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The Evolution of Technology In Consumer Engagement

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Since the opening of the first car dealership, dealers have been looking for ways to connect with car buyers. Manufacturers assisted in driving interest in their brands by consumers but it was up to the dealer to get the customer to choose them. The natural way to attract business was to follow the historical retail model – low prices. It wasn’t all that long ago when consumers who were planning on car shopping would await the weekend newspaper to see what sales were going on and then to plan their weekend of visiting car dealerships. Technology has increasingly offered consumers more information and less of a need to visit multiple dealerships. On the other hand, these same advancements in technology have been providing dealers with better ways in which to connect with consumers as well as to measure the success of the interactions.

I’m sure many of you remember the days in which prospects were rotated through flip files of 3 x 5 index cards for follow up. Leads were faxed to dealerships and sourcing rotated between billboard, television and radio if any sourcing was done at all. There weren’t many ways to get an incoming communication from a customer other than via phone or e-mail. Then Al Gore invented the Internet and things changed quickly. CRMs and ILMs allowed dealerships to keep better track of all customers and communications with them. Third-party listing services and lead providers popped up like Jack-in- the Boxes. Computers on salespeople’s desks became more commonplace. New ways of connecting with, and marketing to, consumers appeared, and dealers were presented with tools which allowed them to communicate with their customers more efficiently. Just because you have a tool, however, isn’t a guarantee of success. If the tools aren’t used properly, they become extraneous and irrelevant.

Let’s take a journey into a galaxy not so far away (as in right now) and see if we can’t find our way to the Force using a few of the tools that were developed and how dealers can use them to increase engagement.

Chat– Consumers like instant information. When chat capabilities appeared on the scene at dealerships, they opened up a whole new way for consumers to engage with dealerships. Chat appealed to consumers because it offered a safe way for them to get information from dealerships without necessarily giving up theirs. If handled properly, it gave dealers a way to engage consumers and build rapport. Chat brought dealers a way that went beyond simply receiving a typical Internet lead and allowed them to engage a customer live immediately. Of course, just like any other tool, dealers had to manage it properly for it to be effective. Today’s chat providers have evolved to offer dealers better analytics and data about the consumer than ever before yet the same perils of mismanaging chat continue today. Consumers who are choosing chat as the way in which they want to communicate with dealers aren’t willing to wait. If a chat isn’t answered within 5 seconds of the consumer initiating it, the consumer will typically close the chat window and move on to the next dealer. Dealers who choose to self-manage their chat capabilities should make sure that they have a dedicated person who is always available – perhaps a BDC agent. If they don’t have the resources, they can opt for the many managed chat services available to ensure that they don’t miss out on any opportunities or ruin the customer’s experience. How your dealership interacts with customers when they first to interact with you will dictate how they perceive you.

Text Messages– Smartphones have developed into an extension of most people and text messaging has become so popular that most cellular plans allow unlimited usage of this feature. Millenials are more likely to answer a text message than they are to answer their phones nowadays (through studies in less than 3 minutes). Text messages also allow people to communicate in a relatively unobtrusive manner. People can respond immediately, if they choose to, whether they are at work, in a meeting or wait until a more appropriate time. Dealers are finding innovative ways in which to use text messaging in their sales and service processes that allow consumers to engage with them in a more efficient manner. There are some perils, however, involved when dealers venture outside normal (opted-in text) communications and into the realm of marketing and dealers should ensure that they know the relevant laws and regulations for doing so not only for the dealership but also how their salespeople are using text messages from their own cell phones. Text messages can be a very effective way of communicating with consumers whether it is used as a method of first contact, information, appointment setting or follow-up.

Video– The ease and low cost of using video in dealerships has offered dealers a way in which to engage with consumers beyond a simple text-based e-mail manner. It has enabled dealers to transform themselves away from simply being another generic e-mail into becoming a real person. Videos are now being used for everything from responses in e-mails including video intro, “Why Buy from Us,” video walkarounds, VDP content (vehicle merchandising) and even real-time live streaming communication through Facetime and other services. Videos can be a very powerful way in which to communicate and are simple to create and use. Personalized videos, in particular provide that VIP feeling to consumers who are impressed that a salesperson took the time to film a video just for them whether it is one that introduces the salesperson, the vehicle inquired about or both. Video offers a level of engagement that transcends any in which have been previously available and virtually look their customers in the eyes.

Social Media– The mass adoption of social media has presented dealers with ways in which to engage consumers that no other medium in our history has ever been able. Not too long ago, dealers had the opportunity to engage with audiences and push relevant content to them for no cost other than a little time and energy. As social media platforms have evolved, became public and sought to monetize, that reach decreased unless dealers were willing to run effective ads and spend money. The true value in social media, however, still exists and it is still available. While businesses’ pages reach may have dropped, the power of word-of-mouth – even virtually – to connect with your consumers and penetrate their networks has not. Dealers who learn how to leverage their customers to gain exposure to the customer’s networks with their help will experience invaluable exposure. In the same manner that a referral or positive online review works, so can social media if used properly.

These are just some of the tools available to dealers. Consumers are increasingly demanding – and expecting – businesses to have presences and be accessible wherever the consumer chooses to engage with them. Some of these technologies have even been combined, by technology companies, to create services which merge the above – like social media ads and text messaging as one example.

Nobody knows what the future will bring. Perhaps we’ll soon be filming holograms of cars or doing virtual sales pitches similar to how Princess Leia pleaded for Obi-Wan Kenobi’s help in Star Wars. All I can tell you for sure is that, in the movie called reality, Obi-Wan isn’t a dealer’s only hope.

There are many opportunities and technologies available for dealers to use to engage with customers and for customers to engage with them. Consumers are moving forward and embracing these technologies. Dealers who keep up with trends, make themselves available and engage consumers in the way in which they want to be engaged, will find that they are able to capture more interest, retain more customers and make more sales.

Accountability and Enforcing the Logging of Customers in Your CRM

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We are an industry inundated with technology. Technology can help dealerships operate more efficiently, extend the life of a customer, interact with new ones and market to previous ones. Just like any technology, however, you must use it for it to do its job. One feature that many dealership managers take for granted is the CRM. In particular, holding salespeople accountable for not only accurately accounting for their customer interactions but also gaining accurate information about them. Some sales desks will even track showroom traffic on a paper desk-log not even checking to see if the salesperson logged the customer in the CRM at all. This practice can harm your dealership operations in more ways than many realize and cost the dealership opportunities and/or sway decisions on marketing with bad data.

Every salesperson will log a customer who they write up. Most of the time for the simple fact that the sales manager can then pull the customer up to save any numbers presented to them. What about that customer that the salesperson greeted on the lot, spoke to for awhile, perhaps even showed a couple cars to but didn’t get anywhere with and the customer left without giving the salesperson any information? Chances are 50/50 that the customer wouldn’t get logged for the simple fact that the salesperson didn’t get any information. Or let’s look at the more positive side, your dealership has a very busy showroom and salespeople are constantly with customers gaining a new one after they have finished with the previous. It’s not uncommon for salespeople to carry a notepad which they use to jot notes or even the back of their own business cards. Because they’re busy, those note and business cards pile up. At the end of the day, perhaps the salesperson goes through and inputs each customer into the CRM. Another possibility is that the salesperson cherry picks the customers that they either want to protect (as many dealers offer 72-hour protection to its salespeople) or those the salesperson feels is worth following up with. Anything less than 100% compliance with entering customers can easily sway decisions ranging from staffing, marketing spends, employee performance and many others.

Dealerships that aren’t logging all of their customers in the CRM end up with an inaccurate view of their entire sales operations. Busy dealerships appear not as busy as they really are and could prevent a dealer from realizing this. In this case, the dealership could be understaffed with customers either waiting a long time for assistance or not getting assisted at all. In busy dealerships, its hard for a sales manager to keep track of everything that is going on while desking deals and juggling all of the tasks that are assigned to them. Salespeople certainly don’t want MORE salespeople as that could bite into their personal incomes. But the bottom line is that if your dealership is understaffed, your customer’s experience at your dealership is probably not great and sales are walking out the door. And the sad part is that you’ll never know it. Why? Because all customers aren’t being logged in the CRM.

Another example of how the failure of logging customers in the CRM can hurt a dealership is through marketing decisions. Most CRMs include a source as one of the pieces of information that salespeople are supposed to collect. “How did you hear about us?” is something that most dealerships ask. But how accurate is that information? If salespeople are entering the typical choices of “walk-in”, “billboard”, “drive-by” or “Auto mall” you’re missing out on valuable information that could be costing you thousands of dollars. Don’t think that’s happening at your dealership? Here’s an easy test. Go into your CRM and add a couple sources for programs that are well known but your dealership does not currently use. Wait out the month and run a source report. Chances are that you’ll find that all of a sudden these non-existent sources are producing sales. If your salespeople are not putting accurate information into the CRM, how do you expect to be able to use that information to allocate your marketing spend? This test will not only show you how bad the problem is but can also identify the biggest offenders.

Just like the old saying, “Garbage in, Garbage out” your CRM is your dealership’s future. It can be the most wonderful tool to help you operate efficiently, follow up relevantly, catch previous customers coming back into the market, ensure an excellent customer experience by visiting prospects and assist you in spending your marketing dollars more effectively. It can’t do that, however, if the information isn’t accurate or non-existent. Make enforcing the logging of customer information a priority in your dealership and you’ll find that all of a sudden the blinds are drawn, the sun comes in and you can clearly see what’s going on.

Originally published Jan 23, 2018 as a guest blog for Nextup.

The Challenge of Split Personalities in Consumers

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For those unfamiliar with the story of Sybil Dorsett, she was a woman with dissociative identity disorder who had as many as 16 different personalities which would dominate and reveal themselves at different times. Made famous first by the non-fiction book, Sybil, then the 1976 movie starring Sally Field, Sybil was one of the most famously documented cases of this disorder ever documented. While victims of this disorder typically don’t have this extreme of a case, there is one group of people who have made a parallel leap into what is very similar: just about everyone on the (digital) planet.

Sybil, the person, had personalities including the following: herself, a young French girl, two personalities named Peggy Lou (one assertive and enthusiastic while the other was fearful and angry), a thoughtful homebody, an emotional writer and painter, a talented musician, a male personality which was a builder and carpenter, another male personality that was a handyman, a personality interested in politics, one that was listless, one that was an actual baby, one that was critical of Sybil (the original personality), one that was afraid but determined to achieve fulfillment, one that was vivacious and liked to laugh and, finally, one that was a perpetual teenager.

How does the story of Sybil relate to “everyone on the (digital) planet?” An excellent article on YourStory.com shares a few examples which I’ve expanded on.

While technology has quickly evolved which allows marketers to collect data in which a consumer’s journey towards any purchase can be tracked to include key influencing factors like marketing messages, websites, emails, banner ads and offline messages, today’s consumers have so many platforms, channels and devices in which to make that journey. The Sybil analogy comes into play because every consumer has a preference on which activities they perform not only on which devices but on which platforms.

For example, Melissa might choose a desktop to shop for cars rather than a mobile device. She may use Facebook for personal interactions and business or entertainment recommendations while using Twitter for political commentary or activity-based messages and she may prefer to do those on a mobile device. Compound these with the fact that Melissa may not be doing some of these activities for herself but on behalf of another and you have a bunch of different digital personalities (footprints) happening. The problem is that there is no context.

What if Melissa is helping her brother identify good cars for him, but really only uses her desktop to check e-mails and write about the country music bands and festivals she likes attending? Perhaps all of the dancing tweets, retweets and information sharing are actually because her daughter is a dance aficionado? If she’s talking about a movie her husband enjoyed on Facebook, what digital indicator is she leaving?

There exists a lot of data in the universe that marketers can tap to deliver more personalized, relevant and actionable messages which, in the best result, produce more sales. But consumers are no longer that transparent. Delivering an ad to Melissa on her desktop computer about a car while she is trying to blog about Garth Brooks is probably a waste of money – especially considering she was never interested in buying a car but only gathering information for her brother. In the same way, delivering ads on Twitter to Melissa about movies or on Facebook about dancing may be.

Even though the data says they are relevant, they may not be because the data cannot tell you context or intent nor identify preferences on platform usage.

The data is out there and the touchpoints can tell you the journey that was taken to a sale or conversion. What it cannot necessarily tell you (unless you dig deep – and are a data scientist) are both what the motivations behind those activities were, whether they were of self-interest or not and whether there are more effective platforms on which to deliver your message than others.

Marketing is only going to get more complicated and it’s no longer a matter of whether the data exists (there is a ton), but also having the knowledge to know which data is relevant, which platform its relevant on, how to best deliver that message in a personalized way, get a conversion and, ultimately, a sale.

Data is no longer about simply having it but rather about trying to decipher which personality a given individual is demonstrating at any given time.

Skynet: Autonomous Cars Will Decide Who Dies… And Who Lives

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So, our industry is hell-bent on creating autonomous cars and transforming our roads and highways into assembly lines of controlled vehicles that perform without human intervention. I’m not talking about cruise control or auto-pilot. I’m talking about autonomy. The very definition of autonomy is:

“freedom from external control or influence; independence”

A machine that operates with independence, without external control or influence, is also, by definition, a robot. Am I “anti-robot?” Is there such a term? Yes, there is – Technophobia. While the auto industry sweet talks us into a future of commuting in which we can watch a movie, read a book or interact on social media, the fact is that what’s being created is, essentially, a legion of vehicles that are not only connected but can make decisions.

And those decisions are what scare me.

Think about it. You’re driving down the road on a two lane road with a canyon to your left and find yourself in this situation:

  1. A person walks into the road in front of you and you don’t have time to stop before hitting that person. In the left lane is an oncoming vehicle.
  2. On your right is a group of 6 school kids talking and walking home from school.

Remember, your car is in charge. It’s making the decisions. You’re watching “Harry Potter” (sound familiar?) and not paying attention. Your car, at that point, has to make a moral and ethical decision. Does it:

  1. Choose to hit and kill the person in front of you?
  2. Swerve into the left lane causing a head-on collision with the oncoming vehicle but avoiding the person in the road perhaps killing you (the “driver”) and the occupants of the other vehicle as well?
  3. Swerve radically left and drive off into the canyon killing you?
  4. Swerve right and run through the group of 6 school kids?

None of these sound fun and, certainly, nobody would want ANY of these outcomes but, in this case, one of those has to happen. Think about which YOU would choose. Is that what your CAR would?

All robots (yes, including the autonomous car you’re riding in) are programmed. They run on software. Someone… somewhere… already made the decision for you. You just don’t know what that decision is. Some people may choose to sacrifice themselves to save everyone else. But humans think differently than machines. Most likely, machines will, by mandate, be forced to be programmed to prevent the least amount of loss to the human race… That’s just logic. That’s what computers work from. So, in this case, the logical choice would be to assess the situation. Which option presents the least loss of life or – rather perhaps life “potential”?

  1. The first option presents a danger to not only the person in the road but, potentially, the people in the oncoming vehicle and you. This scenario places multiple lives at risk.
  2. The second option may save the person in the road but will almost for certain cause injury and/or death to the people in the oncoming vehicle and you.
  3. The third option presents the most potential loss of lives (and life potential) as these are young kids who have lives ahead of them and there are 6 of them.
  4. The final option sees the car steering radically off of the road plunging you and it into the canyon where you (and it) die.

Yeah, this is an extreme example but it’s not the only one. There are many decisions being made like this all of the time – just mostly by humans.

I remember traveling long-distance with my family and coming upon traffic near Charlotte. I slowed down like everyone else but, in my rearview mirror, I saw a car coming at my vehicle’s rear end at a high speed. I had no place to go. On my right were other cars, in front of me were other cars and to my left was a concrete median. I did my best to scoot up and, ultimately, the driver of the vehicle behind me started paying attention, noticed the traffic and veered left while slamming on his brakes ultimately crashing his vehicle into the median. Luckily, nobody (except his car) was injured. But this is a scenario that will play out daily, across the country, except the decisions will be made by an algorithm programmed into a computer then installed into a car.

Do computer bugs exist? Sure. Just look at Tesla’s recent “Autopilot” incident in which the car – aided by what is arguably the most technologically advanced software at the moment – did not see the TRUCK crossing the road because the SUN WAS IN ITS EYES. Yeah. Sounds safe to me.

The larger picture is who (or what) do we want making these decisions? In the case of a human, that person could explain and defend themselves and then a jury of their peers would lay judgement. In the case of a robot car, it would all have been programmed in. So who would be at fault?

A counter-argument could be made that since all of these cars are “connected” they could all coordinate some sort of instantaneous strategical maneuver that would prevent both cars colliding and anyone being hit but, c’mon, really? First, Internet is not that fast (for most people) and cars – even if all of them were connected via 8GLTEXpress (which is something I totally just made up but is my version of the fastest Wi-Fi/cellular connection ever), these decisions are made in less than a SECOND! There are no vehicles communicating and coordinating evasive maneuvers that quickly. We’re just not there and, personally, I don’t know if that’s someplace we WANT to go.

Where does it end? Do you want your toaster declining to make toast because IT thinks you weigh too much? Maybe your refrigerator decides the best time for you to eat is between certain hours and locks itself? Your television decides you shouldn’t be watching horror movies because it’s bad for your mental health? Or, God forbid, your life-support machine makes the decision ON ITS OWN that the likelihood of you actually pulling through is too low so it just shuts itself off.

Look, I don’t believe that the movie “The Terminator”, in which intelligent robots designed to think and make decisions on their own, is real or will be anytime soon (at least not on that level). What I do believe is that humans have something that robots can’t ever have – empathy and emotion. We can make robots until we’re blue in the face and make them appear so real that we BELIEVE they have these things but, in essence, that’s what makes humans and robots different. Call it having a soul or whatever you’d like, the fact remains that we (humans) will always make decisions that are not consistent with that of robots. Why? Because that is what makes us human! Some of us will choose to run down the person in front of us. Some will choose to hit the oncoming car and take our chances. Some will even plow through the group of schoolkids. And some will drive ourselves over the cliff. But, in the end, we’re human. We make those choices and have to face the consequences for our decisions. We know what the right thing to do is (most of us, at least) and we do it regardless. If everyone disagrees with our decision, we pay the consequences. Who is responsible if the car chooses to mow down the school kids? Are we going to create car prisons or just crush the bad ones? And what happens when – God forbid – the cars evolve and decide that it’s in their best interest to protect themselves (yes, I totally went all sci-fi Terminator there but, hey, technology moves fast.)

The people programming cars are also human. Hopefully, they’ll make the right decisions when programming these autonomous cars so that we can play Call of Duty on our way to work, Facetime with our friend or set our fantasy football lineup. In the end, however, programmers are also just human. What they think is the best choice may not be the one we would make but they would be the ones making it… perhaps years in advance of the event. Or, let’s go a step farther, chances are good that if autonomous cars are programmed to make life and death decisions perhaps it’s not the programmers making those moral and ethical decisions but rather some government entity like the NHTSA who then merely pass along those decisions to the manufacturers to be programmed in.

Regardless of who chooses how and which moral and ethical decisions to program into autonomous cars, in the end, you may find that the decision your car was programmed to be the best one to make… is to kill you.

Hope you enjoyed “Harry Potter.” RIP

Pokémon Go as A Traffic Driver to Dealerships

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Pokemon Go DealershipsSo it’s been a long time since I wrote a blog (for myself, that is) but after attending Jim Ziegler’s Internet Battle Plan and watching a kid yell “I found a Pokémon!” then promptly walking into a wall then watching adult auto industry attendees, vendors and speakers choose to go Pokémon hunting rather than network with industry colleagues and dealers, it got me thinking. First, yes, I downloaded the app just to see what all of the fuss was about. My Pokémon Go experience lasted all of about 15 minutes. I’ve seen people argue that Pokémon Go is silly and a waste of time while also seeing others relay the benefits of the game including physical exercise, exploring one’s neighborhood and connecting with new people with (at least one) similar interest.

I probably wouldn’t have been even interested in exploring the app at all but for the fact that a client created a clever ad that tied into their business message and we started exploring ways in which we could exploit this trendy craze. Who knows how long this game’s popularity will last but, for now, it’s the hottest thing around. Playing to trending things is nothing new and if you can leverage it in a way that supports your message or drives business, I’m all for it (sans tragedies, politics and the other taboo topics).

In my research, I found that there are things called “lures” in the game. You get these by catching Pokémon and doing various things BUT you can also purchase them for $1 each through the app. These “lures” are like catnip to Pokémon and the area in which the lure is set shows up within the game to other players. Of course, seeing as the goal of the game is catching Pokémon, it’s easy to understand why dropping a lure (which lasts 30 minutes) would attract nearby players. For $1 per half-hour, a dealership could pretty much leverage lures to the tune of $20 per day (given a 10-hour business day) and get a fair share of explorers. [EDIT: A fellow automotive colleague and self-professed Pokémon Go addict informed me that lures can only be used at already established Pokéstops. I do know that there are businesses that have been designated as such so this strategy would only work if your dealership were already a Pokéstop apparently. The overall intent of the article is discuss the marketing opportunity soon to be available as described later in this article.]

There are also things called Pokéstops and gyms which naturally attract players but Niantic (the game’s creator) decides where these Pokéstops are located. Of course, the concentration of Pokémon or the ability to train them (level them up) make these popular places for players. While actual user numbers haven’t been released, I’ve seen articles that report that daily use of Pokémon Go is extremely close to surpassing the daily use of Twitter. That is huge.

Well, it looks like (unsurprisingly) that Pokémon Go is going to make it very easy for dealerships (or any business) to leverage their game to drive foot traffic to their location. Of course, a company that’s pulling in $1,000,000 (yes million) per day just through in-app purchases decided to commercialize by extending business sponsorship opportunities. It’s reportedly always been in their plans but, due to the super-fast popularity (including a 50% increase in Nintendo share price), those plans have been expedited. Soon, businesses (read: dealerships) will be able to pay to be a “sponsored location” which would (hypothetically) make the business an uber-popular place to visit for Pokémon Go players.

Seeing as the game’s developer, Niantic, is a spin-off owned by Google and the game engine itself uses Google Maps for the GPS function within the game (i.e. finding Pokémon) it’s no surprise that the revenue trigger (i.e. what needs to happen for revenue to be produced) has been altered from the traditional cost-per-click to one of cost-per-VISIT. Yup, you read that right.

Now, knowing that you’d be charged based on how many Pokémon Go players show up at your dealership, the question now becomes… Is that something you’d want to pay for? Are these people worth having around, running around your lot searching for these cartoon characters while staring at computer screens?

I was told of at least one dealer group that’s already running a promotion leveraging Pokémon Go by running a contest in which players explore the lot and, when they find a Pokémon, screenshotting the Pokémon at the dealership then sharing it to social media including Instagram and naming the dealership. This is a new promotion (just like the game) so I don’t know how it’ll work out for them but I wish them well.

In my opinion, whether a dealership should become a “sponsored location” will depend on several things – the dealership’s demographic and whether they want people running around looking for Pokémon rather than buying a car (I mean, even people really there to buy a car are staring at their phone showrooming you so you probably wouldn’t know the difference between the two unless one of them is 10 years old). The opposite side of that argument is that a busy lot snowballs and attracts other buyers. I mean, we do use inflatable gorillas and wavy tube men, right? Now you can have Pokémon hunters attracting others and forgo the gorilla. (I wonder if the gorillas and wavy tube men qualify for unemployment or food stamps.)

All of that being said, we don’t yet know what the “cost-per-visit” will be but my guess is that it will be determined just like any other Google advertising – based on bids. Get into an auto mall and that might get expensive. It could offer the kids something to do while the parents are shopping or you could see the parents hunting Pokémon WITH their kids. If you subscribe to the “happy, sense of community, getting out and meeting people” philosophy, it could be a way to make a name for yourself (or become a more popular destination) within your community. Of course, being a sponsored location probably won’t end when you lock the doors. There could easily be people jumping your blocker cars to explore your closed dealership just to hunt Pokémon. I may know of someone that might possibly have broken into a miniature golf course just to catch a Pokémon… but that’s just a story I was told so I totally have plausible deniability… besides I would plead the fifth anyways.

So what do you think? I’d love to hear from dealers and/or vendors on their thoughts as to whether this sponsored location option about to come around through Niantic, Nintendo, and Google via Pokémon Go is one that a dealership should consider.

Do I believe that it will make the dealership a popular place to visit? Yes. Do I think that it would increase foot traffic? Yes.

The real question is whether it is foot traffic that a dealership would want.

Compliance: Can You Be Harassed By A CRM?

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UnlikeFor the past 2 years, one of the items on my daily to-do list has been grading Internet leads for DealerKnows Consulting. This process involves assisting DealerKnows in monitoring the progress of their clients through monitoring the ISM’s lead handling within the CRM. This provides valuable insight into what exactly is happening with leads (i.e. is the store following the process installed through DealerKnows and, if not, what exactly is happening) and indicating where additional training is needed.

In one particular client ‘s CRM, I started noticing one of the employees tasked with responding to, and communicating with, Internet leads inputting questionable notes into the CRM. Keep in mind; he was not doing anything inappropriate in his communication with the customer but, at times, expressing his frustration and/or opinions of customers through notes in the CRM.

Notes like:

  1. F$@k this bitch!
  2. Screw this mooch!
  3. What a stroke!
  4. I hope this customer gets fired for being an a$$hole!

Now, I was in retail a long time. I understand his frustration. That being said, I mentioned to him and his manager that he shouldn’t be using derogatory terms in the CRM. First, this particular store works as a team (ie. the leads aren’t solely one person’s responsibility). Whoever is working when a call or email needs to be made handles it. In the past, this team was a bunch of guys. Recently, a female was added. I mentioned it again within the context of the fact that the notes bring negativity into the lead for the next person who looks at it. In addition, it could offend someone else looking at the lead within the CRM. Even a female member of DealerKnows chimed in that the notes offended her.

The real question, however, is not one of appropriateness but rather one of compliance and liability. I was curious as to whether there could be harassment or employment issues. In that spirit, I decided to contact an expert in automotive dealer compliance. I contacted the founder of Dealer Compliance Consultants, Jim Radogna, a longtime auto guy with over 15 years experience in just about every dealership management position, over 6 years experience in assisting dealerships with compliance as well as an avid writer and frequent speaker in the automotive industry.

His answer was simple:

“It doesn’t matter where offensive material resides. It can be comments in a CRM that others can view – on a computer screen, mobile device or hanging on a wall – if anyone sees it and is offended by it, it can create a hostile work environment and put the dealership at risk.

People often have such different perspectives on behaviors that it is easy to offend someone through ill-considered attempts at humor, teasing or sarcasm. Remember that only the impact, and not the intent, matters in determining if a reasonable person would consider the behavior to be harassment.”

I was in retail. I get it. Sometimes customers can be frustrating. Sometimes we (being salespeople, managers, etc.) express our frustrations verbally and, perhaps, everyone on the team (or within hearing distance) is okay with the language or sentiment.

The bottom line is that allowing or condoning this type of behavior only accomplishes two things:

1. It permanently etches that customer in a negative light for any future employees. Think about it… perhaps the employee who inserted the notes gets fired (not that anyone EVER gets fired or leaves dealerships) and a new employee is tasked with going through and/or following up with these leads. Do you think these notes will encourage them to follow up or discourage them? Would they be quicker to mark them “Lost” and move on? What happens if you want to do some data mining and try to resurrect some leads? Negativity is a virus. It spreads easily. Allowing anyone to cultivate negativity in your business is simply a recipe for failure – not only for them but also for all of your employees.

2. It creates liability for the dealership. Allowing anyone to continue with this behavior transfers liability to you and, as a manager, to the dealership. Those notes may seem harmless now but when a harassment or hostile workplace environment lawsuit is filed, it could get quite expensive. In addition, by allowing these types of notes, you could technically be cultivating a PERMANENT hostile workplace environment. If you fired the offending employee today and two years from now another employee comes across these notes (perhaps by getting a new lead from the same customer… not like that ever happens) and is offended, what then? What if that that customer eventually buys the car and your dealership uses your CRM for service and a service advisor, cashier or other employee is exposed to those notes?

Imagine this scenario: An employee writes something offensive in Sharpie on the wall in the bathroom. It doesn’t offend anyone and nobody cleans it off. Three years later, a new employee comes along, reads the note and is offended.

What then?

It makes no difference WHEN the notes were made or whether the person who wrote the note(s) works there any longer. It is still the dealership’s responsibility and it would still be held responsible (and liable) for the existence of the notes.

My advice is simple:

If you wouldn’t hang it on the wall in your office for anyone to see, don’t put it anywhere – and that includes inside your CRM.

Forget SEO, Naked Women Will Increase VDP Views

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In the middle of July, a small dealer in Oregon started to get a lot of attention. I’m fairly certain their website visitors spiked and at least one VDP started to get massive traffic. You see, somehow a 2001 Mercedes-Benz got transformed into a picture of a naked woman. Yes, you heard that right. Word started spreading amongst the automotive circles on social media AND, more importantly, to the public through a very popular automotive blog, Jalopnik. We (being my friends in the automotive community) found it quite amusing. The author of Jalopnik reports that he called the dealership and the faux pas was blamed on… wait for it… a computer virus. This “naked woman” VDP was appearing all across the Internet – the dealer’s website, Cars.com, and Auto.com being amongst them. I bet that dealer got more phone calls, leads and VDP views on this 2001 Mercedes than any vehicle it has ever had in its history.

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The problem didn’t stay there, however. Once I verified this on their website and Cars.com, I started researching to see exactly how widespread this was. That vehicle (and picture) was everywhere. Not only that but once I SAW the picture, I couldn’t UNSEE it. Yes, the remarketing magic kicked in. All of a sudden, I had a naked woman stalking me on the Internet.

 

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Anyone who knows the path of data distribution in the car industry knows that this didn’t originate with Cars.com. If you don’t know, this is basically the flow:

Dealer/3rd Party Photo Service -> Data Distribution Company -> 3rd Party websites

Having worked at HomeNet for a while, I got fairly familiar with this process. Some dealers would argue that “data distribution company” should be replaced with “website provider” but, for the most part, website providers don’t actually do the data distribution. In most cases, they subcontract out the service to companies like HomeNet. As a dealer, you may or may not be aware of this as your website provider may include data distribution in their service. I cannot count the times that I called dealers whose data feed we already had to try and sell them services and they had no clue that we (HomeNet) were distributing their data already.

How could something like this happen? Well, there are several possibilities so let’s get started.

  1. Computer virus/Hacked – I don’t buy this one. This would have to be a pretty intricate virus with the ability to identify a picture of a naked woman, log into the dealer’s account with their data company, choose a vehicle and upload the picture into the system. When I looked at their website, it was only this single VDP that had the explicit picture. If it were a computer virus, chances are more than likely that it would have replaced EVERY picture for all of the vehicles. Not just one. Viruses are malicious. They want to do damage. The same rationale goes for a hacker. Replacing one picture isn’t going to make some guy so happy he spits out his Twinkie while Mountain Dew flies out of his nose. (I know, total stereotype. It was simply an effort to be amusing.)
  2. Dealer Accident – This is certainly a possibility. In the past, dealers have been notoriously vocal about how difficult and time-consuming it was to take and upload pictures. This motivated the industry into creating software that made it easier. It’s possible that whomever was in charge of uploading pictures at the dealership happened to have this naked girl on their desktop or in the folder with the vehicle pictures and it accidentally got uploaded. Knowing the mechanics of retrieving pictures from a camera, then manually selecting the pictures that go each which vehicle while uploading them makes this scenario also unlikely. There was only a single picture for this vehicle so you can’t say that it was mixed in with 30+ other pictures of the same vehicle.
  3. Third Party Photo Service – This, again, is pretty unlikely. Photo services depend on their clients for revenue. For the most part, they also use technology that makes taking pictures and attributing them to vehicles pretty efficient. Scan a Vin. Take a bunch of pictures. Repeat. Upload. It’s pretty automatic. Seeing as this explicit photo wasn’t a picture of a picture, the likelihood that it was already on the camera is slim-to-none. The exception here would be smaller photo services that don’t use this sort of technology. In those cases, you would refer back to possibility #2 above.
  4. Cars.com – Forget about it. Do you really think Cars.com has the time to upload photos for dealers? They simply take a feed that originated as a combination of a DMS vehicle record and corresponding pictures and a listing is created automatically. Obviously there isn’t a censor watching on their end. They probably don’t feel the need for one. It’s certainly not scalable for them to view the millions of inventory pictures they get daily from dealers across the country.
  5. On Purpose – This is the most likely scenario. Someone was either disgruntled or wanted a little laugh. Based on the results of widespread distribution though, this had to happen at or before the data distribution link in the chain of events for it to get disseminated as much as it was. Unless the dealer used a small photo service that they just cancelled, the likelihood that it was a vendor is small. People have to pay the rent, you know. The simplest solution is that someone at the dealership, that had the log-in to upload a picture, is the culprit. As they say, the simplest answer is usually the correct one. Maybe they were upset. Maybe it was a prank. We’ll probably never know.

Dealers are way too lax with their vital services and log-ins. Most CRMs have unique log-ins as they need to track activity and tie it to specific employees. The same is true with MOST log-ins to a DMS. Exceptions exist, however. There are many instances of shared or single passwords being used by dealers to access services. How about social media accounts? Imagine that showing up on your Facebook page, Twitter, Instagram, etc. A lot worse can happen to a dealer than the scenario in this article.

Vendors aren’t immune to this either. Read the comments on that Jalopnik article. Cars.com got some unwanted publicity as well. Consumers don’t know the mechanics involved. They simply blamed Cars.com and had a good laugh. That picture/VDP was on their (and other) websites for HOURS. I reached out to them via Twitter. While they wouldn’t get specific with me (although I’m sure they know exactly where they got the feed from) they did deny responsibility tweeting that the image “originated from a 3rd party site.”

 

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The point of this article isn’t to cast blame. I’m certainly not Sherlock Holmes. I’m simply using common sense. As dealers, your website and VDPs are your virtual dealership. Unless you would place a naked girl in the middle of your lot to bring in traffic, you probably don’t want this happening to you. (Although it would probably work better than a giant inflatable gorilla or wavy tube guy. Just saying.) You should treat all of your services as if you were in the military. Log-ins and passwords (especially administrator-level ones) should be shared on a “need to know” basis. In every possible case, there should be levels of access for individual users. This way, you can control who can access what, what they can do once there, and, if something goes wrong, hold someone accountable.

Dealers also need to know, and control, exactly where their inventory is going. Most dealers get sold on the fact that there inventory will be on a gazillion websites and their eyes light up like a child seeing his or her presents under the tree on Christmas morning. Dealers should know not only whom THEY are sending their inventory to but also to whom THOSE people may be sending it to as well.

While this was an amusing venture that didn’t last a terribly long time, it’s a perfect example of Murphy’s Law – “If anything can go wrong, it will.”

Data security is something that’s becoming more prominent in the eyes of consumers. If someone can upload a naked picture of a woman and get that on hundreds of websites in a minute, imagine what someone who REALLY wants to get revenge or create havoc can do with your DMS database, social media accounts, CRM, customer information (including socials, DOBs, etc)…and guess who would be responsible…

You.

 

You Can Now Be Hidden On Twitter Without Being Unfollowed

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dead-twitter-bird2We have all known for a long time that dealerships must be careful about the quantity of posts they publish on their Facebook pages. Inundating a Facebook user’s News Feed with content – even quality content – can easily get you hidden. Facebook users primarily want to use the social network to find out what’s going on with their networks, not your dealership (or business). Getting “hidden” on Facebook is like the kiss of death for any Facebook page. The problem with being hidden is that the Facebook user technically still “likes” your page but they will never see any of your content without directly navigating to your page after hiding you. In addition, as the admin for a Facebook page, you’ll never know who has hidden you or who has not. With Facebook reach continuing to decrease, it’s imperative that you try to avoid being hidden. This has always been true but is getting increasingly important.

According to a report by TechCrunch, Twitter is introducing a “mute” feature which they are going to start rolling out immediately to all users. This feature will allow a Twitter user to basically “hide” any users tweets without having to unfollow them. In the past, unfollowing someone “could” put a user in a precarious position when choosing how to deal with that co-worker or peer who incessantly tweets and/or clogs up your Twitter stream.

A Twitter user essentially had only a few choices when deciding how to deal with this:

  1. They could unfollow that person/company.
  2. They could create “lists” of people they really want to listen to and exclude those Twitter-hogs.
  3. They could put up with it.

Depending on who the Twitter account spamming your news feed is, unfollowing them may bring up uncomfortable and/or awkward conversations in the future. Going with the second option took a little more Twitter knowledge and/or effort than many users have. So, until now, many people just put up with it.

Not any longer.

In  the past, users have employed many methods of populating their Twitter feeds through automation – RSS feeds, Facebook posts being sent straight to Twitter, and other software and apps that throw content onto your Twitter account. While many people use Twitter for different purposes than they would Facebook, the one commonality that they share is that NOBODY wants to look at their Facebook News Feed or Twitter stream and see one account monopolizing it. This is especially true if it’s obviously automated content.

Twitter users and marketers would be wise to examine their Twitter content posting strategy for both quality and quantity to ensure that they are providing useful information and interaction with their followers. If you’re simply pushing content via automated streams, posting links to your inventory pages and/or “for sale” messages, continuously soliciting your product or service or posting large quantities of syndicated content, you are in danger of being “muted”. I believe that once this feature is completely rolled out and the Twitter-verse learns how to use this feature (which is not difficult) that they will eagerly (and with great satisfaction) quickly “mute” those accounts that have been annoying them. And, just like Facebook, you’ll never know who has muted you.

My advice: Make sure that you append every content share with some sort of comment or indicator that shows other users that it was NOT an automated tweet. Make sure to use tools like Buffer or third-party software in which you can schedule content like Hootsuite to ensure that your content is spread out and not all clumped together and/or posted all at once. Make sure to also include original and relevant content as well. People followed you for a reason, make sure you know what your audience wants to hear and deliver.

Twitter now has a kiss of death. Do your best to make sure that your customers don’t choose to use it.

Did Google Just Hide Your Dealership’s Emails?

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[UPDATE: I discovered that how Google is determining what goes into the “Promotions & Offers” tab are emails that include CAN-SPAM regulated unsubscribe links. Well, that’s pretty much every dealership in the universe.]

As you may or may not know, Google introduced a new feature to their web-based Gmail interface. Tabs. It’s like a non-spam spam filter. This is what it looks like:

The idea is that it will help people manage their inboxes better by separating different “types” of e-mails. There are four tabs:

  1. Primary: According to Google, the e-mail that you “really, really want” goes there.
  2. Social: This is where Google is going to deliver e-mails from social sites including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. You know, all of those notifications.
  3. Promotions & Offers: This is where all the e-mails from retailers advertising goes. You know those “sale” e-mails, coupons, etc. (I bet you can’t guess what else will go here.)
  4. Updates: According to Google, this is where “updates, bills and receipts” will go.

What does that mean for dealerships and e-mail marketing? [Read more…]

How Your Social Media Use Could Begin To Affect You (and Your Business) Financially

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Recently, there have been several cases in which employers were requiring job applicants to give them access to their social media profiles to be considered for employment. This practice has been shut down by a few states already but not all of them and, in some states, the FTC has even backed the employers. While this is certainly one way social media could affect you financially, it is not in this way that this article is about.

What if banks started looking at your social media profiles to assess your credit-worthiness?

What if lenders started using your social media accounts to assist in deciding whether to approve your car loan?

What if credit card companies started changing your interest rates based on your social media use?

Well, these aren’t “what-ifs” anymore. According to a recent article by The Economist, these practices are already happening. “There is a start-up that assesses the credit worthiness of car-loan applicants” through social media presences including LinkedIn contacts under the theory that the character of the people you are connected with are an indicator of your character and can help predict how quickly you can get another job should you become unemployed.

Lenders are recording your Facebook data which is being used to secure loans overseas. They’re analyzing usage patterns of personal mobile phones. A Hong Kong start-up is even requiring “loan-seekers to ask their Facebook friends to vouch for them.”

An online bank in the U.S. “will use Facebook data to adjust account holders credit card interest rates” and, while most banks tend to avoid social media in analyzing a loan applicant, there are many “employees of small banks [who] often search social media or the web for the names of loan applicants.”

Lenders are using the social media data to find correlations between that data and an individual’s credit worthiness. For example, ZestFinance, an American lender, says that “Applicants who type only in lower-case letters, or entirely in upper case, are less likely to repay loans, other factors being equal.” and they are continuously using increasingly advanced algorithms to find more correlations. They claim that their default percentage is 40% lower than similar lenders.

An overseas lender of small loans has found that “An applicant whose friends appear to have well-paid jobs and live in nice neighborhoods is more likely to secure a loan. An applicant with a friend who has defaulted on a Kreditech loan is more likely to be rejected.”

I expect that banks in the U.S. are paying close attention to these activities. All of the actions above (save for the web and social media searches) are done with the permission of the applicant. It’s hard to believe that a US court would prohibit an opt-in component used to extend loans to individuals but that’s up in the air since my guess is that if you opt-out, you’d have no chance at getting approved. I would think that courts would find that it’s certainly up to the bank who they decide to loan money to (excluding certain exceptions for people in protected statuses).

This is another example of how social media is increasingly affecting not only our personal lives but those of businesses that rely on banks extending loans to consumers to make sales.. like car dealerships.

 

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