Volume 25: Happy New Year

Happy New Year! It is my pleasure to be able to wish you a prosperous 2017.

We have had a great year and quite simply, we could not have done it without you. Your success is our number-one priority in 2017.

I am proud of the achievements of our entire team and the excitement that Spectrum has brought to the service customer experience within dealers.

The dedication and hard work of everyone at Xtime will continue in the same spirit in 2017. We will continue to enhance our systems and processes and to deliver unprecedented levels of customer support to keep earning your business.

What I am most proud of in 2016 is the launch of Spectrum, Xtime’s reimagined solutions platform and the industry’s first integrated, cloud-based system created to empower you to deliver a superior customer experience.

As part of Spectrum, Invite has helped dealers recapture around 24 lost souls per month, translating to an average of $316 in customer pay revenue and 4.8-to-1 customer pay gross profit return on investment per lost soul. Invite is proving to be an effective insurance policy for consistent communication with customers each month to remind them to service their vehicles.

Schedule has continued to increase service retention by 6.6%, boost show rates by 8.7% and generate new online customers, resulting in 50 additional repair orders per month.

The service lane continues to evolve the customer experience and Engage has been at the forefront. Dealers are seeing service retention rates being boosted by 8.2% resulting in an average of $13,000 in additional monthly service revenue. Xtime’s Engage solution in 2016 has so far aided 1.6 million customers with a professional and personal digital experience, and the numbers continue to grow each month.

Rounding out the Spectrum family, Inspect is generating an average of $132 sold per repair order inspected. Dealers are seeing an impressive uptick in additional revenue from same-day selling.

We are the proud partner to more than 7,600 dealers and 25 OEMs, helping facilitate over 44 million service appointments annually. All of this couldn’t have been achieved without our valued partners, and we thank you for your continued support.

Best wishes from all of us at Xtime for a prosperous 2017 and beyond!

Gary Martin,
COO & General Manager

*Data based on Xtime dealerships as of Q3 2016

As we look back at 2016, Xtime is honored to have participated in some of the auto industry’s biggest successes this year, including participation in many top events, new partnerships, groundbreaking research and the launch of our enhanced solutions platform. Read below to learn more about our accomplishments this year.

The year kicked off at the 20th Annual Digital Dealer Conference and Expo in Orlando, Florida, where several Cox Automotive brands—including Xtime, Autotrader, Dealertrack, and Kelley Blue Book—gathered to share industry expertise and best practices.

At the National Automotive Dealers Association (NADA) in March, Cox Automotive and Xtime announced its fusion of Dealertrack^® Service Pro fixed operations solution and Xtime’s customer engagement and retention tool. Designed to benefit dealers and vehicle owners alike, this integration helps dealers increase customer loyalty through enhancement in operational efficiency and better opportunities for parts and service departments to deliver a more comprehensive service platform.

Xtime’s premiere accomplishment in 2016 was the successful launch of Spectrum, its reimagined solutions platform and the industry’s first integrated, cloud-based system designed to drive customer loyalty by delivering a premium service experience. The Spectrum suite includes Invite, Schedule, Engage and Inspect (powered by Service Pro), each created to seamlessly deliver a modern, world-class ownership experience at each touchpoint.

In January, Xtime research revealed that 64% of dealers identify customer retention as their primary concern, with 94% stating that the experience is now more important than the service itself. Despite these new metrics, 83% of dealers say that their current systems do not enable a superior ownership experience.

Additionally, in July new Xtime research showed that transparency in cost estimates were the most critical concern for today’s discerning vehicle owners when setting service appointments, outranking all other factors surveyed among almost 700 participants. This groundbreaking data indicated that price transparency—and having the solutions to deliver cost estimates during the scheduling process—can alleviate the pricing misconceptions that lead to customers’ distrust in the overall service experience.

Xtime’s ongoing dedication to sustainability, including recycling and composting, earned the company “zero-waste-to-landfill” status in August with a 90% diversion rate, making it the first of the U.S. Cox Automotive brands to achieve such success. This achievement, on the heels of a 2015 certification as a California Green Business, calls for Xtime to send 10% or less of its waste to landfills by 2024.

In October, Subaru Canada, Inc. and Xtime announced an exclusive partnership to use Xtime Scheduler and Two-Way Text Messaging in order to improve communications between the dealer network and Subaru customers. This announcement marks Xtime’s 13th partnership with a Canadian manufacturing brand and will help Subaru Canada in its initiatives to adopt the latest technologies to better serve its customers.

It’s no secret that multi-point inspections boost dealer revenue and build customer trust—an imperative element to loyalty and retention. What sets Xtime users apart, however, is the ability to perform the inspections correctly each time, every time.

Xtime Inspect powered by Service Pro is the industry’s leading digital multi-point inspection tool that helps service technicians and advisors identify more opportunities, maximize repair orders, increase their dealer’s profitability and boost customer loyalty through trust and top-notch car care. High-performing dealers have reported the following success using Xtime Inspect:

• An average of 1,360 vehicles inspected per month
• $141 in average sales per vehicle based on recommendations
• Total monthly revenue boost of $191,000

To learn more about how Xtime Inspect is helping dealers become more profitable through multi-point inspections, check out our latest infographic.