GM Lead Response Times

[Jason L]

We have a dealer in our zone that has a response time between 15 and 30 minutes every month. This is a smaller dealership that averages only around 30 leads per month. Even though the amount of leads is small, I still don’t understand how they are able to maintain such a great response time. Also, I know they are using ProMax as their ILM. I have sent fake e-mails to the dealership and received an e-mail that is essentially an auto-responder that states they’ll get back with us within 48 hours.

My boss has stated that under the new GM rules, we are going to need to have a response time under 2 hours. Currently we are using iMagicLab as our CRM/ILM. Prior to iMagic, I had a response time that was as good as 58 minutes one month. But I practically sleep with my iPhone.

Since switching to iMagic, my response time has been fluxuating between 4-8 hours, even though I am still snuggling up each night to my phone. Has anyone else experienced this problem with iMagic or does anyone have any tips?

If anyone does not have any tips on how to succeed with iMagic, any suggestions on an ILM that will help us get our response times for GM leads back down to around 1 hour?

 

[Alex Snyder]

iMagicLab is currently gauging response times on a 24/7 period. They used to gauge things on what your business hours are set to and I think they need to get back to it. 24/7 makes sense, but I don't pay people on a 24/7 schedule. I'd like to, but that kind of pay just isn't in the cards, so I believe the times need to go back to whatever we define as our business hours. If we ever have the funding to pay someone on a 24/7 schedule, then we can change the dealership hours (in the CRM) to be 24/7.

We used to be at under 10 minutes during business hours, but since it is 24/7 we're over a 4 hour response rate too. I don't know how GM measures this, but if they've teamed up with the ILM companies then it is based on the ILM's lead clock.....and not a fair comparison.

 

[Jason L]

Yeah, they really need to get back to the only business hours. From what we've heard, GM will be gauging us based on the 24/7 and in order to hit SFE, we will need to be at under 2 hours. I don't really think that is extremely obtainable when you have handraisers and such that come in around midnight when I'm already asleep.

Another issue I've seen with how iMagic reports to GM is that they don't report the status of your day's leads until the next morning. GM runs their reports at 4:00AM for end of the month. That means if I have received 6 leads on the 31st then it'll show as have 6 leads not responded to. Any suggestions there?

Thanks!

 

[Alex Snyder]

I emailed this thread to iMagicLab. When I hear something back I will post it.

 

[Jason L]

Thanks a lot, Alex!

 

[Alex Snyder]

Talking to Tom Harsha about it right now. Keith is out of the office right now, but we hope to have some sort of answer soon.

 

[Shawn Morse]

Alex/Jason
VinSolutions allows the dealer and/or OEM to set the way they want lead response times to be handled. The dealer can set his or her business hours in the ILM or they can choose the 24/7 option. This obviously eliminates the response times that come in at 2:00 AM from hurting your average.

 

[Alex Snyder]

Thanks Shawn. Even though iMagicLab has had a temporary malfunction in how it times lead responses, it certainly isn't enough to consider switching.

 

[Jason L]

Unfortunately, my GM is going to make me drop iMagic. We've been addressing this concern with their technical support team for the last 3 months, and they've yet to find a resolution. I've really liked iMagic, coming from Higher Gear especially, but he just can't stand losing the SFE money over an ILM failing to work with what are OEM requires out of us.

 

[Blake Arbogast]

I have been dealing with this for a long time...you would think there would be a way in every CRM to trick GM with an auto responder! Have the dealers with ProMax figured this out? If so sign me up!