A recent study released by lead-engagement software provider Conversica, found that auto retailers scored better in responding to leads in 2016 than their counterparts in eight other industries, including real estate, insurance and telecommunications. Although Conversica gave the automotive industry an “A” grade, the company cited examples of customer-engagement where improvements are still needed.
Conversica’s 2016 Sales Effectiveness Report — Automotive Industry, published April 7, dispatched “secret shoppers” who sent questions over a one-month period to 538 company websites, including 59 automotive sites. The goal was to measure each company’s customer lead follow-up process within the scope of four categories:
- Promptness: dealerships are up 12 per cent from 2015, as 49 per cent of them responded to online customer inquiries within five minutes;
- Persistence: 25 per cent of dealerships made eight or more attempts at replying to a question;
- Personalization: 74 per cent of dealerships responded with a personalized greeting and referenced the original lead query — only 18 per cent of dealerships did so in 2015;
- Performance: Due to increasingly sophisticated filters, a mere two per cent of dealership responses were emails with more than a 90 per cent chance to wind up as spam — this score marked a serious decline from 59 per cent in 2015.
Among the surveyed dealerships, 19 per cent of them did not respond at all to a customer inquiry, while 75 per cent did not attempt to establish Conversica’s recommended eight or more responses to an unresponsive customer.
