Beadles Group uses the Contact Management solution
from ADP to strengthen their contact centre operation

Benefits of a centralised contact centre

There are significant benefits for a dealer operating over more than one location to centralise phone-based revenue generation and customer service activities. It avoids these types of activities falling to the bottom of the priority pile if left to the already busy staff within individual dealerships. Beadles realised the benefits of a centralised call centre operation earlier than most and have been running a set-up making service bookings out of their head office for a little over three years.

Early adopters

Originally, Beadles worked off a bespoke Microsoft Access database; however, a major drawback of this was the lack of integration to their Dealer Management System (DMS), Autoline® from ADP. This meant all service bookings had to be manually keyed into Autoline. Additionally, their old system lacked many of the facilities of a professional contact centre solution, such as call scripting or the ability to load jobs directly into workshop diaries. Therefore, when ADP released their integrated Contact Management (CM) solution, Beadles were one of the first to opt for it, agreeing to act as one of the products initial pilot sites.

Leigh Cummings, Beadles’ Customer Services Manager explains, “The new application enabled my team to make service booking for multiple branches and load jobs directly into the workshops, which made the whole process much more efficient. As well as outbound service bookings, the call scripting functionality within CM also allows us to carry out CSI follow-ups easily.”

Beadles began life as coach makers back in 1915. Today, however, Beadles Group Limited, as it is now known, is a specialist new and used car dealer representing Volkswagen and Volkswagen Commercials, Skoda, Land Rover and Nissan & Toyota across 11 locations, employing over 450 staff.

Their mission statement is simple; to continually exceed their customers’ expectations.

The Technology

The CM module for Autoline was designed with simplicity in mind; to maximise the sales opportunities that can be produced from carrying out outbound calling. CM allows users to easily create target call lists for multiple campaigns to be executed at any one time through the call centre.

The script builder tool means managers can create scripts that allow even a new call agent to sound knowledgeable on the phone from day one. Specific customer details are automatically inserted into the script as it appears on the call agent’s screen and dependent on the customer’s responses, the script changes to reflect their requirements. Scripts can be created to give the caller the opportunity to sell in additional products and services, such as additional oil or a filter change, further increasing the potential profitability of each call.

Cummings comments, “In addition to outbound service bookings and CSI follow ups, we also use CM to help us carry out data cleansing across all our dealerships and with the introduction of the electronic vehicle health check functionality for Autoline, our aim is to use CM for the follow-up of all deferred work. This could prove extremely profitable for Beadles.”

“Contact Management has significantly benefitted the Beadles Group.

In the last year, we have made over 2,000 service bookings using the system, representing over half a million pounds worth of business.”

Leigh Cummings, Customer Services Manager

Initial Success

For Beadles, CM has already delivered a significant return on the investment made in it. Leigh Cummings is enthusiastic about the product going forwards. She summarises, ”CM has significantly benefitted the Beadles Group. In the last year, we have made over 2,000 service bookings using the system, representing over half a million pounds worth of business and we are now supporting ten of the eleven dealerships in one way or another. Using CM, we have definitely improved the conversion ratio on service and MOT reminders, generating additional revenue for our aftersales operations. Reports within the system allow me to track our performance by call agent, campaign and dealership.

For me personally, one of the other highlights of the system is the speed in which a new call agent can become effective by using CM. Only one of my current team has previous automotive experience.”

Our team at Beadles currently consists of four full time staff; however, I see this growing as we take on board more call activities. While we currently only use CM primarily for outbound calling, my vision for the future is to use it to take inbound service and MOT bookings, which has been trialled successfully on a small scale with a dedicated ‘0800’ number. This will further reduce the number of calls going directly into the dealerships, allowing dealership staff to spend more face to face time with the customers.”