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Dealerships Flub Lots of Phone Calls
Study results indicate some callers are lucky the phone is even answered.
1 Min Read
quotCritical for auto industryquot Zhao says
When consumers search for cars, parts or auto services on their mobile phones and then try to contact a dealership, one in six times their call goes unanswered.
That’s according to data from Marchex, a mobile ad technology firm. The finding is part of an Industry Institute white paper, “Mobile Consumers Are Calling: How Inbound Phone Calls Help Auto Dealers Win Customers, Influence Brand Loyalty.”
Using technology to analyze anonymous data from 1,000 randomly sampled consumer-to-dealer mobile phone calls in the U.S., the study reports:
16% of the calls weren’t answered.
When customers did connect with a dealership, 63% of the time there was no attempt to schedule an appointment.
66% of the time, dealership representatives failed to ask for contact information.
“What we’ve learned is critical for the auto industry, especially given that cars, parts and services are what we consider high-margin sales,” says Chen Zhao, the Institute’s director-analytics and the study’s author.
“There's no question that becoming more effective at capturing these leads over the phone can have a direct impact on dealers’ profitability,” she says.
Other study findings:
77% of phone calls are from new customers.
74% of callers ask about parts and services.
The percentage of customers calling about new or used cars, which are considered valuable leads, was 14%. That’s much smaller than inbound phone calls for parts and services.
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