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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.

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.

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…]

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