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Performance Management for Sales and Marketing

Reputation Management

Your Newest Customers, Millennials, Are Changing Up the Car Buying Process. So Where Should You Focus Your Efforts?

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Millennials optimize the online car buying process more than any previous consumers. What does this mean for dealers?

It’s no secret to car dealers that the process of car selling is ever-changing. Besides the evolution of automobiles themselves, there is also another important factor changing in the industry—the customer.

As the largest call tracking company in the world and having worked with auto dealerships for over 20 years, CallSource sees all the trends in the automotive marketing space—so you can say we know a thing or two about it.

It is important to not only focus on the car selling process but the car buying process that your consumers are experiencing. And while it may or not be surprising for dealerships, millennials (people born between 1981 and 1997) are making up a bigger customer-base than you may have previously thought. Seriously –AutoRaptor reports that as of April 2016, millennials are the largest living generation in America.

The question that remains is: where should you be focusing your marketing and selling efforts to most effectively meet your sales quotas and your millennial customers’ needs? The answer, of course, can be found online.

Quite literally—I mean the answer is the internet. You need to focus more on your online process and the online car buying journey.

OK, focusing a bit more on your online efforts probably isn’t any groundbreaking news for you – but I want to make sure that you understand the significance. Having a website isn’t enough; there are many facets of the online experience that you need to pay attention to, especially when it’s reported that millennials spend over 17 hours researching their vehicle before purchasing it, and 71% of them need to be aware of all of their possible vehicle options.

These two stats combined show that they are obviously perusing many other sites other than your own, so you need to make sure that your dealership stands out online, and that doesn’t only include your website.

How do you do this?

Dealers Need to Focus on Online Reviews

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again—you need to focus on your online review presence! This is even more vital when attracting millennial customers, who are more likely to read and write online reviews. Still not convinced that you need to spend more time on reputation management? This statistic may change your mind.

BrightLocal reports that 97% of millennials read local business’ online reviews, and 89% of them trust online reviews. That means a better online review presence may make the difference between winning or losing a customer.

Don’t think that just because you may be in the closest proximity to customers that they’ll choose you for convenience—Digital Air Strike’s Sixth Annual Automotive Social Media Trends study for 2017 reports that 72% of car buyers and 63% of service customers would drive 20-60 miles to a dealership with good reviews. Don’t you think that’s worth striving for?

Get Smarter on Smart Phones at your Dealership

Most of us are guilty of being attached at the hip with our smartphones; it’s a device that millennials are using when doing some of their online research. Sad as I am to report this, according to AutoRaptor, 80% of millennials have texted in the past 24 hours, and 83% of them even sleep with their mobile device.

Automotive text-enabled phone numbers

This is why you need to be sure to have a great mobile-enabled website, as well as tech-savvy smartphone capabilities such as text alerts, click-to-call, and app integrations. If a consumer tries to text you and your number isn’t text-enabled, they will think that you are ignoring them, and move on to your competitor who does have text-enabled lines.

Don’t be left behind due to a lack of being up-to-date with your technology.

Mobile-Friendly Sites to Sell More Automobiles

Don’t know if you have a mobile-friendly site? Check out Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. It’s a free mobile evaluation tool.

Dealers Need Digital Ads

AutoTrader reports that 82% of millennials credit third-party sites as the top source of their purchase decision. You want to make sure your dealership appears on all of these sites, and anywhere across the web that consumers are looking as a part of their buying decision.

If you don’t know where they’re looking, you don’t know where to target this customer-base. But when you can track the entire customer journey – cross-domain AND cross-device, you can ensure you are showcasing your dealership to prospective customers and understanding how people get to your dealership.

Less Isn’t More

I don’t want to say that millennials are more flashy than their Baby Boomer parents but…I’m going to say it, they’re more flashy. When you can show off everything you have in a few clicks to a social media site, how can you blame them? According to AutoTrader’s study, millennials care about owning the best brand and are willing to pay more for a product that fits with their image.

Marketers and salespeople know that achieving a sales lead is no time to be modest – show off on your website what features your dealership has that makes you the best and put your vehicles’ special features in the forefront when listing cars. You know that millennials are going to do a deep dive into figuring out all that they can anyway, why not deliver it all up front?

Schedule a time to learn how CallSource’s EveryLead platform can show you which cars consumers are looking at now – and make sure to keep your most popular vehicles in stock.

Auto Dealers Need to Get More Social on Social Media

You better believe that some of millennials’ online research will lead them to social channels. If you aren’t present there, it can be catastrophic for your dealership. The truth is, they might not even find you to begin with if you aren’t present on social media.

Digital Air Strike reported that 77% of car buyers and 55% of Service Customers clicked on a Facebook ad because of an offer or promo, and a recent report by Deloitte found that 47% of millennials say social media influences their purchase decisions (compared to 19% across other age groups). Where are you advertising?

Social media isn’t only for gaining new customers, though. You should be using your social channels to regularly communicate with your audiences, especially if someone directly communicates with you via these platforms. Sprout Social reports that 30% of millennials engage with a brand on social at least once a month, but also—89% of social media messages to brands go ignored. Yet, the top choice for a customer care channel is social media. Don’t be a part of this disconnect—use social media to your advantage in marketing and customer service.

Keep Consumers Engaged With Your Dealership

It’s evident in this internet-era that people just don’t have quite the attention span you may be hoping for. And when, as we mentioned, millennials are spending over 17 hours doing their car research before buying—it’s important to get their attention back to your dealership. Responding quickly to online chats, tweets, or whatever digital way your consumer is interacting with you is imperative.

Do you know how your social chat feature on your website is doing? How about the number of consumers who are visiting your website and then leaving to visit another dealer’s site? Well, with EveryLead, you can see these stats and more. With this newest product, you can see transcripts of online chats, which cars your consumers are viewing, and how many are defected to competitor sites—all in one easy dashboard.

So what are you waiting for? Get working on your online presence and start selling to your largest pool of customers! The millennials are waiting for it.

Schedule a demo with a CallSource Automotive Specialist now and start improving your dealership’s sales – even to millennials.

The Phone is Vital to Your Dental Practice’s Patient Experience

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As an appointment-based business, your dental office relies on the phone for new patients and book appointments with existing patients. The phone is an integral part of your full customer experience scope, and should not be ignored.

It is the experience that is delivered which leads to positive online reviews from patients.

Maximize reviews for your practice by ensuring your front office staff provides exceptional phone skills; giving a great first impression on the phone starts the patient’s experience with your office as a positive one.

Patients are calling your office

The easiest way for patients and potential patients to get a hold of you is via the phone. Therefore, this is the first point of the patient experience.

Patients call through your marketing materials

When new patients discover your dental office, they will need to contact you for any inquiries, including booking the appointment. Usually, this point of communication will be via the phone.

You probably rely on marketing to acquire new patients. Your marketing materials should be targeted for your practice’s ideal types of patients, prompting them to contact you. These marketing materials may include:

  • Direct Mail
  • Radio Advertisement
  • TV Commercial
  • Newspaper Ad
  • Online Ads
  • Etc.

Make sure each of your ads have an easy to find contact method included so that people who are ready for your services can quickly get a hold of you. The most common form of contact is a phone number.

Learn how to effectively use call tracking for your dental practice
– in under 30 minutes a week!

Patients call your office after finding you through local search

Another way that consumers may find you would be by searching online to find a practice near them. When they find your office, either from your SEO efforts, local search, or a great online review presence, they will visit your website or use one of the contact methods found on a review website or provided by Google. It is important to make sure you have a working phone number for all of these places that your business has a presence online.

Discover how using call tracking phone numbers
can help your dental office.

Patients call from a referral

Even patients that are referred to you by someone will most likely ask their referrer for your phone number as the point of contact.

No matter how a patient finds your office, it is a high chance that they will call your office as the preferred contact method.

Why a good phone experience is necessary for a positive reputation

When patients call into your office from your ads, finding you organically, or through a referral, you want to be sure that your front office staff has the skills to give a great first impression by providing a superior phone experience to potential new patients.

Your phone handlers are the first point of contact that a new patient has with your office – don’t ruin the first impression and lose a potential patient with a poor experience over the phone.

Get our free call handler checklist for the qualities
of a successful inbound call.

Improve front office staff’s phone skills

To receive great online reviews, you must be sure that your employees are delivering a consistent and positive phone experience to existing and potential patients calling your office.

Are you ready to stay accountable and employee scorecards and coaching your office? Reach us today at 888.788.0123 to learn more, or we can have someone contact you.

Improve your call handlers appointment setting techniques.

Get Employee Report Cards and Call Coaching

I want to talk to learn more about improving
my call handlers’ phone skills

Why Should You Incentivize Your Employees?

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Let me ask you a question.

If your friend asked you to help them move, how willing would you be to help them? If you’re a great friend, maybe you’d say yes with no questions asked – but internally, how much would you really want to help? Let’s be honest, no one likes moving.

Now, let’s say that this same friend offers to take you to a nice dinner with drinks after helping them move. The incentive for you to assist them in moving makes the activity a bit more worth it for you. Sure, you are still doing a kind favor for your friend, but you won’t be as bummed about the un-fun, laborious task.

The same goes for your employees at work. Although their job is not something you are asking them to volunteer for (they are getting paid), it still helps to create a little light at the end of the tunnel of the regular day-to-day tasks.

This is also important for employee turnover. Access Perks reports that roughly $11 billion is lost due to employee turnover. Don’t you think that employee incentives will help restrict these losses?

Incentivizing employees

If your business relies on appointments to make sales and acquire customers, then a main priority for your employees is obviously to book appointments. Yet, it may be unclear to inbound call handlers that setting the appointment is truly their most important task is to set appointments. They have other tasks to accomplish as well, so they may start to see themselves as simply “order takers” or just a body there to answer the phone and the callers’ questions. If they properly answered all of the caller’s questions and had a good attitude on the phone, then they accomplished their goal, right? Wrong.

If you clearly communicate to your employees that appointment-setting is a crucial metric for them by tracking their performance and creating a contest for your call handlers to see who has the highest appointment-setting conversion rate each month where the winner gets some sort of prize—don’t you think they will try a heck of a lot harder to do their best to set more appointments?

Incentive plans motivate your team and help them appreciate that they have control over booking a prospect into an appointment. In fact, it shows them that they truly are in control of and responsible for exceeding expectations in their job duties.

Why are incentive plans important?

Incentive plans motivate employees to do exactly what they are incentivized to do. As owners and managers, you must decide what you want your employees to accomplish. If you task employees with multiple duties, keep in mind that people will usually focus more on the tasks they are incentivized to do. If you want your team to increase the amount of booked estimates, they will focus on that more than other tasks or goals.

Check out our incentive stats infographic here.

According to DCR Strategies Inc., while “90% of business leaders believe that an engagement strategy could positively impact their business, only 25% of them actually have a strategy in place.” This is surprising since it is also reported that having a valuable, structured incentive program in place can increase employee performance by as much as 44%. What would a 44% increase mean for your business?

As noted earlier; it is reported that about $11 billion is lost each year due to employee turnover. Without good engagement and good company culture in the day-to-day workplace, there is a great chance that you will experience a high turnover rate. But having a good incentive plan in place can help. Companies that implemented an official, planned-out incentive or engagement program found a 64% greater increase in employee engagement than companies without this plan in place.

Download our free Incentive Plan Checklist here and create the perfect incentive plan for your employees.

What Makes an Incentive Plan “Good”?

A good incentive plan is considered to be fun, exciting and rewarding. Strong plans will keep your employees engaged and motivate them. The incentive plan should provide an opportunity to gain something, such as higher pay, cash bonuses, or other perks such as catered lunches or gift cards.

According to Strategic Incentives, over 65% of participants in their study strongly agreed that travel or merchandise awards are remembered longer than strictly cash payments. Think about what would motivate you, or what would excite your team. You’ll know if you’re successful because your call handlers will be excited and they will start to hit the goals that you set in place with your incentive programs. You know your team, so you should take the time to understand what they would strive for.

If you are stumped for incentive plans, here are some non-cash incentive ideas for you.

Start Incentivizing!

Hopefully, these statistics and tips have helped you see the light that it is worth allocating a portion of your yearly budget towards employee incentives – it should not be seen as an added expense. When incentives will make your employees happier, provide a better workspace, and help increase your revenue, why wouldn’t you have incentive plans in place? It’s truly a no-brainer.

Have other ideas for employee incentives? Drop us your thoughts below! We would love to share best practices.

Google Agrees: Your Home Services Company Should Respond to Online Reviews

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Reviews are all around us.

You want to find a new restaurant in town to eat at? You’ll look up some hot spots and check out their reviews.

You have to get your car serviced and don’t have a go-to mechanic? You’re going to hop onto Google and look up reviews.

So how are consumers choosing your home services company as the local business they want to use?

Most likely – it’s reviews.

Online reviews help consumers in the buying process.

While you should already know how online reviews impact your home services company, the next step is taking the time to respond to the reviews you receive.

When choosing a company to help with their home service needs, consumers want to make sure that the company that they choose is reliable, affordable, and will cater to their needs. When reading reviews, a company’s review page that shows the manager responding to others’ online reviews demonstrates that the company is personable and takes that extra step to really care about its customers.

But why else should you respond to customers online reviews?

Keep informed of your online review presence

When you are committing to responding to new reviews that you receive, you are making sure that you are also keeping up-to-date on your review presence.

You should dedicate a responsible employee to regularly check your online review presence – this person may be a manager, or perhaps even a customer service representative.

By dedicating the time to keep up on your reviews, the responsible person must make a list of all popular review sites that your company appears on, keeping in mind any industry-specific review sites such as Angi.

If your budget allows, consider an aggregate online review platform that has the ability to automatically alert you whenever a new review is left on any review site your business appears on.

Don’t let a negative review ruin your reputation

No one wants to get a negative review from a bad customer experience, but unfortunately, they are bound to happen from time to time. Fortunately, bad reviews won’t altogether ruin your reputation if you know how to handle them properly.

When data shows that 4 in 5 consumers reverse their purchase decisions based on negative reviews1, it is handling these reviews properly that will ultimately help build your online reputation even higher.

78% of consumers believe a business cares more about them when they see management respond to reviews.2

Make sure to respond quickly – the longer you take to respond to a review, the angrier a customer may be at your business’s lack of response to rectify the situation.

But also don’t respond too hastily. Do your due diligence to research what exactly happened so you can be informed in your response. It isn’t enough to simply be apologetic or empathetic; you need to be actionable.

Tell the reviewer what actions you are taking to correct the experience. Like anything you’d put on your website or pay to put on an advertisement, this response will stay on the internet and will be read by customers and prospective customers. You want to get it right the first time.

Lastly, if there is an issue brought up in the review that is particularly concerning, show that you care. People like people, so when you are putting a real face and voice to your business and showing you truly care about their concerns, they will appreciate it. The whole conversation doesn’t need to be online, but it shows you are willing and putting forth the effort to make it right.

Get the checklist for responding to negative reviews here.

Increase your local SEO with review responses

Having more reviews and more stars in the Google Local Pack (and across other online review sites) doesn’t only help your business become more trustworthy and enticing—it also helps with SEO.

But don’t just take our word for it; see what Google themselves says about review responses:

“Interact with customers by responding to reviews that they leave about your business. Responding to reviews shows that you value your customers and the feedback that they leave about your business. High-quality, positive reviews from your customers will improve your business’s visibility and increase the likelihood that a potential customer will visit your location.”

Having your customers do the work for you by writing reviews for your business will have a positive impact on your SEO – especially when it is estimated that online reviews account for nearly 10% of Google’s total SEO ranking factors.

How? Well, online reviews give your company relevant and recent content on the web. When customers are writing about your company and services, they are adding to your long tail keywords and helping your business show up higher in search results when other consumers are looking for the products and services that you provide.

When you respond to these reviews, you boost your SEO efforts as well by becoming a more reputable company that consumers want to choose, therefore earning more clicks and showing that your company resonates with what people are searching for, therefore helping you earn higher search rankings.

Take Hold of Your Online Reputation

If you need help with your reputation management, click here to have someone reach out to you, or contact a representative today at 888.788.0123 to learn more.

Take charge of your online reputation

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I want to talk to someone about maximizing my online review presence.

References:
1. https://www.reviewtrackers.com/online-review-monitoring/
2. https://moderncomment.com/customer-feedback-stats

Audiology Offices Need Online Reviews, Despite Varying Patient Ages

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An online review presence is still necessary for hearing offices to earn new patients.

When someone mentions hearing aids, people usually think of a product whose consumer-base makes up mostly that of older generations.

This isn’t entirely untrue – according to Better Hearing Institute, the average age of first-time hearing aid wearers is close to 70 years of age. Yet, the majority of people with hearing loss are actually below the age of 65, and nearly half of all people with hearing loss are below the age of 55.

Another generalization of older populations is that most of them do not use or do not fully understand how to use the internet.

But is this really true?

Although there are substantial differences in internet and social media use by age, that doesn’t mean that those within the age of the prime hearing aid wearers are not online.

Your consumers are using the internet

According to Pew Research Center, roughly nine-in-ten American adults use the internet. This has increased from 52% in early 2000, when Pew first began systematically tracking Americans’ internet usage.

Adults who use the internet

Source: Pew Research Center

And while we already know that patient ages vary for those needing hearing aids, even with the oldest age group (those in the 65+ category), at least two-thirds are using the internet.

Adults who use the internet, by age.

Source: Pew Research Center

Bottom line? Your patients are using the internet, despite what society may think.

But are they reading online reviews?

Well, just because they are using the internet does not mean they are seeking out reviews for my practice, you may be thinking.

Let’s take a look.

What is one of the largest and most popular social media platforms that exists?

Facebook, of course.

Do you know how many people over the age of 50 are on Facebook? Over half.

Popular platforms by age

Source: Pew Research Center

And what is something that people can do on your business Facebook page? Leave online reviews.

According to BrightLocal’s 2017 Local Consumer Review Survey, 97% of consumers used the internet to find a local business. Just as internet usage has increased every year, so has using the internet to search for businesses. These incremental increases suggest that consumers are looking for local businesses via the internet now more than ever, and this will probably continue to increase.

When asking consumers what types of businesses they read online reviews for, healthcare was the third-most read, at 60%.

Now, when asking which consumer review sites were most trusted for local searches, Facebook came in as the top contender (tied with Yelp) for the most trusted consumer review site in the US.

Taking into consideration consumers who are aged 50+, using Facebook, and trusting online reviews…it is inevitable that a good portion of your patient-base are searching for your practice online and looking for reviews for you.

The takeaway

Don’t let the sweeping generalization that older consumers don’t use the internet prohibit your hearing practice from staying proactive and ensuring a positive brand impression online through reviews.

The internet has now been here for a while, and it’s here to stay.

Start achieving online reviews for your practice and continue to ask for them to keep a great and up-to-date impression to ensure that your practice is here to stay as top in potential patients’ minds, too.

Take our fun, 4 question assessment to learn if your current online review management process is up-to-par.

Sources:
http://www.betterhearing.org/sites/default/files/quality_of_life.pdf
http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/internet-broadband/
http://www.pewinternet.org/2018/03/01/social-media-use-in-2018/
https://www.brightlocal.com/learn/local-consumer-review-survey/#q1

Remove Negative Reviews Guide

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It doesn’t matter if your industry is home services, health care or automotive repairs, in today’s Internet-centric world, expect prospective customers to do their research. In other words, long before people ever call your office, they will probably look your business up online, as well as read reviews that are posted about your service or products.

  • Do you know what they’ll find when they do?
  • Are there negative reviews out there, telling prospects not to choose you?
  • Most importantly, should you find undesirable reviews on a site, what can you do about it?

For business owners, there are few frustrations as upsetting as bad press. When you find negative reviews posted, you want to be proactive. Some online review sites, such as Yelp, allow you to flag negative reviews that meet certain characteristics. The key is knowing what qualifies a review for removal and how to request deletion properly. (Tip: We’ve also put together a handy PDF as the ultimate guide for reputation management you can grab right here).

With that in mind, to help you combat fraudulent or spam reviews criticizing your business, here’s a look at how to respond. In the accompanying resource, you’ll see what types of content are removable, as well as a four-step guide to flagging reviews for removal on Yelp. Take a look to guard your brand reputation online!

 

remove-negative-reviews-guide-1remove-negative-reviews-guide

Lee McNeil

Author bio: Lee McNiel, founder and CEO of ReviewPush, graduated from Texas State University and has extensive experience in online review management. McNiel assists local businesses, franchises and multi-location businesses with monitoring and managing their online reviews.