Expert Automotive Knowledge at Your Fingertips

How Do You Measure Up? We’ve now written three articles on how Google views our industry for speed and performance. We touched on Page Speed, Speed Index, SEO scores for OEMs (vs Independents) and vendor vs vendor . Next, we looked at Google’s accessibility and best practices score for OEMS. In this article, we will wrap up this four-part series with an analysis of how Google ranks website vendors for average SEO, Accessibility, and Best Practice scores. Remember, our data source is quite large pulling from over 35,000 dealer websites. No joke. Average SEO Score As everyone knows, technical SEO is a very important requirement for good website design. If your technical SEO is poor, then your site will behave like a one-legged man running a marathon.   The average SEO score for all vendors was 86%. Overall, this is pretty good and a sign that most vendors are getting their technical SEO right. This is in sharp contrast to our mobile Page Speed analysis where the performance was dismal. But let’s look at the data… What does this bar graph tell us?  The most obvious thing we see is that Sincro Digital has work to do and YourCarLot is doing slightly better than most.   Average Accessibility Score What is Accessibility and why is it important? Google’s Accessibility audit/score is rooted in the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The ADA is a civil rights law that “prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all areas of public life, including jobs, schools, transportation, and all public and private places that are open to the general public.” What does that mean for web providers? Simply put, websites need to be designed in such a way that they can be easy to “read” whether by adjusting sizes, maintaining strong contrasts, and/or by allowing digital readers to “read” the website out loud for someone with a severe visual impairment. Google’s Accessibility Score weighs the average of a number of accessibility audits to create the score that you see. These scores are important because if you have a low score, you are not serving your customers well AND you are possibly exposing your dealership to a lawsuit by an enterprising lawyer or two. Enough with that. On with the data: By and large, these results are good, but as you can see some providers, such as Naked Lime and Dealer.com average below 75%. Realistically, the average should be higher and technical and design adjustments to the website can improve performance. I would recommend that any provider who is below at least 85% should seek to improve their positioning. Otherwise, they are risking causing trouble for their dealers. That said, kudos to those website vendors 90% and above such as AutoFunds, Jazel, LotWizard , ProMax , SOKAL , V12 , Team Velocity , eBizAutos and SurgeMetrix . Average Best Practices Score Your Best Practices score is based on an audit of common web development mistakes, some of which serve as the root cause of scoring deductions for other scores such as those above.   A poor score here is very avoidable so the overall vendor average of 75% is something to decry and not celebrate. Realistically, you should score over 90%, but like I said above, 85% or higher is a good start. Here’s some data-driven eye candy since a “picture”, or in this case graph, is worth 1,000 words. As you can see from the data, most website vendors hover around the 75% mark with some, such as CarBase, Dealer eProcess, Dealer.com, DealerFire, DealerInspire, FusionZone, Motorcar Marketing, Naked Lime, and PixelMotion all scoring in the 60s.   Sadly, there are only two website vendors above 85%: V12Software at 88% and SurgeMetrix at 91%. The Final Word While Brian Pasch drives conversation around GA4 standards for the dealer community, we need to have the same standards discussion for website vendors as I suggested in my last article . Some standards are pretty obvious. For example, since we know that bounce rates increase dramatically the slower a website loads, we should set our speed standards according to user behavior. 3 seconds is a good goal for mobile sites although 4 is fine to start. In the case of the stats above, it is not hard to reach 90% for a performance goal for all three measures. We can do better.   If anyone wants to discuss the data we collected, have opinions and suggestions for standards, or want their site (and even their competitor’s sites) evaluated, then contact me via email or 954.507.6468. Until then, use this data to push for better performance. You deserve it. 

Culture, Manifestation, and the Desire to do good "I have built a framework from the best of everyone I ever paid attention to, and I don't read many books. I don't have a lot of time," Art smiles as he explains that he has a simple paradigm that has defined the RepairPal culture, "the right person doing the right job." Art meets every person during onboarding to ensure this value system remains the focus and cites their approach to people as the reason they are a 2021 Inc Best Workplaces Honouree: "effective teams that are fully remote." The MAPConnected Vehicle Service and Warranty Lifecycle Summit 2022 is approaching. A collaborative conversation, led by some of the most brilliant minds in the industry, will be hosted by the Westin Southfield Detroit on the 25th - 26th of October. We had the opportunity to sit with Art Shaw, CEO of RepairPal .  The Art Shaw and RepairPal Journey "It is very simple; I am a poor kid, the first to attend college after high school in my family," Art explains that he paid his way through college, worked hard, and "got lucky." It was back in the 90s, and he had done well; he landed a job at Charles Schwab, where he stayed until 1999, eventually exiting as the Senior Vice President. After that, Art became the CEO, Board Director, or Founder of several companies ranging from management advisory to digital music distribution, artificial intelligence, and investment management. In 2012, Art took the reins at RepairPal, "I had learned that doing something I am proud of is important. Trying to help people is the foundation for running good companies, and I perform better in companies that are doing good for those around them."  "You can do good and do well," Art explains; he had learned early on in his career that there is a way to do right by the consumer while also building great companies and, by doing so, attracting great people and partners. "We have partners like USAA who work with us not just because of what we do but because of who we are," Art beams as he describes the relationships they have built through and with RepairPal. His time at Charles Schwab comes up throughout the conversation, and Art reflects on his time there with an unmistakable sense of pride and appreciation. The parallels experienced from a consumer trust perspective in both industries were clear to Art, "feeling empowered as a consumer" in a space that traditionally has a level of uncertainty attached to it means that you can build a great business if you have the right tool: "fair price for car repairs."  Through luck, Art had come across a team in auto repair who had a significant data set and the desire to do good, but the business was not sustainable. "I realized that like with Schwab, people were really afraid," the stats were overwhelming, and there was an opportunity to build trust. And so, Art went around San Francisco with the audit professionals who had built this dataset of "what's a fair price?" They went to different independent auto repair shops and asked a question that no one could answer, "your daughter is in Nashville, and her car breaks down. Where do you send her to get a car fixed?" Your car is built thousands of miles away, in Europe, Japan, or elsewhere in the States, and this is a tightly engineered ecosystem. A referral from a family member who knows nothing about cars or, even more specifically, cannot diagnose your car was the only overwhelming stat on how people were finding repair shops in an environment where trust was the issue. The relationships or connections people have with their cars are primarily accepted within the industry, but the numbers show that in 2022, people still don't know where to get their cars fixed. So Art created a brand with his team comparable to the hotel industry's quality standards. What was lacking in auto repair was knowing what you are getting at each price point.  "I was honored that the audit professionals came up with this paradigm that we call RepairPal Certified," Art explains, "for a trusted place to get your car fixed, defined by the level of quality which is not just what consumers want, but it is the right thing to do." Quality "So the first level is quality."  One of the things RepairPal does in terms of their quality standard is to make sure everyone is trained, "dealers pass easily, but independents don't always, and that's one of the biggest things: skills and training." Art explains that the next is the diagnostic equipment and high-quality parts. The second level is customer satisfaction, "and we do all sorts of interesting things around unbiased customer satisfaction." The third piece is the warranty, "if you're trained, and you satisfy customers and stand behind your work, we have a minimum warranty of one year, which all dealers pass."  "Interestingly, independents that fit our model and that are repaired by certified technicians have an average of two years or 24,000 miles in their warranty because they understand that's a sign of quality," Art shares. And then lastly, the final component, "that estimator that the team had built before, based on high quality with OEM MSRP and parts, and average dealer labor rates, not low, but what's a fair price with ranges, means that people can charge whatever they want, we don't control that," says Art, "if they want to charge outside of that range, they can't be Certified."  In terms of the work that RepairPal does with independents, it's mostly about quality. "They are pretty focused on being priced lower than the dealer. It's one of the ways that they increase their business," says Art, "in terms of dealers, they satisfy the quality standard already." So leaving the critical thing for dealers to focus on is price.  "We started with independents because it's a much wider range of quality, and that's the number one buying factor. So today, we have 3000 independents in our network, that's much bigger than any other chains," says Art. As a result, the RepairPal footprint is sizable, and they have grown a healthy website with 4 million unique visitors each month.  "We have 4 million people looking at service and repair. That's what we've done, and we've done that for 15 years," Art adds that the additional benefit pertains to those who are Certified becoming part of that online ecosystem, "so when you're Certified, you go up on our site. So when people come to us, 4 million of them, we help solve their problem by including you."  Price Once RepairPal had built a network of independents big enough, they talked to big companies that were in the car business, "for instance USAA has the highest net promoter score of any large company," says Art, "we presented them this nationwide network of trusted partners that we had already built, alongside an effective workflow, integrations, and technology to try to make it simpler across all these independent shops nationwide." Through the member network, RepairPal created a space where consumers can find a trusted repair shop with high quality, excellent service, and a fair price.  "This is great for brands, and we have a huge commitment to quality. The average net promoter score of independents in our network is 76," Art shares, "shops are happy to pay because they are getting incremental business."  People leave the dealer for servicing and repair. Four out of five customers leave the dealer over time, and the number one reason is price. The quality is excellent, the customer satisfaction is where it needs to be, and dealers stand behind their work, "so why are they losing most of their customers? Dealers are hardworking people who want to do good and earn a fair profit." Art highlights the objectives, "someone has to connect the customers to the dealers who are attentive to a fair price."  RepairPal has built what they call a "healthy, three-sided marketplace" Art says, "we have 3000 shops, most are independents, but we have recently started working with dealers." They have 4 million unique visitors to their site and 70 partners who rely on RepairPal to curate their trusted network, including dealers, for them. "We are on a journey to build out the dealer business," Art explains that the process includes certifying pricing through testing but that what they are already finding is that most dealers who are attentive to pricing qualify. "We use average dealer labor rates, OEM MSRP, and so if you build based on those inputs, you can become RepairPal Certified," says Art.  The beauty lies in the mechanism of trust that is established throughout the conversation with the customer. Having a third party certify fairness in pricing establishes trust between the customer and the dealer. "That conversation changes everything," Art says, "you are addressing the number one need, fairness." People know that dealers provide excellent service and a high standard of quality, but people also look to third-party sites for validation.  As we wrap up our conversation and discuss the longevity of dealers, Art and his team at RepairPal play a clear role, "there are a lot of ways to buy a car online, but when a customer needs repair work done, they still need to go to their local dealer." Art will discuss "Transparency And Trust: Overcoming Negative Price Perception" at the Vehicle Service and Warranty Lifecycle Summit at the Westin Southfield Detroit on October 25th and 26th. 

Pioneering a new type of conference in automotive takes a lot of guts, and Paul J Daly and Kyle Mountsier just pulled it off in a big way. From the venue to the guest list to the panel-style workshops, this conference lived up to its infamous tagline, “the rebirth of the automotive conference.” Here’s a recap of a few of my favorite things about this conference and why I can’t wait for next year’s event.  ASOTUCON2022 No expo hall  I’m a big believer in networking and learning from content, which is why exhibition halls can be distracting to that mission. ASOTUCON was all about the jam-packed schedule of podcast interviews, keynotes, and well-thought-out panels throughout each day; there was no one running to the expo hall to see what free swag they could snag. Everyone was focused on the same communal mission of learning together and from each other.  Vibrant venue  When I think of breakout sessions at conferences, all I can picture is carpeted hallways with lined-up classrooms one after another. I think of the closed rooms with quiet energy. ASOTUCON disrupted that image, rocking the Xfinity Live’s entertainment center with every breakout session held in a repurposed sports bar featuring a ton of screens with session information as you listened to the panels. It was vibrant and engaging rather than bland and quiet. It was fun.  Limited spots The curated and intimate guest list meant I didn’t waste any time looking for people at this conference. The ASOTU guest list focused on quality over quantity, controlling the registration so the event didn’t get too big or overwhelming. This meant that every conversation I had was meaningful, focused, and productive.  Progressive topics  As the industry continues to improve on data connectivity & orchestration, everyone present was on board with critical changes that need to be made in automotive. There were several sessions around owning and controlling your data, implementing a data strategy, and how to focus on first-party data and brand content to drive quality traffic and leads to dealership websites.  People>cars  At the end of the day, there was an underlying theme to every presentation, panel, and conversation at ASOTUCON: people are everything. It doesn’t matter which industry you’re in, what tech stack you have, or which top 150 group you may work for; if you don’t put your people first, nothing will function properly.  Ilana Shabtay in the Podcast Booth at ASOTUCON2022 Conclusion ASOTUCON was a new and exciting experience that reshaped my view of what an automotive conference could be: content sessions that are practical, relevant, and bring multiple minds together without any fluff. It was amazing to be empowered by so many other professionals in the space who want to make an impact in the industry. Congrats to the entire ASOTU team - you killed it. 

Marketing, customer-dealer interaction, and even your website are more than just the sales process, it is engagement with your community. Are you engaging in your language or your community’s language? For your dealership, engaging your community is the best way to grow your business and gain new customers.  There is a great deal of focus on engagement and experience, without covering how you need to engage with your community. If you are like most dealerships, you are focusing on the sales process itself, your reviews, and driving traffic, not thinking about how your website, marketing materials, and even customer interactions can help you grow your business. The car business must go beyond the goal of selling cars—you must connect with people. And when you do so in their own language, they will feel more comfortable buying from you. Brands across the board have been pushed to recreate their marketing strategies and focus efforts on building relationships that are driven by two-way communication.  One of the big questions is how to keep consumers engaged so that when they need your products or services, you are their first thought. To accomplish this, we need a shift in thinking to “Whose interests are being served?” For example, when you are posting on social media, are you posting content that drives butterfly effect engagement from your audience, or are you posting about the product only? By butterfly effect engagement, I am referring to the type of engagement that draws in people your audience is connected to and drives them to engage as well, allowing you to create a brand community. Consider that many potential customers will visit your social media pages before initiating the purchase process, reviews and content can impact the decision process in your favor. Putting out content that is of interest to your community is paramount, an example is Meta marketing content that is solely based on product and deliveries versus what interests your community. If you can scroll through your feed and cannot find anything that supports your local community regularly, you are not building your brand community. Remember, you are recruiting volunteers to champion your business, inundating consumers with sales purchases, and product places hoping to see results is simply disruptive marketing that desensitizes consumers and does not promote conversation. Unlike traditional advertising, which is primarily focused on getting new customers, a community marketing strategy is about connecting and engaging with people to build long-term relationships. It is about making customers feel seen, heard, and important. This type of strategy bridges the gap between the people driving your business, your team, and your customers. A vehicle purchase is no small thing, growing a sense of connection, support, and service within your community allows you to start building relationships before the sales process even begins. Providing value to your community is a great place to start What questions do customers most commonly have during the car buying process, what are some challenges you have helped others overcome, and what do people on your team specialize in? Sharing the details of how you serve and how it benefits the community paves the way for conversations. Participate Your community marketing strategy should take you outside of the virtual world of social engagement and participation in your community. Can you help educate young consumers on how they qualify for their first auto loan, how credit affects a large bandwidth of life or the ins and outs of the buying process? Getting involved early and giving young consumers the tools, they need as they move forward in life is a wonderful way to expand your value in your community. Consistency and accessibility are key Consistency is the foundation for trust, accessibility allows that trust to grow. How easy are consumers able to reach and converse with your team, do your internal processes allow for ease of communication or is there a backlog of calls to be returned and messages to answer? One large component of customer satisfaction is communication, the ability to reach contacts at the dealership amid the sales process, or even worse after delivery, is beyond frustrating to customers. This is a big part of the experience customers will remember when it becomes time to purchase another vehicle or service their current vehicle. Creating ways to engage with your audience in a way that works for them is crucial, whether by phone, text, email or messaging services - being accessible builds trust and impacts customer retention. Tell a story and use images Interaction on your social media posts gets on average 160% more interaction when you use relatable images, take this a step further and focus on telling the story behind the image. Consumers trust and value other consumers' opinions and experiences, share those success stories! Share other sides of your dealership, service, parts, community outreach, and team members - give your content an individualized touch. Consumers want to know who they are working with and look for connections and common interests on which to build relationships.  Over and above long-term benefits in customer loyalty and retention, executing a community marketing strategy can help to reduce your dependency on traditional advertising, often a large chunk of the dealership budget. While not necessarily immediate, this type of strategy will snowball as you continue to grow your audience and engagement. The use of social platform engagement isn’t going away, what you begin building now will impact your future sales and retention. Over the last few years, we have experienced a shift in consumer value, a shift that focuses on people and the community. Building value and creating relationships within your community is a powerful way to engage your customer base and community, create loyalty and trust, and grow your sales and retention - that is if you choose to accept the challenge before you.

When Jason Payne graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering, he also sold the web design company that he had started in his sophomore year. “There weren’t many people doing web design at that time and it taught me how to develop new business and customer relationships while focusing on solving the problems that my customers had; the business intelligence side of things.” By the time he had completed his studies, Jason wanted to move on and use his degree the way he had intended, and being in Michigan, many companies were interested in young engineers, especially those with an entrepreneurial background and a keen understanding of business practices.  The  MAPconnected Vehicle Service and Warranty Lifecycle Summit 2022  is approaching. A collaborative conversation, led by some of the most brilliant minds in the industry, will be hosted at the Westin Southfield Detroit on the 25th - 26th of October. We had the opportunity to sit down with Jason Payne, Founder and Chief Intelligence Officer at JP Strategy and Intelligence.  The Career Journey: The Entrepreneurial Engineer Jason’s problem-solving ability, cultivated during his college years, would play out throughout his career to his advantage. He was recruited by Advanced Accessories Systems as a Design Engineer and this would be his introduction to what would become a creative and non-traditional Engineer’s journey through the vehicle service and warranty space. “I was able to see areas within the business that were not efficient; the company had doubled in size in a short period and there was an opportunity to build strong quality systems.” The company gave Jason the freedom and opportunity to explore the customer requirements and systems when it came to warranty which, in turn, allowed him to develop an understanding of how the company worked beyond the engineering function.  Jason saw what data was out there and available at the time and then created frameworks around how to best use the information, something that was new at the time. “I saw it as an interesting part of the automotive industry because warranty lets you touch a lot of different parts of an organization,” Jason explained. “You can work with engineering, with quality, with the commercial side of the company, legal; every part of the organization has some sort of interest in what's going on with their parts from a warranty standpoint.” By late 2007, Jason had established himself in the warranty industry, someone highly active within the community and recognized outside of his organization. He was heavily sought after and chose to join Schrader Electronics, later acquired by Sensata Technologies, a large, multibillion-dollar electronics company that has business in automotive, aerospace, heavy industrial, medical, and commercial electronics. As the recession began to take hold and severely impacted automotive sales, tire pressure monitoring, Schrader Electronics’ main product, had become federally mandated and Jason found himself in a fortunate position having joined a company that was doubling in size, again. With that kind of growth, came huge warranty exposure. “Their products were exploding in terms of usage overnight and there would potentially be a lot of exposure,” Jason explained. “I was able to build systems and mechanisms to prepare the structures that would protect the business and their customers.”  When Sensata acquired Schrader in 2016, there were people within the warranty division but it was not on a large or robust scale. Jason was perfectly positioned to move into a global leadership role and take control of warranty issues that were sizable in scale and potential impact. Jason had the opportunity to branch out into aerospace and heavy industrial manufacturing, “although the concepts are similar to that of automotive, the landscapes differ,” he said. This transition allowed him to apply his years of experience on a much larger scale.  OESA and Contributing to the Warranty Community At this point, Jason had also been a part of the Original Equipment Supplier Association (OESA) for several years as part of their Warranty Management Council. He was voted in by the members to lead their Board of Directors as the Chairman in 2013.  A collective of warranty professionals, coming together to share information and help each other, OESA played a strong role in developing the warranty network and the vehicle service landscape. “I enjoyed that,” said Jason, “it is still a great avenue for suppliers to have a method of comparing notes.” The regular meetings and interactions developed an understanding of what was working in the industry and what wasn’t. “I learned a lot and tried to transfer my knowledge as well,” Jason explains that this kind of engagement allowed for participants to see and understand how the vehicle service landscape was changing and the direction it was going in, especially with electrification. “It gave organizations the chance to adapt and prepare for things that may have serious impacts” further down the line.  On Launching JPSI Warranty, Strategy and Intelligence Jason had been thinking about starting his warranty-centric consultancy for a while and decided once the timing had aligned both personally and professionally. He wanted to “work on the proactive side of data in warranty,” he explained. “The interesting thing about warranty is that it's an extremely critical function. However, when it comes to allocating resources to do things proactively, it is still very much an uphill battle.”  Jason currently works with several OEMs, EV startups, and companies that are building from the ground up. Whether it's the potential business they could lose if they don't address issues quickly or the financial illegal aspects of it, Jason develops strategies to not only approach the issues currently being experienced but also focus on “how to build business cases for senior leadership to say here's what we need, here's why we think we need it and here's the data behind it and here's what we can save.”  On Jason’s “Why?” “I help companies understand where the gaps are in their existing systems and which processes and resources are out there to help them fill those gaps,” says Jason.  In the United States, as well as in some other parts of the world, there have been some massive warranty issues. There have been severe legal fines, people have gone to jail and Jason goes on to state that “their impact would have been greatly minimized if a more proactive stance had been taken in how the data and tracking were being monitored.”   After having done all the research before launching JPSI, an area of the business that Jason had not envisioned has become critical in terms of his consultancy work: third-party companies. “Companies such as software companies that are up and coming with unique capabilities when it comes to analyzing big data,” Jason explains, “whether it's predictive analysis, artificial intelligence, machine learning, the areas where you can take huge subsets of data and find trends that are extremely difficult to identify manually” have become an interesting component of his service offering. “Helping those companies understand whom their capabilities can serve and making those introductions” has been another way in which Jason is proactively serving the vehicle service community.  On Warranty and its development within the Market There are a lot of people that work in warranty but there are few warranty subject matter experts. Things are changing though, “you are seeing companies who are starting to build actual warranty departments, for the first time,” says Jason. “I like seeing companies take it more seriously and understand the value.” Historically, it has been an “extra hat that people wear.” A Quality Manager will also be in charge of warranty returns or a Quality Technician will analyze data on a case-by-case basis. Many companies think that a warranty is “just defending yourself against cost recovery” Jason explains, or that it is a mostly financial component. “There is a real-world impact on actual human beings and actual people.” Jason goes on to explain that “we need to look at it from the human level and say what we're doing is not only protecting ourselves from financial implications, but it's helping to protect the people that are driving the vehicle.” What helps design and build a better product is “taking the data and understanding what we are seeing, what the information is telling us”. Jason emphasizes the importance of sharing the data with the right people to help them create a better product: “The financial end will work itself out in the long run because you’re going to reduce the number of issues in the field, and you will reduce the number of times people will need to come in to have their vehicles repaired.”  Focusing on a proactive approach means you still have to address things from the past but then take that information and implement it to prevent downfalls in the future.  Jason will be discussing Optimizing Quality Management Between Stakeholders To Reduce Warranty Risk & Costs, at the MAPconnected Vehicle Service and Warranty Lifecycle Summit at the Westin Southfield Detroit on October 25th and 26th. www.mapconnected.com

“In 1995, as web adoption was excelling and Internet browsers were engaging users I realized three key things. One, there was a clear opportunity for manufacturers and dealers to improve their profitability by focusing on the service side of the business. Two, the need was underserved by the existing software and three, technology trends were showing opportunities to enhance the entire process for all stakeholders throughout the service and warranty ecosystem.” The MAPconnected Vehicle Service and Warranty Lifecycle Summit 2022 is approaching. A collaborative conversation, led by some of the most brilliant minds in the industry, will be hosted at the Westin Southfield Detroit on the 25th - 26th of October. We had the opportunity to sit down with Ashok Kartham, Chief Product Officer at Syncron .  In the early 90s, Ashok was working at John Deere in the warranty and product support area when the future that he envisioned, one based on using technology to greatly improve the process and profitability of the warranty environment through enhancing communication, became a clear objective.  “Most existing software systems such as ERPs and CRMs were not addressing the needs: better communication and collaboration between the OEM and the dealer network,” mentioned Kartham. Parts, Service and Service Contracts could generate higher margins for the manufacturer and, the entrepreneurial streak in him, understood how. Ashok went on to build and launch 4CS in 1995 which was later acquired by PTC Inc in 2011. Just one year later, once the integration was complete, Ashok launched Mize. He said, “there was an unfinished opportunity, mobile was being adopted by consumers. Companies could leverage mobile technology to enhance customer experiences by improving service delivery to the end customer.” Mize allowed for the next part of Ashok’s vision to take hold, “by using mobile technology to deliver a connected customer experience, the Mize platform supported increased revenue for manufacturers and dealers.” Mize used both web and mobile technologies to enable field technicians and call centers. Often, field technicians are the interface between the dealer or OEM and the end customers. Mize focused on ensuring easy access to product knowledge, and by doing so, empowered technicians.  This approach was also adapted within the aftermarket parts space. Kartham went on to say, “the biggest problem was that the data was not connected. Services were processed manually and customer problems took days to resolve which led to frustration." When data is not connected, stakeholders are not connected and processes are not connected, the business becomes a collection of siloed systems, “we saw the need for connected experiences.” Syncron has a similar vision: Empower manufacturers to capitalize on the new service economy. Syncron merged with Mize in 2021, Kartham describes how this integration allowed his vision to be truly realized.  “Manufacturers are now focusing on offering their products as a service, whether it is equipment as a service or within automotive mobility. In order for that to be achieved, there are a lot of pieces that need to come together on the service side.”  Syncron serves many of the same customers as Mize did, automotive, heavy equipment and industries with high value, durable goods that are complex. “We had a common vision on the service side but also had complementary products”, Kartham noted. Syncron is the leader in parts inventory optimization and parts pricing. Mize had products in the warranty, service contract and field service space and together, the vision of a connected service could be realized at a much faster rate, accelerating the scope of offering and “serving hundreds of major manufacturers on a global scale in terms of our combined vision of connected services.” How is Syncron uniquely positioned to meet the needs of a developing service landscape? “We have a combined portfolio of solutions that offer a smart, connected customer experience, second to none, which improve the way that the dealer network, suppliers and customers come together and increase value,” explained Kartham.  Syncron products solutions allow for ultimate value to be realized through its common platform, the Connected Service Experience platform, which brings together all the data from historically siloed areas. This means that the data can be analyzed, insights can be derived and new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence can be leveraged whilst unifying the user experience.  In terms of the future, consumers have been impacted by subscription models. Recurring revenue streams, as a model, is prevalent and it is something consumers are accustomed to. It is a direction Ashok believes manufacturers are being impacted by.  Manufacturers are generating more revenue from an existing customer base, reiterating the link between customer retention or loyalty and profitability, and achieving this through efficiency and technology. “I am excited that we are enabling and empowering manufacturers through this transformation,” said Kartham.  Ashok goes on to explain, “as a technology provider, these are a nexus of technologies. Not only web and mobile but also connected products like IoT, as well as AR which provides remote assistance. There is a confluence or a nexus of technologies which enables this transformation.” Enabling the Dealer Network to optimize parts, service and warranty to drive service profitability. Ashok will be speaking about the important role that the dealer network plays in optimizing the parts, service and warranty to increase overall profitability. Manufacturers rely on the distribution network and channel partners to deliver the best possible service. This means that the dealer network needs to be empowered with the right knowledge and parts. “Warranty costs depend on what decisions are being made by the technicians and the diagnostic and repair process. We want to share how these elements are all interconnected.” Customers want to reduce warranty costs, the question is, how do we improve performance and enable technicians through empowering the dealer network? With the automotive space heavily influenced to go electric, or autonomous, how do we enable the dealer network and the OEMs to connect these pieces and deliver on, what is often, an impacted business model? Ashok stated, "A connected service technology plays an important part in the digital transformation journey, we are talking about enhancing the dealer network to optimize parts, price, service and warranty to drive service profitability.” Ashok is the epitome of a thought leader. He has the ability to see things before they happen in the general sphere. See him live as he discusses the importance of the dealer network and the role OEMs play in equipping, through technology, each component of the ecosystem. Driving the sustainability of dealers and the manufacturers that build for them, at MAPconnected 2022 .  www.mapconnected.com

How do you measure up? PART ONE In our previous two articles, we wrote about how Google uses its software to assess a website’s performance, from page speed and technical SEO, to download rates and accessibility compliance. The first article looked at page speed, your speed index score, and SEO rating, while the second article reviewed Google’s accessibility and best practices score. The focus of those two articles was on how OEM websites performed relative to each other and Independents.  The topic of this article will be to review how website vendors perform relative to each other, as seen through the eyes of Google. Our data source was over 35,000 dealer websites. Google’s Speed Index Score Google’s Speed Index Score is based on the average time it takes for visible parts of the page to be displayed. For this study, we only looked at mobile devices since around 80% of car shoppers shop by mobile device, while over 90% of Hispanic shoppers shop the same way.   Let’s look at the data… As an industry, we can do better than this. I’ve identified two critical cut off points - at 5 seconds and at 10. Ideally, mobile load times should be 3-4 seconds at most. Any time longer, and you start to suffer an increasing volume of drop-offs.   I have chosen the 5 second mark just to be practical, recognizing that some OEMs require a lot of time consuming add-ons and features that guzzle load time. But even with this said, it is hard to justify the speeds we see here. I imagine some providers might not like this article and will argue that our data is faulty or should be ignored. That’s fine, they can take that argument up with Google. These are Google’s numbers after all. We need Standards Brian Pasch , a well known automotive veteran, has quite wisely launched an initiative to have the automotive community come together on some GA4 standards in the hopes of crafting common and usable standards for the industry. Based on these numbers, we would do well to apply the same thought process to automotive website performance to ensure that we deliver highly usable, fast, and Google complaint websites to our dealer customers.   To do this, we would have to identify what’s slowing down the sites (think third party code), what metric we’ll use to gauge success (think Google since it’s the 8,253 ton Gorilla in the room), and ensure that all vendors play by the same rules. Otherwise, we’ll continue to get results like you see below for Google’s sister metric to Speed Index, that is, their Google PageSpeed Score. Not good. The Final Word Like I said in my previous two articles, you can’t bury your head and try to ignore Google’s ranking factors. You have to learn how to work with them to maximize the performance of your customer’s website. Google can’t be ignored, but it does serve as a neutral metric for evaluating website performance. If your provider is listed here, see where they rank relative to their competitors and contact me for a deeper analysis, or just use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to do your evaluation. Speed counts, and your website should be as fast as possible on your customers’ mobile and desktop devices. Otherwise, you risk losing potential customers who don’t want to sit around waiting for your website to load. Part 2 of this vendor review will follow in a couple of weeks… Stay tuned.

I'll be in trouble with my wife if she finds out I told you this.  Do you have a strategy for getting the best space in the parking deck? From my personal observations, most folks tend to drive onto the lower decks and try to (maybe) find that perfect space as close to the door/stairway as possible. They will circle and circle (like airplanes waiting to land) trying to get the best space. It takes a while to find, they end up disappointed, and proceed to the next level up. Then, they do it again. (Rince, wash, repeat.) Perhaps, just maybe, there’s a better way? Consider this. Instead of trying to cram your way into the last space on Level 2, why not just drive higher to the top or the second to the top level?   You can get there quickly. You can get yourself pretty close to your preferred entrance door. (Some alleged “pros” have told me you never want to park on the top deck because of the blazing sun on your vehicle and potential to get wet if it rains.) Ha!  I’ll buy the rain argument, but unless you’ve spent as much time as I do at airports, I am going to waive you off the flight pattern with that sun related philosophy.  The added driving, elevator, or stair time is minimal compared to circling the lot like a shark.  It’s less stressful, you’re done, and on to your next task.  AmIright?  Sometimes, you just need a different perspective. Same task, same outcome, better process.   Let’s discuss the insurance renewal at your dealership. Does this sound familiar: Once a year, your insurance agent comes to visit and to deliver this year’s bad news. Your premium is going up on every single policy. Without question, they arrive in your office one (1) week ahead of your renewal so there isn’t any time to maneuver or negotiate. You’re irritated. “This isn’t right,” you say to yourself. Then, you swallow hard and tell him to renew everything and (almost) throw him out of your office – banished for another year. Sound familiar?  Here’s a different perspective and a better way. First, spread your insurance renewals throughout the year.  Don’t have all of them renew at once. Second, require your agent to bring you the quotes thirty (30) days ahead of the renewal date. In the case of the garage renewal, because of its complexity, I suggest ninety (90) days.  This accomplishes multiple things: You’ve created an opportunity to review and renew each policy calmly, carefully, and without stress.   You’ve given yourself the option of having enough time to review the actual policy forms. This allows you to consider where your vulnerabilities lie and determine if there are ways for you to cover these through the insurance policies. By requiring your agent to give you the new numbers ahead of time, you’ve opened up the option of your negotiating with the insurance company about either (1) the policy form itself or (2) the premium. You will be less aggravated. For certain, you will be able to exercise control over your policies. Maybe you will send the agent to get prices from another carrier? Maybe you will ask the carrier to come visit you or you go to their offices to talk about the policy and renewal? Perhaps, you can discuss how claims are handled and how that effects your renewal premium?  In short, you gain control. I would proffer that’s a better way. By the way, if I find our favorite parking spot on Level 7 of the Norfolk, Virginia airport parking lot blocked, I’m going to be in trouble with my wife. Please be gentle with me!   

As we progress more and more in the “information age,” and move into what looks like a strong 2022 for automotive, different things become key to our strategy when it comes to creating customer experiences. And we always have these technological “eras” that revolutionized how we think about our marketing and customer communications. It used to be mobile responsiveness, then it was how to apply smart machine learning. Now because of all the information flying around, we’re moving into the next phase of data orchestration and connectivity . This is the missing piece in the accelerated dealer-tech adoption we’ve seen over the past year and a half that will be key to a successful digital infrastructure. Modern retail and machine learning decision-making are mostly just givens at this point. Connecting the data in a meaningful way and minimizing data silos is our next priority as an industry.  What is data orchestration? Data orchestration is the process of taking siloed, disjointed data and connecting it together into one organized, cohesive system. Historically, this has been quite difficult in automotive because the data sources are not built in a way to share information easily. Today, there are new technologies focused on solving this for dealerships to continue the focus on seamless customer shopping experiences.  Let’s discuss why this is so important for automotive.  I cannot tell you how many times I went to a dealership’s website, looked at a specific VDP, filled out a form, and then got an email about a totally different vehicle. Or, other times when I went to a dealership’s website, looked at 2-3 vehicles, and then got retargeted by an inventory specific ad based on my search (sounds promising right?); However, when I click on the ad, it takes me to an oops page (404 page) because the car was already sold and/or taken down from the website even though the ad is still driving traffic to that VDP. I even see back to school Facebook ads running mid-November, which is clearly no longer relevant.  Challenges like these are a function of the information overload we’re facing. There is data and information everywhere and because it’s not connected, it’s creating really poor user experiences. Your dealership needs to invest time and resources into understanding what data orchestration is and how you can implement this at your dealership.  Here are three things you can do to get started: Map all data silos Map out all your customer touchpoints and data sources into one spreadsheet or document. This makes it crystal clear to understand where and how you’re communicating to your customers and how that data is then fed back to your dealership. Once you have this mapped out, you can understand what is extremely siloed and what needs to be connected.   Find a data hub There are a couple softwares that do this well-- find them. Invest in technology that connects your systems and customer touch points so you can create seamless experiences. This part of the process will also probably involve consolidating vendors.  Ever have a lead from a chat that also converted on a trade in? Were you able to see one solid customer journey, or two journeys for the same lead? T hat’s what we’re talking about here: consolidate.  Execution engine  Data orchestration is only half the equation. Once you have connected data, it’s critical you can execute and take action based on insights. For example, are your ads reflecting information from your CRM? Are your email follow-ups based on website activity? Making sure your marketing machine is leveraging the orchestrated data will be key to success in 2022.  While this may have seemed impossible five years ago, technologies outside of automotive have proven the possible and shown us the importance of data orchestration and connectivity. This trend to connectivity and orchestration is playing out all over society in different systems. In the tech ecosystem we've seen the emergence of micro-services and data coordination systems like Kubernetes and Docker. In IoT (internet of things) we've seen IoT opps to connect data from numerous sensors and orchestrate the information. There are endless examples that prove its path to automotive digital is coming soon to perfect the customer journey.   Let’s get started.