Use Analytics To Make Your Customers’ & Employees’ Lives Easier
Amid all this talk of robots taking over our jobs, it’s easy to forget that—at least in some ways—the rise of the machines is already making our lives easier.
Consider your experience at Target or Walmart. The wide majority of shoppers have used self-checkout machines, and a little over half of those polled said they do so to avoid waiting in line, while two-thirds said they want more self-checkout options.
It’s not just supermarkets and discount stores. Imagine that the only way you could withdraw cash was from a bank teller, or worse, that cash was your only payment option. People like convenience—sometimes, more than we than like other people.
This logic applies to your automotive dealership as well. The sale or lease of a vehicle is a complex, multi-layered process involving a dozen people: sales personnel, loan officers, previous owners, manufacturer representatives, dealership owners, and mechanics—not to mention the customer, their spouse, and family members. There are countless ways to waste a customer’s time before, during, and after the transaction, and any of those procedures will probably waste your and your employees’ time as well.
So, how do you go about reducing manual touchpoints and making your employees’ and customers’ lives easier? As we recently learned at the 21st Annual AFSA Vehicle Conference and Exhibition, it starts with analytics.
Ask yourself how much you know about your dealerships processes. How many man-hours does it take to process loans and claims? What are you spending on HR, accounting, and compliance?
Gather this data and compare it with consumer feedback. Anything that gives your team and your customers headaches has the potential to become an automated process. Of course, potential doesn’t necessary mean automation will be effective or even feasible. Here’s a quick assessment to find out if a given process should be handed over to the robots:
- Is there a standard way of doing it?
- Does it recur on a regular basis (e.g. weekly, monthly, quarterly)?
- Does it involve multiple applications and systems?
- Does it require a great deal of precision?
If the answer to any of the above is “yes,” the process may be ripe for automation.
But that’s not the only way you can leverages analytics to reduce the frustration and waste associated with manual processes. Detailed consumer analytics can tell you, for instance, which lessees who have defaulted on their payments will and won’t respond to collection calls.
Review your historical customer data and look for patterns in the class of customers who have dealt with collection agents: Which types of lessees respond to collectors? Do they tend to lease certain vehicles over others? How do their incomes and credit histories correlate with their behavior? By gathering data from the past, you can develop analytics that accurately predict the future, and only have collectors call those customers who will accurately respond, while addressing others through alternative means such as extension offers.
Once you’ve seen the time-saving relationship between data and automation in action, opportunities to reduce manual touchpoints pop up everywhere. Compli applies analytics to our automated workforce compliance solution, making the employee training process much more dynamic and efficient. We’d love to walk you through how—contact us to schedule a demo.
