A wise service director once said: “For years, customers have been asking us to sing them a tune, and we’ve been handing them a piece of sheet music.”

“Why don’t we just play them the song?”

The “song,” in this context, is a video directly from a technician reporting the findings from their multi-point inspection versus our decades-old piece of “sheet music”: a paper MPI sheet. MPIs, as a reminder, were designed roughly forty years ago because about 70% of customers were defecting after their warranty expired. Today, roughly 70% of customers are still defecting after their warranty expires. And we’re still using the same paper MPI. 

While it was meant to be an effective selling tool for advisors and technicians, the MPI was never built for the task. Customers don’t approve work because of a piece of paper. They approve work  because they can see and understand that the work needs to be done to the vehicle, while being educated in layman’s terms by a technician about why the work needs to be done for their vehicle’s long-term health as well as their own safety.

It took the franchise automotive industry years to adapt, but with the advent of smartphones and the ubiquitous nature of texting, new technology emerged to bridge the communication gap between dealership and their customers. As customers finally benefitted from a transparent experience when taking their vehicle in for service, dealerships realized that the benefits went both ways.

So, when it comes to optimizing your customer experience and maximizing your bottom line through video and texting, what are the most important factors to keep in mind when choosing a technology partner? Our team at TruVideo talks to franchise dealerships every day, and we’ve learned a lot about the problems dealers are most looking to solve.

Here are ten of the most common questions we hear from dealers who are thinking about implementing a video and texting platform or making changes to their existing video and texting strategy:

1. We’re not currently using video. Why should we start?

The automotive industry—along with many others—has always talked about how transparency would build trust with customers. But, beyond being an industry buzzword, what does actual transparency look like? Receiving a video of the technician working on your vehicle which explains, in non-technical language, what is going on with your vehicle and shows you in clear, high-definition video the areas that require attention—THAT is actual transparency. And yes, the benefits are very real. Adding video results in:

• 20-30%+ increase in dollars-per-repair order on ROs with video
• 50%+ increase in appointment set rates and 40%+ increase in lead-to-sale conversions (based on TruVideo case studies)
• 20%+ increase in CSI/NPS scores with a 77% decrease in detractors
• Meaningful differentiation from your competitors
• Increased efficiency in netting approvals/appointments while adapting to how your modern customers and prospects prefer to communicate.
• Customers returning to your dealership and becoming promoters of your business

2. How are video/texting solutions different from just taking and sending videos on our own smartphones?

As the benefits of video became better understood at dealerships, many employees began taking it upon themselves to record and send videos directly to their customers or prospects. They soon found out that sending a video file to a customer/prospect is something that should never be done, for several reasons. Video files are large, often pixelated (think of sending a video from an iPhone to an Android) and take too long to download when you send them from your smartphone. With a dedicated video solution, you can typically:

• Stream HD videos from a cloud rather than a download.
• Send videos that are several minutes in length without any lag time or reduction of picture quality.
• Monitor customer engagement.
• Follow data and analytics.
• Track each video that has been sent, so you can see when your customer watched it, how long they watched it for, how many times they watched it and whether they shared it or not.
• Take advantage of features like the TruVideo AI Experience.
• Brand each video with your service center’s logo.

3. Do techs/salespeople use their own devices, or should we provide them?

Your video solution should typically be powered by a smartphone app for technicians and sales people taking videos. Given that almost everyone has a smartphone that lives in their pocket, leveraging their personal devices is usually the ideal solution. It’s not uncommon for management to encounter initial pushback from techs/salespeople due to fear of a company-purposed app living on their personal device. The TruVideo app is 100% non-intrusive, meaning it does not pull or store any data from the device itself. So, these concerns are typically overcome simply by educating users on how the app functions.

Some dealerships do opt to provide devices for their employees. If your dealership goes this route, there are some less expensive, used devices online that will do the trick.  Our recommended hardware page outlines some of these options for company-provided devices that won’t break the bank.

4. What’s better for video: smartphones or tablets?

It’s not uncommon for tablets to already be in use at the dealership for lane check-in software or other applications. However,  when it comes to taking a video, smartphones and smaller devices (like Apple’s iPod Touch) are much more comfortable and less cumbersome than tablets, allowing technicians to highlight any tighter spaces beneath a vehicle or under the hood with ease. There are also many options available for handles that can make recording a video with a smartphone that much easier. For these reasons, we always recommend that our dealers use smartphones or other smaller devices (like certain iPods) rather than tablets.

5. How do we overcome our techs/salespeople being reluctant to take and send videos consistently?

This is the single most common concern (or existing issue) dealers adopting TruVideo communicate to us. The results of your video strategy are directly tethered to your employees’ video utilization, so how do you overcome failed rollouts of the past and ensure that techs/salespeople adopt video as a core part of their process? There are several key components here:

• Educate your employees on the “why.” With video, the “why” typically directly benefits your employees who are taking and sending videos. To be clear, this means more money in their paychecks. And as we know, money talks. Having an open, transparent (there’s that word again) conversation with your employees and clearly communicating this and other benefits ahead of rollout is an important first step to a successful launch.
• Identify, involve, and deputize leaders. Have a master technician or veteran salesperson who is a key influencer in your shop? Involve them in the conversation early, appoint them as a leader of their team, and encourage them to promote the benefits of video to their team directly. The buy-in of a team leader who will also be using video in their day-to-day routine can resonate a lot louder than the same words coming from management.
• Short-term incentive programs can drive early adoption. Higher earnings for your employees is ultimately the core reason they will become advocates for video, but what about the time leading up to that first paycheck? Higher wages only become reality if they actually use the video platform first.  So, we’ve worked with many of our dealers to identify a meaningful incentive program for their video-takers for the first 30 days or so post-launch. Simplicity and value are key here. Many of our dealers that go this route simply opt to pay $3-5 per video sent over the first 30 days (which is a small slice of the ROI that the videos are driving). By then, techs / sales people are seeing the benefit of this approach in their paycheck, and the momentum rolls on from there.

6. What are the key differences between video/texting solutions, and which is best for our dealership?

We recently wrote an article explaining some of the key differences between TruVideo (a dedicated video and messaging communication platform) and end-to-end solutions with a tack-on video/texting solution (e.g XTime, MyKaarma, and several DMSs that now offer video/texting add-ons). Since then, we’ve found that many dealers initially opt to prioritize software consolidation yet are ultimately left with an underperforming or non-existent video process. We understand the appeal of technological consolidation. But weighed against the meaningful differences in functionality and performance/ROI of a dedicated solution like TruVideo, dealers often learn the hard way that successful video/texting execution only comes with getting the little things right, as well as having a dedicated, singularly-focused partner that can train, onboard, optimize, and help drive top-tier results with your team.

Through 3rd party data and direct dealer feedback, we’ve also become increasingly aware of the differences in view rates between TruVideo and these end-to-end solutions – and they are statistically significant. While TruVideo is able to drive 80%+ view rates on sent videos (AKA “relative view rate”), several other popular video solutions struggle to drive 50%+ relative view rates. Not only is this a major hit to your ROI and bottom line, but imagine your techs/salespeople’s reaction if they were to learn that more than half of the videos they recorded were never watched by a customer or prospect!

7. How can I be sure my techs/salespeople are doing and saying the right things in their videos to drive the best results?

Aside from the technology itself, how your employees use video and the quality of that experience are major factors in your video performance. This is where partnering with proven experts who live and breathe automotive videos works to your advantage. It starts with training: Your employees need to know what constitutes a good, effective video and what does not. The more your chosen video partner is able to effectively train on these proven best practices, the better your videos and your results will be.

Beyond training, your video partner should also be willing to watch and score videos from each video-taker, grading them on how well they adhere to best practices. This should likely be a part of a broader post-training onboarding program, since reinforcement and refinement over time are crucial to successful process implementation—especially with video. If you choose your video partner carefully, you should never feel like you’re alone in driving the utilization and quality needed to make video a true driver for your dealership. 

If your dealership needs some extra TLC when it comes to process and change management, consider working with an automotive-specific training company like MTN (aka Mountain). They can help you define and streamline your existing processes as well as successfully implement a video/texting strategy based on known best practices and boots-on-the-ground support.

8. What are the key metrics we should be paying attention to with video?

Absolute Send Rate: The percentage of customer-facing repair orders or leads that had a video sent by a technician/advisor or salesperson.

Absolute View Rate: The percentage of repair orders or leads that had a video viewed by the customer or prospect, measured against all customer-facing repair orders or leads.

Relative View Rate: The percentage of videos viewed by a customer or prospect, weighed against the total number of videos sent to a customer or prospect.

Average Video Length: Reporting on average video length (time) at the technician and advisor level allows you to see when video-takers may be deviating from trained best practices, and should allow you to drill in on their videos to inspect what you expect.

9. What does “good” look like as it relates to these metrics? What does “great” look like?

While benchmarks for these key metrics can vary based on your dealership’s goals and usage of video, we see our elite dealers taking and sending videos on as close to 100% of customer-facing ROs and inbound leads as possible. Assuming you’re looking to standardize your use of video as a means to maximize your bottom line and CSI/NPS scores, here are some benchmarks we can share (specific to technician service videos on customer-facing ROs):

Absolute Send Rate – Good:  >70%
Absolute Send Rate – Great:  >90%
Absolute View Rate – Good:  >60%
Absolute View Rate – Great:  >70%
Relative View Rate – Good:  >75%
Relative View Rate – Great:  >85%
Average Video Length – Recommended:  1:30-2:30

10. We’re already using video. Why would we consider making a change?

Dealers decide to work with TruVideo for various reasons. But, here are some of the most common reasons we hear from our dealer partners:

• They are looking for the easiest to use video software for their employees (mainly to help drive better utilization).
• The current video/texting solution they are using is “clunky” or has other issues, preventing them from seeing the intended usage and/or results.
• Their usage of their current solution is solid, but their view rates are low.
• They want to focus more on the quality of their video experience and work with a dedicated video/texting partner.
• They value what our AI Experience offers their customers and advisors.

Simply put, if you do not currently have a consistent video and texting process that is helping your technicians and advisors sell significantly (20-30%+) more work and your salespeople sell more vehicles while improving your dealership’s CSI/NPS results, then you may want to consider making a change.

Video and texting have quickly become the standard for a top-tier customer experience, and are known to be a driving factor for customers both recommending your dealership to others and returning for their next vehicle service or purchase themselves. And, as it turns out, providing true transparency while meeting customers where they are digitally not only creates a better overall experience, it makes a very real impact on your bottom line. Because of this, it’s important to make sure you have a proven and consistently utilized solution (and hands-on partner) when it comes to executing your video and texting strategy.

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