During a Tuesday webinar, a team from Bob Clements International and Kenect helped dealers uncover ways they can use artificial intelligence to make their operations more efficient and profitable.
During the presentation by Trevor Allred and Sara Hey, procedures were detailed that, in combination with a dealer’s Dealer Management System, can make scheduling, service and the parts operation work more smoothly.
The pair even offered tips that could potentially increase a dealer’s parts and service revenue in 14 days.
“If parts and service is the most profitable part of our business and the highest margins, why wouldn’t we focus on making it easier, quicker and a better experience not only for the customer but for the employee?” Allred said.
He said a secret weapon can be using AI to schedule service appointments and fill the service calendar across all months – not just spring and fall. By using both voice and text AI, dealers can reach customers via their preferred method. Dealers can plug a command into their DMS to contact all customers who have bought within the past six months, but who have not come in for parts or service and include a link to a 15% off coupon.
Hey urged dealers to use automated scheduling for the service departments. She said this can be especially helpful with recall campaigns as well as missed appointment follow-ups.
Any AI application needs to be gradually trained in order to provide the right answers for service managers and help them generate service quotes in a fraction of the time they normally would require.
“Not only are we talking about profitability for the dealership, but we can’t overstate the importance of time-savings,” Allred said. “The reason it is so important is, ‘How does that affect employees’ aura?’ If I’m an employee and I just bought myself an extra 2.2 hours a day because I’m good with technology, I’m going to be easier to work with.”
Increasing profits also means driving more people through the doors. AI can be an invaluable tool when it comes to marketing, they said. Broadcast text messaging and event-based triggered text messages can save time and make marketing specific to customers. A service order or parts order can trigger automated text messages.
When it comes to the parts department, AI can be used as well. Hey said dealers need to make sure their margins are right, that they have the right parts in stock and then add 5% to parts sold through service. AI also can help dealers know what parts they need in stock by looking at a list of RV models that have been sold by the dealer in the past five years.
“If you have it in stock it becomes less of a price issue and more of a matter of is it easy to do business with you,” she said.
Once parts and service have become a strong point of the dealership, the dealers can use AI to generate five-star reviews for those departments.
“You already have thousands of satisfied customers out there, let your online reputation show that those people are happy,” Allred said.
But for those wanting immediate satisfaction, instructors offered two possibilities.
First, pick one product from the parts store and ask every single customer that comes in if they need the product. Choose one of the easiest things that customers would say yes to in the parts department. Hey estimated that 30% of all customers will say yes.
Second, in the service department, conduct a warranty inspection promotion. Choose one make and one model and find the group of customers who bought that vehicle who are close to having their warranty expire. Send that group a text message, email or even phone call to touch those customers and offer them a basic maintenance with a free warranty inspection to see if there are any repairs that need to be made before the warranty expires.
She said by getting the customers focused on the warranty, there is the potential for other service opportunities to come up once their attention is on the quality of their RV.
For most of the AI solutions, improved communication is the key benefit.
“When we don’t respond to our customers, it says, ‘I have no idea what’s actually going on,’” Hey said. “That does not bring trust and confidence. Consumers want to choose a business that makes it easy to do business with them. If we aren’t building trust by communicating and being in front of your customer I think you are missing a huge piece of it. Truthfully, that’s how market share is going to start driving in the next few years.”
