The Problem
Many customers who buy vehicles from dealerships often do not return for vehicle servicing. This is lost revenue and opportunity for these dealerships. By allowing dealerships to offer a First Service Appointment when a customer purchases a vehicle, dealerships now have the opportunity to service customers and build further rapport so that the customer will (hopefully) continue to return for any future service needs.
The Process
We began this process by collaborating with our partner VinSolutions’ (a automotive sales and trade platform) design and product team to figure out different integration points within both products. After several brainstorming sessions and high-level discussions, we landed on several different areas where information from both products would be beneficial to each company.
For Xtime, the data from the point of sale would provide further clarity on customer spending. It would also allow Xtime to populate our system with new customer data. This data would allow for quick booking of a first service appointment as well as allow marketing campaigns to be sent to the customer in order to get them back into the dealership for their first service appointment.
For VinSolutions, the access to a customer’s services would allow dealerships to provide equity data to the advisors within the service lane. This data mining would allow the dealership’s advisors to provide trade-in options to customers whose services exceed the total value of their vehicle. This trade-in information would then get the customer into a new vehicle, which would then kick-off the first service appointment workflow all over again. Below are ideas of where this information would be placed within the Xtime products.
The Solution
After further discussion with UX, product, and engineering from both companies as well as brief user research with several different dealership groups, one overall workflow was decided. The workflow would allow First Service Appointments to be booked and eventually converted into a real appointment as the FSA approached the date of booking.
The first step of the workflow is to book a First Service Appointment lead after the customer has purchased a new vehicle. This step would be completed through the Xtime consumer application. VinSolutions would pass the customer data to Xtime which would then populate the customer data, allowing the advisor to walk through the appointment making process with the customer.
Once the lead appointment has been booked, it would be placed onto the Schedule workbook. A week before the scheduled appointment date, the lead would appear on the workbook. This would allow the advisor to call the customer and ensure that they are still wanting to come in for their first service appointment. If they do, the lead is then converted into a real appointment and consumes dealership capacity.
The workflow also considers the fact that the customer does not wish to book their first service appointment when they purchase the vehicle. In this case, the customer data would be sent to Xtime from VinSolutions and populated into the Xtime Marketing application. The product would then do customer outreach to attempt to bring the customer back into the dealership for their first service appointment.
With this workflow, the dealership has two attempts to capture the customer for their first service appointment: at the time of vehicle purchase and a few months after through the Marketing portal. This gives the dealership the best chance of making sure to convert this potential sales lead into a service appointment.