Not only can you expect new-car buying and vehicle ownership to remain relatively unscathed by car-sharing and ride-sharing upstarts, these burgeoning services may actually present an opportunity for dealers and others in the auto business.
That’s according to a recap of the 2016 Kelley Blue Book Ride Sharing/Car Sharing Study, which was commissioned by KBB and conducted by Vital Findings.
First, the basics on the terminology. Think of companies like Uber or Lyft when you hear “ride-sharing”, KBB explained. The consumer uses a smartphone app to request and pay for a ride. The vehicle is usually owned by the driver who picks the requester up.
When you hear “car-sharing,” think folks like Getaround, ZipCar and Car2Go. These companies provide cars that consumers can borrow.
“Ride- and car-sharing services are getting a lot of attention these days, and we wanted to better understand the current landscape of these app-fueled platforms and how they may impact both consumers and the auto industry moving forward,” Karl Brauer, senior analyst for Kelley Blue Book, said in an analysis.
“While there are numerous benefits to ride sharing and car sharing, our data reveals that owning a car still reigns supreme, with reliability, safety and convenience all being major factors,” he said.
In a nutshell, the key point from KBB’s research is that consumers mainly use these services as an alternative to a taxi or going the traditional rental car route, not necessarily as an alternative to owning a car.
But what could also be pivotal for the auto industry are the potential business opportunities within this segment for dealers and rental-car companies.
When it comes to potentially using a ride-sharing provider in the future, the companies with a ride-sharing app still command the most consideration from consumers at 37 percent. However, rental-car companies (32 percent) and dealerships (24 percent) earned some looks, as well.
Taxi/limo companies were at 26 percent consideration. Sixteen percent would consider automakers for ride-sharing, private individuals had 15 percent consideration and tech companies were at 14 percent.
The numbers were even more favorable to rental-car companies and dealerships on the car-sharing side.
In fact, consideration for traditional rental companies to provide car-sharing services was at 36 percent, with dealerships at 31 percent. And then companies designed specifically to provide car-sharing services were in between at 33 percent.
More vital stats
Seventy-six percent of vehicle-sharing users say they plan on buying or leasing a car during the next two years, according to KBB.
A similar percentage (73 percent) of overall survey respondents say they’re familiar with ride-sharing and 43 percent say they’re familiar with car-sharing. However, just 16 percent have used ride-sharing and just 7 percent have used car-sharing.
KBB’s stats also show respondents having significantly more favorable views of vehicle ownership than either car-sharing or ride-sharing when it comes to reliability, safety and convenience, as detailed below:
More reliable: ownership or ride-sharing?
Ownership: 81 percent
Ride-sharing: 19 percent
More reliable: ownership or car-sharing?
Ownership: 78 percent
Car-sharing: 22 percent
Safer: ownership or ride-sharing?
Ownership: 80 percent
Ride-sharing: 20 percent
Safer: ownership or car-sharing?
Ownership: 80 percent
Car-sharing: 20 percent for car sharing
More convenient: ownership or ride-sharing?
Ownership: 74 percent
Ride-sharing: 26 percent
More convenient: ownership or car-sharing?
Ownership: 75 percent
Car-sharing: 25 percent
Customer contact management company CallRevu and dealership software provider ELEAD1ONE recently introduced the seamless integration of CallRevu into the ELEAD1ONE CRM platform.
CallRevu can provide call management tools for dealers to handle phone calls, improve employee phone skills and discover more sales and service opportunities through live, actionable alerts.
“Every phone call is an opportunity to get or keep a customer and the only way to increase sales, ongoing loyalty and improve CSI is to focus on your caller’s journey,” CallRevu said.
The advanced integration is geared to bring all of the CallRevu data and functionality inside of ELEAD1ONE CRM platform. With a single login, dealers can get the data to have familiar conversations that lead to appointments. Because CallRevu listens to every call, the CRM is populated with “only true” sales opportunities.
CallRevu estimated the average lifespan of a phone up is nine days so dealers can benefit from the integration by getting phone ups into the CRM so follow up can happen before a caller buys somewhere else.
Chip King, founder and managing partner at CallRevu addressed what he described as the importance of earning asking and receiving customer contact information for proper entry into CRM.
“Our bench-marking call study indicates that the average dealership fails to obtain customer contact information 52 percent of the time,” King said. “CRM administrators tend to only want to use caller stated contact information, as it is not only accurate but the preferred customer experience.
“Here at CallRevu, we are pleased to automate our dealer client workflows, and continuing to stress that success comes with an optimal caller’s journey and that only happens when you earn, ask, and receive contact information,” he continued.
Dealers will be able to view the full transcription, the ad source, the agent who handled, the vehicle information, and other important data without switching between tabs or systems to follow up on missed opportunities. CallRevu said effective management of ad dollars requires that leads are followed.
The company went on to mention managers can be confident that agents are following up with leads in their CRM system by making outbound calls with a click-to-call. In addition to tracking the calls the store’s team makes, CallRevu can creates more opportunities for agents to connect with customers through texting.
Offering text visibility and response tools directly inside the CRM system, agents can now double their contact rates.
“Without a doubt, ELEAD1ONE understands the importance of measuring phone performance. The CallRevu team has done a great job writing telephony integration standard APIs,” said Mark Queen, partner of ELEAD1ONE, a division of Data Software Services.
“Last year, they recognized and responded to an industry-wide need for measuring outbound call productivity on a daily basis,” Queen added. “It’s a pleasure to partner with companies who share an open architecture belief, as we do. Secure integration allows the dealer, not their vendors, to decide how best to run their business.”
Born in a dealership in 2007 to understand why an ad campaign didn’t sell more vehicles, CallRevu is designed to put dealers in contact with more phone leads and prevents any opportunities from being missed, improving chances that they will turn into sales.
Since inception, CallRevu’s approach has been complex and more labor intensive because dealers need real-time missed opportunity alerts, along with great call data and reporting. To achieve these goals, CallRevu created a process to certify live agents who listen to all important calls from beginning to end.
And now CallRevu is integrated into ELEAD1ONE
“We are excited about the integration. It provides dealers with additional efficiencies, which in turn will help them maximize their CRMs to follow up with customers and sell more cars,” CallRevu executive vice president Tom Harsha said.
“We believe that these new partnerships also support our mission to improve the customer experience and our laser focus on helping automobile dealers measure and improve the most common contact point with their customers — the phone,” Harsha went on to say.
Insurance Auto Auctions has announced the debut of its Title Procurement Dashboard, a new feature within CSAToday, the company’s online vehicle inventory management and analysis tool.
The Title Procurement Dashboard is the newest member to be added to the IAA Total Loss Solution suite of offerings that aim to help improve customer satisfaction and effectively manage costs during the total loss claims process.
According to the company, the solution helps improve the management of the title-procurement process and provides IAA Title Services customers with the status of their documents to enable the loss claims process to be handled more efficiently.
“The added capabilities of the Title Procurement Dashboard allow insurance carriers to be alerted to delays and problem documents,” said Pat Walsh, IAA’s senior vice president of business development. “The loss to claim settlement timeline is decreased through improved visibility, and this can influence policyholder satisfaction and retention. The faster a total loss claim is settled, the higher probability a policyholder will remain a customer of the insurance company.”
Utilizing the dashboard, customers can identify where they are experiencing problems or delays and then address those individual files that are holding up their timeline targets.
“IAA designed this dashboard feature to build on our comprehensive solution for insurance clients,” said John Kett, IAA’s president and chief executive officer. “We are committed to helping our customers reduce costs, improve cycle times and increase employee engagement within the total loss claims process.”
Dominion Dealer Solutions announced the launch of its Dominion Recon solution on Wednesday, its newest process-based software platform for tracking and managing the used-vehicle reconditioning process for dealers.
Dominion Recon is now available to dealers as part of the company’s Inventory Manager.
“Dealers clearly understand the impact the reconditioning process has on dealerships’ financial performance,” said Todd Price, DDS national operations manager for inventory. “Tools such as Dominion Recon provide the transparency and automation needed to effectively manage this.”
According to the company, dealers using Dominion Recon will see a reduction in time to market and greater accountability and tracking in getting used vehicles prepared for the retail process. They can use the solution to alert and deploy necessary resources and hold dealership departments and service providers accountable for any time-related delays.
For more information about Dominion Recon, visit Dominion Dealer Solutions’ site here.
Pearl Technology Holdings revealed its 6-foot-4 dynamic touch screens, called “Genius Stations,” aimed at expediting the sales and F&I process from the showroom.
Utilizing the company’s ShowroomXpress (SRX) retail platform, the Genius Stations allow customers to work out deals with or without the help of a sales representative right in the showroom. Shoppers can start the process online or in the store, or do a combination of both and pick up in the store where they left off online, via the use of Pearl Tech’s SRX application.
The platform uses Experian’s pre-screening technology, allowing SRX to calculate automotive loan payments to the dollar within 10 seconds. It prequalifies customers without providing a Social Security number and can provide exact payment calculations from every auto lender in the United States.
After prequalification, a salesperson can scan the VIN and the customer’s driver’s license using a smart device and bring up the customer’s record up on the Genius Station and walk them through the pre-approved payments on each vehicle they’re interested in for both financing and leasing terms, comparing the best rates from various lenders.
When not in use by a customer, the Genius Stations also serve as advertising boards.
“Basically, within 10 seconds the system takes the customer to a point in the retail process that would traditionally take 90 minutes,” said Bruce Thompson, Pearl Tech’s chief executive officer and founder.” “The ‘Genius Stations’ are expandable touch screens that allow either the salesperson, or the customer, to zoom in and see media-rich content, digital brochures and video, on each vehicle. Allowing the customer to shop by a real pre-qualified payment is a game-changer.”
Thompson also likened the Genius Stations to giant, 55-inch smartphone-style boards, which can use SRX to communicate seamlessly with computers, tablets and smartphones.
The Genius Stations will be officially displayed at the NADA 2016 Expo and Convention in Las Vegas on from March 31 to April 3. For more information, visit the SRX website here.
Carvana has moved into Florida with its latest expansion. The online vehicle retailer said Tuesday it has opened up shop in Orlando.
Carvana now has a physical presence in 10 markets where it offers next-day delivery to buyers within 100 miles for free.
In addition to Orlando, those include Atlanta; Austin, Texas; Birmingham, Ala.; Charlotte, N.C.; Dallas; Houston; Nashville, Tenn.; San Antonio; and Raleigh, N.C.
Carvana offers its services and delivery nationwide, but for buyers outside the 100-mile radius, delivery time and cost determined by distance from the Carvana location.
"This past year was an incredible year of growth for Carvana, and we couldn’t be more excited to kick-off 2016 by continuing our expansion into Florida, beginning with Orlando," Carvana founder and chief executive officer Ernie Garcia said in a news release.
"As one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas, it’s the perfect market for us to enter, and we look forward to bringing local residents the Carvana experience — where they can buy, finance, trade-in and purchase a car entirely online — and now experience free, next-day delivery," he added.
Digital marketing company LotLinx announced Tuesday it has expanded its “deep-linking” technology to Facebook, aiming to lead low-funnel car shoppers on the social media site to their local dealers’ vehicle detail pages.
According to LotLinx, its technology uses proprietary shopper data from LotLinx sites, a dealer’s own site, and Facebook-provided Polk data to build a customer audience for each dealer.
The company says that after testing the tool for a year their results show that this type of targeting, paired with LotLinx’ VIN-specific ads, can be more than five times as efficient as Facebook targeting alone.
“It’s LotLinx’ mission to scour the online universe for low-funnel, high-quality car shoppers and send them directly to dealer’ websites,” said Denise Chudy, chief executive officer at LotLinx. “We’re now expanding our technology on to the Facebook platform to help our dealer customers maximize their opportunity to connect with VINtenders in their market.”
For more information about LotLinx, visit its site here.
Buyers and dealers — no need to take out your smartphone to check run lists. Why don’t you just check your watch?
ADESA said Friday it has launched its Marketplace app for the Apple Watch.
“Car dealers are leveraging technology in new and exciting ways, and this Apple Watch app allows them to monitor their auction day activities even more closely,” said ADESA president and chief executive officer Stéphane St-Hilaire. “We will continue to launch products that give our customers more options and broader access to fill their inventory needs.”
The app allows registered auto dealers to find, research, price and purchase vehicle inventory, both online and at ADESA auction locations across the country.
And the new Apple Watch app includes popular features of Marketplace, such as “Watch Lists”, which tracks vehicles of interest, and GPS, the company said.
ADESA asserts the new app will save dealers time, and with GPS, dealers can quickly locate a vehicle on the auction lot. They can also build Watch Lists, and even purchase vehicles.
The Apple Watch app will also alert dealers when a Watch List vehicle is about to run in the physical lane.
And it also sends notifications when a dealer is outbid on an online vehicle auction on ADESA DealerBlock. Dealers can also access the ADESA Market Guide to research pricing and view national price averages on saved vehicles searches.
On top of the new Apple Watch app, the company has also enhanced the Marketplace app with a few new features, including:
- An improved VIN scanner that links directly to vehicle history;
- Updated condition report details, with tire condition and an inspection summary
- “My Purchases” view with in-lane, LiveBlock and DealerBlock transactions; Coupon code acceptance; and, DealerBlock outbid notifications for iOS.
The Marketplace mobile app is available at no cost for iOS and Android.
Canada-based automotive technology company Selectbidder has recently penned a partnership with one of California’s largest independent auctions: North Hollywood’s own All Valley Dealers Auto Auction.
AVDA Auction plans to use Selectbidder’s platform to manage real-time bids between its network of dealers for their respective trade-ins.
“This new technology is important to our business,” said Victor Soghomonian, the auction’s owner. “Using Selectbidder will help our dealers buy and sell more cars straight from their lots because they will be dealing with us at the point of trade. This makes the whole process faster and easier.”
Meanwhile, 3,500 miles away, in Moncton, New Brunswick, Selectbidder continues its roll of signing auctions in the United States, including other, previously signed independent auctions in Florida, Maine and Pennsylvania.
The Selectbidder platform itself is fairly simple: a selling dealer scans the VIN and takes a few photos of a potential trade-in vehicle and posts the information along with a condition report to Selectbidder. A notification is sent to select dealers in the auction’s network of dealers and interested dealers can make bids on the vehicle in real time. The dealer can then show this offer to their customer during negotiations to ensure they know they’re getting a fair deal.
“We’re pleased to welcome AVDA Auction to the growing Selectbidder family,” said Sean Liptay, Selectbidder’s chief executive officer. “They are part of a growing wave of independent auctions who see how technology can make their business more efficient and profitable. We look forward to helping them make the trade-in process more efficient for their dealers.”
For more information on Selectbidder, check out its site here.
Dominion Dealer Solutions released its second tool for store managers to leverage in less than a week.
On the heels of rolling out a monthly payment tool, Dominion Dealer Solutions on Tuesday introduced what it’s calling ShopMyWay, a suite of shopping tools designed to enable the vehicle buyer to control the shopping and research processes.
The company explained that ShopMyWay lets consumers not only search a dealer group’s entire inventory based on specific features or preferences, but also compare those vehicles side by side.
Additionally, online vehicle shoppers can view the value of a current trade and ascertain which vehicles can be purchased based on prequalified credit.
Dominion Dealer Solutions explained that dealer groups have searched for a way to maximize their businesses’ entire inventory online, facilitating online shopping and directing traffic to their own websites. The company added that dealers also need an environment where they can provide information to high or mid-funnel shoppers, empowering them to shop for vehicles based on their own needs.
Dominion Dealer Solutions general manager Nicole Case indicated ShopMyWay can capture these high and mid-funnel shoppers and create engagement opportunities with them. Case noted these shoppers typically search third-party or OEM websites for the same information that ShopMyWay now lets them view right on the dealership’s website.
With ShopMyWay, dealers can further connect with these shoppers without redirecting them to an automotive portal or manufacturer website.
“This is a first of its kind solution that allows a dealer group to provide consumers with the automotive shopping experience they always wanted,” Case said.
The company went on to mention ShopMyWay can provide an end-to-end, consumer-driven shopping experience. The sites are designed to be easy to use for vehicle, trade and payment-oriented automotive shoppers. Consumers can search the entire dealer group’s inventory by payment preference and look at detailed, side-by-side vehicle comparisons.
Without consumers having to leave the dealer group website, the full-service trade valuation tool can let them pre-qualify for credit and payments so dealerships can efficiently follow up. In addition to providing a singular digital resource for car buyers conducting research on a dealer group website, ShopMyWay can reduce the dependence and money spent on third-party automotive sites while driving high-quality appointments directly to the dealership.
Instead of the dealer group website acting as a directory, Dominion Dealer Solutions said ShopMyWay can make the site a destination for consumers, using the same science-driven responsive website design behind Dominion’s websites.
Sean Stansell, product manager for Dominion Websites, said: “Google identifies 19 digital research touchpoints for auto purchasers. With ShopMyWay, dealer groups can instead make theirs the only one.
“They can eliminate third-party distractions and establish that direct shopping relationship with the consumer,” Stansell said.
