keep their focus on their customers. There’s no business without them, and by using this call data to better engage with them over the phone, it can make a world of difference in a dealership’s success.
