Auto Dealerships Failing to Capture Customers Over the Phone, New Marchex Data Shows
September 23 2014 - 7:01AM
Business Wire
When consumers search for cars, parts or auto services on their
mobile phones and call up a dealership, one in six times their call
doesn’t get answered, meaning dealerships lose out on scores of
potentially high-margin leads just by failing to answer the phone,
according to new data released today from Marchex, Inc.
(NASDAQ:MCHX), a mobile advertising technology company.
The finding was one of many in an in-depth study released today
by the Marchex Institute, the data and insights team at Marchex.
The white paper, entitled “Mobile Consumers Are Calling: How
Inbound Phone Calls Help Auto Dealers Win Customers, Influence
Brand Loyalty,” is the latest in the Institute’s Industry Trends
series, which spotlights data in a particular business
vertical.
Using Call Analytics technology to analyze anonymous data based
on 1,000 randomly sampled mobile phone calls from consumers to
dealerships across the U.S., the Institute found that:
- 16% of customer calls to dealerships go
unanswered.
- When customers do connect with a dealer
representative, 63% of the time there is no attempt to get the
customers to make an appointment.
- 66% of the time, representatives do not
ask for the customer’s contact information.
“What we’ve learned is critical for the auto industry,
especially given that cars, parts and services are what we consider
high-margin sales,” said Chen Zhao, Director of Analytics at the
Institute, and author of the study. “There’s no question that
becoming more effective at capturing these leads over the phone can
have a direct impact on dealers’ profitability.”
The study also found:
- 77% of phone calls to dealerships are
from new customers.
- 74% of callers inquire about parts and
services.
- The percentage of customers calling
about new or used cars, which are considered the most valuable type
of leads, was 14% – substantially smaller than inbound phone calls
for parts and services.
John Busby, Senior Vice President of the Marchex Institute, will
be talking about these findings and more at the 17th Digital Dealer
Conference today in Las Vegas.
To download the white paper, please visit
http://www.marchex.com/mobile_auto_dealers.
About Marchex
Marchex is a mobile advertising technology company. The
company provides a suite of products and services for businesses
that depend on consumer phone calls to drive sales. Marchex’s
mobile advertising platform delivers new customer phone calls to
businesses, while its technology analyzes the data in these calls
to help maximize ad campaign results. Marchex disrupts
traditional advertising models by giving businesses full
transparency into their ad campaign performance and charging them
based on new customer acquisition.
Please
visit www.marchex.com, blog.marchex.com or @marchex on
Twitter (Twitter.com/Marchex), where Marchex discloses
material information from time to time about the company, its
financial information, and its business.
Marchex Corporate CommunicationsSonia Krishnan,
206-331-3434Email: skrishnan(at)marchex.com
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