Xtime Australia | Volume 28: Enhance Vehicle Owner Conversations with Online Approvals

Enhance Vehicle Owner Conversations with Online Approvals

With Xtime online approvals, you can now better educate customers about service recommendations.

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Service advisors are able to build an online quote for vehicle owners with additional service recommendations (ASRs), and the customer can review the full vehicle inspection and approve or decline the quote through a secure microsite from their desktop or smartphone. Online approvals not only ensure a consistent and professional presentation of ASRs, but also facilitate quicker response rates.

customer-microsite-200px Online approvals support the conversation between advisors and customers—educating vehicle owners about service recommendations. When customers better understand recommendations, they are more likely to approve.

This feature is included with Xtime Schedule and Inspect. To get started setting up your dealership with online approvals, connect with your Dealer Performance Specialist or email DPSAdmin@xtime.com and someone will reach out.

Want to learn more about online approvals? Visit Xtime University and select the Online Approvals course. There, practice building a customer quote, learn best practices to ensure you maximize profitability and create a premium ownership experience.

Help Customers to Schedule Service Online

Today’s tech-savvy consumers book almost everything online—hotels, restaurants and even dog walking in some cities.

Despite online bookings being available almost everywhere, this trend doesn’t always extend to scheduling vehicle service. Forty-five percent of customers who do not currently use online scheduling are unaware of this feature even being available in the service department*. Educate and encourage customers to schedule their next service appointment online by sharing this how-to video to your customers after they purchase their vehicle or by playing it in your waiting room.

We’ve found that 23 percent of Web customers schedule appointments outside of your service department hours**. That’s almost a quarter of your customers inconvenienced (or worse) if you don’t have online scheduling. Consumers today demand accessibility 24/7. Let them know that your service department is accessible online to ensure increased customer retention and profitability.

*Based on Cox Automotive Maintenance & Repair Study, 2016
**Based on Xtime Premium US dealers with go-live date before February 2016; Period analyzed: May 2016 – May 2017.

In Case You Missed It

Xtime delivers regular product updates to improve your experience and increase service department efficiency. Read on for recent product enhancements.

No Advisor Preference
The updated advisor selection flow improves the appointment-making process. It is now more intuitive to schedule appointments when customers don’t have an advisor preference. Schedule determines which advisors are eligible or available for requested services.

Month View with Capacity
You can now easily view a month’s worth of available appointments and capacities in Xtime Schedule.

See More New Features at Xtime University

Xtime University now has the Help Library. Simply log into Xtime, click the ? in the upper right hand corner and select Xtime University. From there, select Help Library at the top.

Learn about other features and how to use them. Additionally, you can easily search for knowledge articles, best practices and more.

Service Star: Manly Honda

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Bob Bradbury
Parts Manager

Manly Honda is all in on Xtime Spectrum. The dealership implemented Xtime Schedule just a few years ago and has since added Invite, Engage and recently Inspect. We caught up with Parts Manager Bob Bradbury to see how the dealership has been using Xtime’s multipoint inspection tool to increase efficiency and make everyone’s time more effective. He also shares insights on the importance of using an integrated platform and how to get all staff to use and appreciate the system.

Add it Up!

100%

Xtime
utilization

1,879

vehicle inspections per month

19.3%

increased service retention

Utilization and retention based on vehicles January 2017-June 2017, vehicle inspections based on vehicles July 2016-June 2017.

How has your overall experience been with Xtime products?

My experience with implementation has been very positive. We’ve seen our efficiency go up because of it. The service advisors get the price availability in real time and the technicians have to spend less time waiting at the parts counter.

How has your experience been with Xtime Inspect?

Inspect has been the valuable feature of Xtime for us. It makes it so that the technicians don’t have to stand at the parts counter. It makes it so that the recommended services go directly to our parts people, the parts people see it in real time. They’re able to do it right away and send it off to the service advisor. The service advisor can look at it and push it back to the parts department and let us know what they’ve declined, what they’ve accepted, what we have to order. There’s no guess work. We can tell the service advisor how long the parts are going to take to get here, whether we have it in stock, how much it’s going to cost. It just saves us a lot of time.

How do you think Xtime contributed to your success?

[Any service] that’s declined, we can follow up. Xtime allows us to look and see what each customer didn’t do so that we can possibly market to them specifically in the future and get them back in.

What has customer feedback been?

Our number one customer is our service department. We’ve had very positive feedback. At first it was a little tough because nobody likes change. But once we got rolling with Xtime, people saw the benefit and it’s been a good thing for us.

How did you implement these changes?

We just made sure that we were going to do it. This is the way it is. We got a little bit of resistance but the people we got resistance from, they stopped resisting once they realized that we weren’t going to go back. It was going to make us better, we knew that, we believed in it and we pushed through.

What would you say to a dealership that is hesitant to implement Xtime?

If you’re hesitant to implement Xtime, don’t be. It’s a great product. It has helped us in many ways. It makes us more efficient. I would say just make sure that everyone is on board because it’s only going to work if it’s utilized and executed by everyone that is using it.

Why is it important to use the latest software systems in the dealership?

It’s important for dealerships to utilize the latest technology because our customers are utilizing the latest technology. They expect more, they expect things faster. I think being a dealership, people expect that they’re going to come here and that they’re going to spend more money than if they went somewhere else, which makes it even more crucial that we do it in a timely fashion, we do it efficiently and we do it with great customer service.

Volume 28: Enhance Vehicle Owner Conversations with Online Approvals