The order to delivery stage of the car-buying journey is rife with possibility for the retail automotive sector. From driving up customer experience at a time when sales teams struggle to offer meaningful updates to each and every customer, all the way to maximising value of car-buyers through profitable add-ons like accessories, gap insurance and service plans.
The value of this phase of the retail journey is no longer in question, however, as with any data collection and analysis exercise we’ve noted a few patterns of behaviour as we have developed the technology, rolled out to clients and watched customers in their thousands receive the AutoBuzz experience.
1. APPETITE FOR INFORMATION IS SIGNIFICANT
We have some bad news for anyone who thought customers are more than happy to sit by the phone and wait for the sales team to call up sporadically to let them know when their newly ordered vehicle will be ready. AutoBuzz has shown that more than 90% of customers engage with initial comms post-order and on average 70% of those individuals remain ‘active’ throughout the order to delivery phase.
AutoBuzz provides a personalised website or WelcomeHub, as we call it, packed full of information on what to do next, what else can be purchased and things like in-car technology video tutorials. Empowering individual sales executives with details of which customers are active and what they are active around, is one of the most powerful ways AutoBuzz converts this huge appetite for information into additional revenue and profit.
2. ACCESSORIES AND PROTECTION PRODUCTS DRIVE REVENUE
Across the franchises and retailers that we power with AutoBuzz, accessories and protection products like paint protection and gap insurance, come out on top in terms of most popular add-ons between order and delivery.
This might come as a surprise to retailers who believe the sales team are well drilled in presenting and closing on these typically profitable items. And they may well be, but it could be down to the fact that the customer is not particularly keen on investing further at point of order, or that they do not see the value at this stage. The good news is that across the next few months with automated presentation of any add-ons they haven’t yet purchased, the customer may well decide to invest.
The question is, does your sales team know when that moment is? More importantly, from a senior leadership perspective, the ability to see exactly how each site or franchise is performing in terms of capitalising on the value that order to handover possesses, is hugely powerful. Understand where profit is being won and lost and make the appropriate changes to boost business performance in an area that has not been understood, let alone leveraged, for too long.
3. THERE ARE ONLY 24 HOURS IN A SALES EXEC’S DAY
Something we’ve learnt on our tech journey with AutoBuzz is that the order to delivery marketplace is getting busier and busier by the day. Recently, Group 1 announced it had an order bank here in the UK of 16,000 units, predominantly in the luxury sector with brands ranging from Audi to BMW and Jaguar Land Rover to Mercedes-Benz.
Some 16,000 customers waiting for a new car to arrive across around 30 or so luxury dealers will mean each site will have around 500 customers to manage between order and handover.
Each site would be looking at more than 200 customers to manage while more and more are being added to the list. There are only 24 hours in the day, and even the most diligent of sales executives will struggle to maintain a close relationship with customers in the order to delivery gap and simultaneously handling all their new enquiries. The latter, of course, they are financially incentivised to execute.
AutoBuzz is in place to take long lists of customers and cut them down into major opportunities, driving efficiencies through sales teams and, in turn, the entire retail business.
Want to learn more about your customers in the Order to Delivery part of the car-buying journey? It’s full of possibility but until you begin to shine a light on it you’ll never truly understand what it can deliver.
Get in touch today to arrange a quick demo or set up a small, light-touch pilot so you can see exactly how AutoBuzz delivers during Order to Delivery.
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