Freeway Honda, part of the Wilson Automotive Group, is located in Santa Ana, California in the highly competitive Los Angeles market. The store is surrounded by over 10 competing Honda dealers in less than a 20 mile radius. In this competitive environment, the dealership needs to deliver a professional, customized, and informative first response to the customer request, every time, in order to win the sale.
Megan Valade, Internet BDC Director for Freeway Honda, has worked at Freeway Honda for over 18 years and has climbed up the ranks earning roles that cover various aspects of the business from sales to finance to customer service. She is currently the Internet BDC Director and oversees a team of internet managers and BDC managers. Freeway Honda began using Quotible in 2018 to help overcome the following challenges:
The Challenge
Being First to Respond and Avoiding Spam Filters.
Prior to using Quotible, the team at Freeway Honda, like most dealers in the industry, relied on sending email templates from their CRM to respond to the more than 1200 internet leads generated every month. Management had grown frustrated with declining CRM email open rates, with over 50% of their first responses filtering to spam and going unopened. Looking at the top line numbers, this represented more than 600 leads effectively eliminated for the dealership each month. When the responses did make it through, they often failed to deliver a good first impression due to outdated designs, failure to get to the customer in a timely manner, and nothing to differentiate Freeway Honda within a sea of competitors. They turned to Quotible for a better solution.
The Solution
Freeway Honda Turns to Quotible for Professional, First to Inbox Responses.
Freeway Honda signed on with Quotible in June of 2018. The goal was to stop relying on outdated CRM templates as a first lead response and instead win business with professional looking quotes that made it into the customer’s inbox first. Seamlessly integrated with Freeway Honda’s CRM, Quotible delivers personalized and interactive quotes to consumers via text and email. Almost instantly Freeway Honda started to see their delivery rates soar and their consumers were spending nearly 4 minutes engaging with each quote.
Today both the internet and retail teams have fully embraced using Quotible. In addition to every internet lead receiving a Quotible quote, sales people at the Freeway Honda build and send showroom customers Quotible quotes. This process helps the sales team build early rapport with customers and provide a much-appreciated superior customer experience, while keeping the sale tied to their dealership through a professional and timely quote.
The Results
Over 94% of Freeway Honda’s Quotes Visited.
After implementing Quotible, over 94% of Freeway Honda’s quotes were visited by customers, a drastic increase from the below 50% they were experiencing when using the standard CRM messaging. In addition, the dealership’s closing rate has increased by 3 percentage points and they have seen a 7% lift in year over year sales.
“We aren’t the lowest price dealer in our area. We have dealers around Freeway Honda that are much lower priced, but once the customer goes to the competition, they realize the car has accessories on it they don’t want, or they don’t qualify for the special APR or lease rate that was advertised, and the price ultimately goes up resulting in a poor experience. With Quotible, our communication is now 100% transparent for the customer and because of that, customers feel more comfortable doing business with Freeway Honda and in turn choose our store more often than the competition.”
