A BDC is an acronym for Business Development Center. In a dealership setting, a BDC is a department that is generally made and used in the Sales Department for reaching out to customers via outbound calls, text, emails, and on rare occasion, physical mail (low conversion to cost), to generate new business and convert existing customers into another vehicle sale.
A Sales BDC is made up using a few employees, provided the dealership even has a Sales BDC. Otherwise, the outbound outreaching is done by sales people, who work on the sales floor, if this methodology of gaining revenue is even employed, and just traditional and social type marketing that is used to bring in new business.
For Fixed Operations, even less dealerships have a BDC for their Service Department. A BDC for Service works similar to a Sales Department BDC, except it’s targeted at getting in lost customers, and ensuring to get a hold of current customers before they deflect to other dealerships or aftermarket shops.
With a Service BDC, the whole idea is to be proactive with the active customer base, by getting customers booked on-time and before service is due, or overdue. This type of outbound outreach includes everything from oil changes, tire changes, seasonal maintenances, special order parts booking, declined services from their last visit, recalls outstanding, getting first services booked in for new & used vehicle sales customers, getting active customer’s second vehicle in for servicing, and collecting customer responses related to CSI.
For lost customers, the service department has exponentially more customers that are lost than active customers coming into the dealership on-time and recurring. If you think about the years and years of vehicle sales from the sales department, both new and used, even within the last ten years, you start to comprehend the massive amount of customers that are out there, that can be salvaged. It is easier and cheaper to convert lost customers, than it is to convert the general public to a service customer.
For Fixed Operations, a way to visualize it, is you have a big bucket full of customers. For the most part, this bucket is filled up with customers that the sales department sold to, consisting of both new and used vehicles. With this bucket, there are a bunch of holes in it, where they leak customers. These are lost customers – customers that have deflected and going elsewhere for one reason or another.
This leaky bucket of customers is offset by customers that the sales department sells to, to keep you flat, year-over-year. Have you ever noticed your flat some years? A way to equate this, is that all the customers the sales department has sold to, has only replaced the customers that are lost. Covid was a period that put an emphasis on this problem since sales sold less vehicles, while the service department was strained to see the same uptick of new customers to offset lost customers the service department would usually see.
There are entire industries built around a dealership bleeding customers. Every single vehicle on the road has come from a dealership when it was sold new. But the dealership only sees a micro fraction of these vehicles coming into the service department for maintenance and repairs.
The aftermarket industry is larger than the OEM dealership servicing industry, which brings to light the scope of the problem and the opportunity for your service department. Beyond the deflection of your own customers, are customers that have deflected from your same-brand competitors. Just as many customers you’ve lost, the same amount are floating around from other dealerships that deflected just the same. With a Service BDC, the goal is to get these lost customers back, and retain them.
Lost customers are equally as valuable as your current customers. In fact, they are your customers – you just lost them. If you could clone your current customer base, many times over, you’d have your lost customers. You just need a way to proactively get them, at scale, and be better at it than you competition; like other same-brand dealers, or aftermarket shops. Also, a dealership without a Service BDC will lose customers to a competitor dealer who does have a Service BDC.
A parts department’s retail parts sales to the service department’s shop, is usually it’s largest customer. With the retail parts sales to retail service department sales being on average a 1:1 ratio, the parts department can realize revenue with service’s increase of retail customers coming in the door.
Now, getting customers to show up to your service drive-thru is a major hurdle, but can be done with a Service BDC. From there, your appointment coordinators pre-selling maintenance services is an easy way to see a major spike in labor and parts sales, and help fill up the shop with technician hours. Then with the service advisors selling at work-order write up, and then again with the technician recommendations on a quote. This is how you grow revenue even further. More customers coming in the door, is how you generate revenue in magnitude for both the service and the parts department.
Oil changes are the easiest way to get customers in the door, since most customers need an oil change twice a year. With a Service BDC, the idea is not only to drive customers in for oil changes, but to drive awareness about what you offer, and then capitalize on the maintenance and repairs that are needed. Revenue and growth can’t happen until you get a customer in the door. That’s the role of a Service BDC.
Driving awareness to customers, that their oil change is becoming due, a recall is outstanding, or there are seasonal items to book now before the rush, is the role of the Service BDC. Just like your dentist, we want to drive awareness, and customers will recall your message and respond – but you first have to ensure your in the back of their mind. They will respond – it’s a numbers game. It all comes together when you hit a volume of customers to outreach too, in combination with the messaging, variation of channel of messaging, and most importantly, the consistency of all these outreaches.
For oil changes, when it comes to your lost customers, you don’t know their current service schedule. With most vehicles needing an oil change every 6 months, about 16.66% of these lost customers will be in-market for an oil change that month, and each month within the 6 month oil-change interval.
The goal is to have a scheduled outreach program to ensure your always front-of-mind, and the go-to option for lost customers, when this service interval is required on their vehicle. Because each consumer is only in-market for an oil change every 6 months, this is why you need to be consistent and perpetuate the messaging and alternate the contact channels with your lost customers to get them in when the time is right for them.
An eBDC is a term we coined that basically takes the majority function of Service Department BDC for current and lost customer outbound outreaching and does it virtually, with an experienced team and fractional costs. It’s on auto-pilot so dealership management can focus on dealing with the things that are their expertise – serving customers.
Everything starts with getting customers in the door. This is why you need a Service BDC now!
