Congratulations! Your VSC penetration is up and so is your F&I income. Your F&I department is rocking on upselling consumer protection products with your vehicles. You can’t believe the success you are having with sales and F&I. Your customers are happy all the way until they leave the dealership and drive home. But guess what, their experience with you hasn’t ended.
Because your customers choose your F&I products, their experience with those products will reflect back on you. You can have the greatest closing numbers in the world, but if your F&I products don’t reflect the service you provide in the dealership, your customers will most likely not return for their next purchase.
Good experience with an F&I product goes beyond claims paid to the customer service provided to both your customers and your service center. Think on your own experience with call centers. The ones you hate are the ones that keep you on hold too long, don’t address your questions, or keep transferring you between departments. Good customer service includes answering phone calls immediately, listening to customer concerns, and answering all questions politely. This experience is often even more important than monetary matters. When looking at your product administrator, look beyond the number of claims paid and average amount paid to the customer experience. Ask yourself:
- How quickly are calls answered?
- Anything over 60 seconds is unacceptable.
- What is the average call time?
- There is an art to a good service call. It shouldn’t end too quickly, leaving the caller more confused, and it shouldn’t linger. Good adjusters or customer service representatives move the conversation along efficiently and end the call between 3 minutes and 5 and a half minutes.
- How often are calls abandoned?
- If more than 5% of callers hang up, there’s a problem.
- What is the average availability of a service representative or a claims adjuster?
- This affects everything else. Without at least 75% availability, calls will not be answered promptly, therefore more will be abandoned.
- Is it easy for my customers to get answers to frequently asked questions, such as policy coverage or claim status?
- These should be available in a number of places, such as online, within the administrators automated phone system, and in print form.
It’s pretty easy to tell whether your customers are having a good experience with your F&I products by just walking into your service center. If your team members are complaining about never getting through to the administrator to initiate a claim, get a status, or get payment, it’s likely that your customer is having the same poor experience. One conversation you never want to hear is:
Service Advisor: “We couldn’t process your claim with your product administrator.”
Your Customer: “I bought the car through you, what do you mean you can’t process my claim?”
Service Advisor: “It’s not us, it’s the product administrator.”
Your Customer: “I can’t believe this service! I’m never bringing my car here again and you can be sure I won’t buy from you again either!”
The best way to avoid the scenario above is to ensure a good customer experience from the day they purchase their car. With over 36 years in innovating and administering consumer protection products, EFG knows the importance of customer service and that our efforts reflect back on our clients. That’s why we perform monthly audits based on daily results to ensure that your customers and service advisors always have the best experience. We continuously strive to keep abandon rates below 5 percent, answer every call within 60 seconds and to provide answers or process a claim as quickly and efficiently as possible.
At EFG, your reputation is our business. Contact us today to find out more about our commitment to your success through product administration.