How Stoneacre made response rates a priority

One tip that has appeared in Auto Retail Profit perhaps more than any other in recent years has been the importance of responding to customers. Tales are many of in-market buyers who have gone elsewhere because they a retailer never bothered to get back to them about a car.

Stoneacre Volvo has made it its mission to do something about this, and has reaped the rewards of its success.

Operations director Jeff Tabb explains that the plan to improve not just the response rate but also the time it took to reply to a customer started before Covid-19 hit.

“Pre-lockdown we worked with Matt Galvin [Volvo UK commercial operations director] and the team,” he says. “We had our response rate at 20 minutes. We were mystery shopped and, across our sites, some dealers returned an email and some didn’t.”

The initial goal was to get the average below 20 minutes, but the response rate is now down to between four and eight minutes across the different Volvo sites. This is particularly impressive when the average across the brand’s network is around 13 minutes.

After hours response

Stoneacre uses Rapid Response to allow the sales team to reply swiftly and via their mobile phones and Jeff says he gets a flag if there is no response after 20 minutes, although he says this rarely happens now, if ever.

“That goes after hours too,” he says. “We have staff at 7, 8, 9, 10pm still responding. It means you have that sales appointment lined up for the next morning with a customer mightily impressed because you replied so quickly. Dare I say we have even done business that late at night.

“Even with customers that choose not to be responded to out of hours we are ready to reply to them first thing in the morning. 20 years ago, this would be a post-it note on someone’s desk.”

The success means that the response rate is no longer considered a KPI for staff bonuses – it is taken that the team will hit it. Rather than using any sort of carrot or stick, the improvement came about purely through necessity in lockdown. “Circumstances were the situation for the improvement – we had no option, we had to drive it,” says Jeff. “We had been very good at driving customers to a showroom and when you don’t have a showroom, how can you keep that going?”

Flexibility factored in

The evening working brings another challenge for management, especially when so many have potentially reassessed their work-life balance over the last year.

“We have a view on flexibility,” says Jeff, who explains that the company took advantage of flexible furlough during the pandemic, with teams in for four days on rotation.

When it comes to sales staff engaging with customers after hours he says: “We would always compensate that time. The Rapid Response system is very simple with an editable template on an app – most can be done in about 20 seconds. If it was a more bespoke response needed [the sales staff] would get that time back.”

The company is also considering even more flexibility in the future. The fleet department recent had a member test positive for Covid, which resulted in the rest of the team having to isolate and work from home. Despite this they didn’t sell any fewer cars in that period.

“They don’t need to be in a showroom, neither do all of the retail staff,” says Jeff. “We aren’t doing this but we could consider having retail staff work from home as well in the future.”

Taking on the high street

The rise of the likes of Cazoo, Carzam and the like mean that Stoneacre is still looking to sharpen up its processes and speed of response in other areas too. This includes speeding up the purchase process for those customers that want it.

“We are catching up to the other retail on the high street,” says Jeff, who says that the company draws inspiration from the ability to order something and get it delivered to your door on the same day.

“We want to be the John Lewis of the motor trade. All our stock is prepared to do deal and deliver on the day, within reason. It is a slower process for distance sales – if they are local to the dealership there is every chance they will want to come in.”

However, he says that someone hitting ‘buy’ on the website and having a car appear on their doorstep the same day remains a possibility. “Depending on the time everything is possible, it is something we need to consider doing.”

ABOUT THE COMPANY

• Where (Volvo sites): Newcastle, Sunderland, Stockton, Harrogate, Lincoln, Grimsby, Sheffield and Chesterfield
• Established in: 1994
• Staff numbers: Volvo only 300
• New cars sold: Volvo only 2020 – 4069
• Used cars sold: Volvo only 2020 – 2827
• Turnover: £186m (Volvo only, group £1.2bn)

Taking marketing online

The pandemic has brought about a change to how Stoneacre approaches its marketing spend, both directly and indirectly.

“From a marketing stance we will probably sway a lot more digitally now, says Jeff Tabb. “We have a TV ad in the mix which we have put off broadcasting, it has been in the can a couple of months.”

The decision is for more than one reason, the first being the approach taken by the manufacturers, particularly during the big sporting events that have taken place this summer. “There was a lot of activity on TV during the Euro 2020 football tournament with electric vehicles being advertised in every break,” explains Jeff. This meant that Stoneacre didn’t see the need to double up in this area.

With greater online activity during the various lockdowns that have been imposed over the last year, it made more sense to push more spend towards the internet. “We can be smarter with our marketing and can do more online and even more in the social media arena – it is cost effective and measurable.”