3 Step Process to Speed Up Payment Collection At Your Dealership [New DATA]

Apr 20
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9
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Dealer Webinar

[Webinar Transcript from April 2022]

Ben:

Hey everyone. I'm Ben, I'm with Kenect. I'm on the marketing team here. Today, we're going to talk about a three-step process to speed up payment collection at your dealership. And we have some new data that we wanted to share with you. And we wanted to first talk about Kenect for about five minutes and then we're going to get into the meat of the webinar. It shouldn't be more than about 20 minutes total. We don't want to take up too much of your time. If you have any questions, please feel free to type them in the questions tab over there on the side panel and then I'll get to them throughout this webinar for sure at the end when there's more time. With that, let's get started here.

Who is Kenect?

First off, I wanted to say, who is Kenect? We're based in the Silicon Slopes of Utah, that's just outside Salt Lake City. We're text messaging platform for a quick equipment dealers throughout North America. And we were founded by dealers and built for dealers like you. So, what does that mean? We help you communicate more efficiently, we generate new leads, we collect payments via text message, and we help you drive online reviews.

Why do we use text messaging? Because your customers prefer it. 89% of consumers say they prefer to is text messaging rather than a phone call. And then 98% of all text messages are opened with 95% of those read within three minutes. 96% of consumers find phone calls to be disruptive. So, what that means is you're actually going to get more response from people. If you have important information, you're going to send them a text, they're going to get it quickly and they're going to be able to send it back to you fast. They're going to give you responses. So that's a great way to get in touch with people. Phone calls, I mean, it takes minutes, with text it takes seconds. And especially if 95% of people are reading it within three minutes, it's the fastest way to reach customers with important information. 78% of US consumers say receiving a text message is the fastest way to reach them for important service updates and purchases. And this is just one of the dealers that uses us. "We used to call Kenect, but 75% of the time they wouldn't answer. So now we text them with Kenect and they immediately text us back."

So, what does it look like when somebody texts you in? This is what it looks like through our inbox here. This is similar to like an email layout, but all of this is done through your existing business line. And what that means is we call your carrier, we set it all up and we have your phone number connected through this inbox. So what happens when somebody texts you in? You see what they're texting in about, you see the time that they've texted in, and you can also assign people to each customer that texted in so they can respond. You have a specific person that's talking to them. And if they're out that day, then you can also chime in and help answer questions through that existing business line. So all of it is funneled through one line. You're not giving out personal information. You're not giving out your cell number. You're just giving out your business line so that people can text you in and easily have one funnel that they're going through.

It's similar to the mobile app. We have the same thing, same layout similar like in the email. It's free in the App Store, but this is handy because you can take this wherever you go. Your employees can move through the service bay, through the sales floor. They can use a video chat, they can use pictures. They can show customers exactly what they're looking at. So what that means is anywhere you are, as long as you have a connection you can use this on your phone. And you can also make sure that you're sending customers more information than maybe you could over the computer, because you're actually out there with your phone and you can show them the equipment they're working on and stuff like that so it's easy for them to see what you're doing.

We also wanted to mention broadcast messaging. This is something that we have been asked of from our dealers. They wanted this feature because, instead of you texting each person individually, you can text a group of people, you can conveniently send a message to a subset of your customers by creating groups. You can also schedule a message or send one right away, easily identify and reply to broadcast messages right inside your inbox. And you can also quickly filter broadcast messages based on scheduled or sent. And this is what it would look like when you start this broadcast text. A little button over on the side, you click “add,” you type in what you need, the subject, the title of what you're going to talk about and then the group, the subset of people that you decided. In this case, it's about 300. So you want to put that group in there, you don't want to send it to everybody, but you do want to send it to more than one. And you want to be able to send it all at once so that you don't have to individually send it out.

Then you put the messages, you hit “send,” and then it'll show you how many people it's actually going to go to out of the group that you have. And then it'll also show you when it's going to send and what the title is so that when you're coming in when these messages are coming back to you. You hit approve and then this is what the customer looks like. In this case, they send them a link to show them, "Hey, maybe you want to schedule an appointment. Here's a way for you to do it." You can also change hours here and this also comes in handy for sales. If you have things that come up, maybe you're short staffed or maybe you have low inventory or something like that and you want to send it out to a group to let them know, "Hey, we're having a little bit of an issue here today." You can send that broadcast message out and it's easy for you to send in one group and one send so that you're not individually sending 300 out, and your employees don't have to waste time doing that.

So that's a convenient feature that we've just added and it's also something the dealers have been asking for because it's actually saving a lot more time. Even with the time they're saving with text, this is saving even more because they're not having to do this individually one by one.

The top ways that dealers are using Kenect: Scheduling appointments, setting up automated reminders, sending quick information. You can also send targeted warranty reminders through that broadcast messaging app that I showed you, collecting payments via text message, attach and send photos, videos, and invoices. You can also generate online reviews on Google and Facebook, and then capture more leads from Facebook, Instagram and your website.

Speeding up Payments, Increasing Revenue.

So, what we're here to talk about today is a way to speed up payments. And we wanted to make sure that you have a good idea of how this works and what tools you can use so that you can better prepare yourself as you head into the second quarter of 2022. First one, it's go remote. Remote payment popularity, we've really seen this gain momentum during the pandemic, and it really hasn't stopped. It's all about customer convenience via contactless interaction. And what that means is customers got used to the fact that they didn't actually have to come in to fill out forms or give their information over the counter, put their card out, stuff like that. Customer convenience is what they really are looking for and what they've expected so they can do this in the comfort of their own home. Cards aren't going away, but will shift to remote forms of payment. Obviously, we've seen remote payments become popular through the pandemic because we don't actually have to have people come in in-person. And a lot of businesses have adopted this, but what's happened is that customers have gotten used to it. They've gotten used to the simplicity and convenience of it and now they expect businesses to actually have it.

Consumers say they would prefer to continue to shop online or smartphone for home delivery freeing up time for people, activities more important to them, such as family, friends, work, physical well-being, leisure and entertainment. This is just what's happened. This is just customers saying, "Yep, we actually have had that experience." And we know that businesses want that to happen so they are expecting you to do that.

All right, next slide here is real quick. I wanted to show you the new data that we just got in. So data around Text-to-Pay. Text-to-Pay is revolutionizing how businesses collect payments from their customers. Your customers want you to text them so let them. You get paid 85% faster payment collection with Text-to-Pay and payment is on-time nearly every time, pretty much 100%. It's like 99.9 from what we've seen from our dealers. 45 minutes is the average time saved per person in service departments. This is during the daytime, but that just shows you how easy it is when you actually send out Text-to-Pay link for customers. And also it's saving you time because all you're doing is saying, "Hey, I'm almost done with your piece of equipment. If you want to pay for it, here's the link" and that saves time. It's a second or two that you're sending that text out with the link. Some dealers are now running over 70% of service payments through Text-to-Pay. And 91% of customers say they prefer Text-to-Pay once they start using it.

What that means is they've seen it. A lot of dealers have been using it. And so that's why we've wanted to make sure that you knew about this, because this is something that customers are actually going to be asking if you don't have it. And it's something that's more convenient for them and it will become convenient for you as you add it in. I don't want to get through all of these, but I just want to touch on a few. We've also we've talked about collecting the payments and deposits in sales and service. But I also wanted to say, this will allow for afterhours pickups and remote drop-offs for collecting prepayments. Like I was talking about in your service department, you can have somebody prepay for this stuff while you're still working on the equipment or prepay for things when you're actually waiting if they want something in your sales department, they can actually prepay for something just to put a deposit down really quickly and say, "I want this." You send them the link and they say, "Okay, I'll put in my credit card information and here's the down payment right away." So that allows for easy payments and collecting pre-payments.

You can also get paid faster and reduced accounts receivable, and this is where a lot of dealers are seeing help, because it actually reduces the amount of time that employees have to use on accounts receivable because customers are filling that information out themselves. So instead of calling and collecting bills, calling for people, playing phone tag, that kind of thing, you're actually having the customer fill out the information themselves. And so you're getting paid faster and then you're reducing that amount of time that your employees will have to spend on that. And we also have next day funding, which is 100% secure.

Text-to-Pay is Growing!

Text-to-Pay growth per location. I just wanted to touch on this. We've seen four times year over year growth per location. Some dealers are actually running 80% of service and parts payments through Text-to-Pay. That's just in the service bay. And it's all about simplicity and convenience. So we want to make sure that you know how this works in just a real quick overview. You click the payments option down there. You're sending this text out to a customer and then it'll send the link and then you fill out the information, how much it is, down payment and then the customer fills all of this out. And the way to increase trust also is we put your logo at the top of this form here so your customer will see the top of the form and they will see that it's you. And you can also text them and say, "We are sending you a Text-to-Pay link and here's the form and here's what it looks like." So they know that it's coming from you and they know that you would like them to fill this out and it's actually your company that they're sending it back to. So increased trust, it cuts down on time because they're filling out this information themselves and it gets you paid faster. And so that's what Text-to-Pay is all about and it helps you and your customers. And it also gives you simplicity and convenience for both you and your customer.

Locations with Text-to-Pay. We just wanted to show you how this popularity has grown. And this just shows you from the pandemic, pretty much April 2020 to now we've seen 1600-plus locations using Text-to-Pay. That went from pretty much zero to 1,600. And the growth is expected to continue well into 2022 and 2023. We've seen 15 times growth per month in two years. More than $14.4 million is running through Text-to-Pay in March of '22. So that just shows you the sheer volume of things that are happening from dealers that use this Text-to-Pay system. And just how much revenue is going through this Text-to-Pay system simply because customers are used to it and simply because customers are getting accustomed to using this remote payment system.

Improve Communication with Customers and Employees.

The second step I'd like to get through is improving communication. And when we're talking about payments, we want to make sure that this is something that you really hammer home, especially if you're cutting down on time. If your employees need to use this, we want to make sure everybody's on board and we want to make sure your customers are on board too. So dealers sometimes struggle setting communication boundaries, some give out their personal cell numbers to customers. We just want you to stop doing that. You don't need to do that. Through the platform, through the Text-to-Pay platform, you can use your existing business line. So you don't need to take customer calls after hours and you can balance responsiveness with boundaries.

And I just wanted to show you the lead generation. This helps you with revenue, but it also helps you keep your customers happy as we use the Text-to-Pay system and making sure that they're keeping a constant communication so that they're expecting you to use that system. And when you send them a link, they're ready for it. A typical lead will wait An hour from dealerships to be responded to. That varies when it comes to after hours. That's pretty much three and a half hours after hours. But we want to make sure we get that down to zero. And how do we do that? We make sure that through that platform, you're getting automated responses to customers. And what I mean by that is when you're at dinner or when you don't have anybody manning that platform that I showed you, you have automated responses going to customers. So you'll have it say, "Thank you for your text. We see the question and we'll get to you as soon as somebody comes back into the shop." Something like that.

What it shows customers, especially with leads is that you really do monitor this at all times. Even if it is an automated response, it's a response. It's not waiting for three and a half hours for you to respond. So what that means is your communication is high and you're increasing that amount of time or you're reducing that amount of time that you're getting back to customers. And that goes a long way, especially when you're giving them updates on their equipment. And especially when they have questions about stuff that's for sale, something if they want to get a down payment, you can monitor all this and they're getting a response right away so that makes sure that you capture them and that they stay with you.

We also want to make sure you're using available technology. And like we were talking about with remote payments, it's more important than ever to ensure sales and service are running smoothly, set up a system to make sure speed and accuracy between employees and customers is at its peak, automate certain tasks. We want to make sure that you are using Text-to-Pay, remote payments, automate messages, that kind of thing, to make sure you're capturing leads. Saving time will save you money. That's pretty much the bottom line.

It's all about texting, not calling. Your customers expect you to text them so we really want to hammer home that this is something that we really have seen the growth in. I showed you the graph there on the Text-to-Pay, but we've also seen the growth in text in general. And I will get to that graph just a second, but we wanted to make sure that texting is key and on the forefront there. It may seem like a pipe dream. It may seem like something that really wasn't in the forefront at least even just five years ago, but we really have seen that growth and we've seen it grow during the pandemic and it really has not slowed out.

So after we've done all this and we've improved communication, we've added Text-to-Pay, we want you to make sure you're proactive. You want to add something to customers, you want to reach out to them and make sure that you're getting the most out of your customer interaction. And you're also giving them an opportunity to maybe to come into your service bay or maybe to upgrade their equipment that they have.

Increasing Revenue.

Make sure you're texting everyone who's bought from you in the last three to four years. Be transparent about how long things take. So make sure that you're giving them updates all the time. Don't wait for them to reach out. Especially if you're working on their piece of equipment, you want to make sure that you're giving updates constantly. In the service bay, a worker can say, "Hey, I'm just working on your engine right now. I'll be done around 4:00." Something like that. Or, "I just found this, now I'm working on this." Making sure that they know that they're part of this, that they're in it with you. Over-communicate. Don't wait for them to reach out to you.

Make sure you're over-communicating in the sense of going through a step-by-step process. And it may seem daunting. With phone calls for sure, daunting. But if you're texting, that's easy because you're actually texting somebody within a couple seconds. You can even have an automated text that you're ready to send out, pre-made texts that you say, "I'm working on this. I'll be done around 4:00" or something like that. The customer can see that and they know that you're on it and you're actually thinking about them and thinking about their time. And making sure that they're in it, they're in this process with you.

So we want to make sure that you can see how this work and how texting has grown in just the past couple years. We've seen a 40% increase in text leads year over year. And if presented with the option to fill out a contact form or text, a lot of customers would prefer to text. So digital buying is changing through the entire funnel. This is when you're gathering leads and making sure that customers are actually coming to you. We've seen more buying done remotely, digitally via communication. It's cut a two-hour visit into a 15-minute text conversation. Google and Amazon have trained us to do this. It's simple and convenient and it's all about faster buying cycles. Implications for structure of dealerships are really just making sure that you're adding this tool for customers. We want to make sure that the buying cycle is faster. It's all about simplicity and convenience, and it's all about what customers have been looking for. And just even in just the past couple years, nearly 70% of consumers say they would pay more for a product if the buying process was convenient.

We wanted to make sure you saw the data for yourself, and you can see that actually texting is growing. 55% increase in text messages per dealer year over year. We've seen this growth before the pandemic started. When COVID hit, we saw that spike because people were just texting. They weren't really calling because simplicity and convenience was the key. And also they don't want to sit on the phone. People were worried and they also didn't know how to communicate well. So we've seen this communication tool become the norm for customers.

Dealers are now completing entire transactions via text. And we just showed you that through the funnel. That's from sales and service, pretty much from a lead to Text-to-Pay. And all of that is new. So that where dealers are completing entire transactions over text. And that would've seemed very foreign in just the last five years to a lot of business owners. But that is now the norm, that is what's coming and that is what's here to stay in 2022 and beyond because customers have gotten a taste for it and they want to keep it going.

The importance of convenience. That's the key here. We talked a lot about simplicity and convenience. Making sure you're adding the convenience of Text-to-Pay and the convenience of texting for customers. Purchase intent versus asking questions, 90% of decisions are made before they actually come in or call. So that's key to know, especially if you're getting texting for leads and stuff like that and you're seeing that customer. The customer says, "Hey, I saw this on your website. Do you still have it?" That kind of thing. "Can I put in a down payment?" They've already made that decision. It doesn't matter if you've got a sale or whatnot, they already know. You're not necessarily selling them because they've seen that on your website, they've seen it on the internet and they're coming in and they're saying, "Yes, I want this." So customers are buying independent of discounts, which means that they know what they want. And like we said before with the decision being made before the call, before they come in, before the text, customers are actually buying independent of discounts because they know what they want.

“Less than a third of young consumers prefer conducting a sale in-person at a dealership. And respondents are even more interested in contactless service. Half of respondents are willing to pay extra for this service.” And what that means is it's not just the youth, even though this quote is for young consumers, but we've seen that trend move and shift into all consumers. And the data that we've showed you before shows you the increase text, the increase in Text-to-Pay, the increase in revenue over the last year. 14.5 million in revenue from dealers just in March alone. That's huge. That's what we're seeing. That's what we're looking for. That's where customers want to be. So you want to be able to meet them where they want to be. It's all about simplicity and convenience. That is the key.

Benefits of Kenect.

The six benefits of Kenect. I just wanted to go through these with you. Generating more leads via our website widget. That's the little Text Us button that we add to your website. And that's where customers can get in more information they text in with leads or they can text in with questions. Generating dozens of five-star reviews, standing out online and selling more units. Using video chat in sales and service. We talked about that just a little bit and that's where you can actually use your phone, the app on your phone and you can go over around the piece of equipment and show customers what they're looking at. Collect deposits and payments from sales and service customers via text message and text from your existing business line instead of your personal cellphones. Save time and sell more by sending photos, videos, and surveys.

So, that's the six benefits of Kenect. It's really all important that you know that it is all done through your existing business line. You can create a line, but you don't need to because we call your carrier, we set this all up so you're not using your personal cellphone anymore. That's the thing in the past. You don't necessarily need to use that anymore. You could still do it for certain customers if you really want to, but gone are the days of you getting phone calls during dinner or texts in the middle of the night. You can actually have this through the platform where people can answer it and people can see it all throughout that platform and be able to respond right away. So you set that up and you make sure that your employees know that they can respond via that business line and then customers can use that same line to respond to you, to anybody coming in with any questions.

And with that, thank you so much for joining us. You can text us with more questions or if you'd like a free demo, you can also call in if you need to so we can set up a demo and show you exactly how this would look for your business, what features you can add to it, how it would be set up, what it would look like. Like I showed you, we add your logo to the top of that Text-to-Pay page. So all of that we can show you how that works and how it would all run through. And then we have somebody going through step-by-step to help you set this all up and going through the process once you've connected. So we want to make sure that you have all the support you need as you go through so you're not left alone and you definitely will have help all along the way if you're not familiar with texting. So this is something that you will not have to be questioning as you go through. So it's something that we'll be able to help you with for sure.

Let's see. Oh, so the questions that I have here, "Will this be available online?" I can provide you with a link if you want to respond to me. I have my email in this presentation. So if you'd like a copy, feel free to email me. You can also text us in and we'll be able to give you this presentation. We have links to that and for sure can present this online.

Let's see here. Oh, "Do you have to download the app on the phone to use Kenect?" Yes, you do, but it's free in the App Store. So your employees can just download it for free. It doesn't take up much bandwidth. We know that you have Gmail, you have Facebook, all those other ones that take up a lot of space, but this one is fairly easy. It's like any other text messaging platform or email system. it's really convenient for employees, especially those in the service bay. If they don't have a computer handy, it's easy for them to just look at it on their phone, pull up the app, see if there are any questions or to be able to send texts to customers. That's really simple and convenient.

Okay. Thank you so much. That looks like all the questions I have here. Again, if you have any more, please feel free to text us. You can also call us in and we're ready standing by we will be able to give you a free demo that caters to your business to show you how it will work. All right, thanks so much and enjoy the rest of your week.

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