Why Dealers are Having Trouble with After-Hours Leads

Getting and maintaining leads can be critical for dealerships during the slower months. When the weather changes, so do buying habits and dealers need to adapt.

The Lead Problem.

In the past year, customer thinking has changed. They are no longer coming into showrooms, but rather transitioning to all online shopping.

Phone calls used to be a good way to kick-start sales and service, but that mentality has changed.

Customers want a fast and convenient way to get their questions answered, and it's important for dealers to be able to respond anytime to keep the lead.

Lead Response Times.

During the pandemic, dealerships saw a huge spike in leads.

Recent data shows dealers are getting an average of 55 monthly leads since March of 2020. The lead numbers change with the season, and that’s where response times become critical.

On Average, 73% of dealer leads got some sort of response. That is a good number, but it could be a lot better.

Trailer dealers were the best at responding at 82% of the time, while Commercial truck dealers respond just 61% of the time.

However, the biggest problem continues to be after-hours leads.

When a lead comes in during business hours, dealers take an average of half an hour to respond. When a lead comes in after-hours, that time jumps to three and a half hours.

How to keep leads.

One of the best ways to keep leads is to make sure they always get a response.

You can add a widget onto your website. Kenect has added thousands of these buttons to business websites. This way, when a customer asks for information, they can just click on the widget, it goes into the Kenect system, and dealers can respond to it anywhere, at any time.

You can also set up an auto-response, so that customers feel like you want their business, and will get back to them when you can.

Bottom Line: Make sure you are keeping customers. You don’t want to miss out on any business, especially during the slow months.

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