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VinSolutions issues

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#61
ddavis said:
Wow! Does this thread speak volumes about the value of DealerRefresh.
Click to expand...

DD,
CK this tread out http://forum.dealerrefresh.com/f19/...inance-form-users-warning-1910.html#post15430

I had an ARMY of concerned DealerTrack managers and execs rain down on me! The effort they put out and fixes they made still amaze me.

Check this out:
I had a chat come in with someone complaining about the finance forms. I fwd'd it to DealerTrack management, Francine Carsten (the Product manager) CALLED THE CUSTOMER FOR DETAILS ON ABOUT HER EXPERIENCE. Traced it to an iPad, went to work on fixing it...


<hug>DealerRefresh</hug>
<hug>DealerTrack</hug>
 
#62
JoePistell said:
DD,
CK this tread out http://forum.dealerrefresh.com/f19/...inance-form-users-warning-1910.html#post15430

I had an ARMY of concerned DealerTrack managers and execs rain down on me! The effort they put out and fixes they made still amaze me.

Check this out:
I had a chat come in with someone complaining about the finance forms. I fwd'd it to DealerTrack management, Francine Carsten (the Product manager) CALLED THE CUSTOMER FOR DETAILS ON ABOUT HER EXPERIENCE. Traced it to an iPad, went to work on fixing it...


<hug>DealerRefresh</hug>
<hug>DealerTrack</hug>
Click to expand...

Joe, it is all about their culture. You develop the right culture and see how it effects every area of the business in a positive way.
 
#63
Emily,



I’m sure by now, you have spoken to Karen Kuzanek, VinCare Manager to better understand the learning opportunities you have identified in you post. I just wanted to let you know that Customer Care is of great importance to us. Over the last year, our VinCare staff has grown at a faster rate than any other department. We understand that our success is directly related to the satisfaction of dealers with the assistance and service that they receive. To address the level of service, we have several initiatives that are designed to improve our clients support experience. Among those are:



· Testing and certifications to help ensure the support staff is knowledgeable and up to date on system functionality.

· 2 person integrity on confirmation of case resolution.

· Weekly formal training sessions.

· Monitored phone communications.



Additionally, we continue to enhance the software tools that the support department uses to diagnose and troubleshoot issues.



· Diagnostics pages for the application that identifies settings that are missing or in conflict.

· Customer facing visibility of the ticketing system. (Note: With the release of portal access, we no longer support chat communications.)



I know that there have been anomalies that have adversely affected our level of service, especially related to the phone system. Those have to be eliminated, and will be. But it is notable to mention that VinCare does successfully handle approximately 300 calls per day with an average queue hold time just over 1 minute.



Ensuring that dealers receive quality service is the highest priority that we have. We continue to work on our processes and personnel in our efforts to carry our this mission. Thank you for taking the time to give us this feedback, and I look forward to hearing from you as your service experience improves.



Respectfully,





Jim Nelson

VP of Implementation and Support

VinSolutions.com
 
#64
Just a quick update this morning. After all of my crabbing, etc. I think that Matthew here has made some progress for me. It looks like I can now assign tasks to my service advisors. It also looks like we can create processes off of RO's (existing or closed), declined items that were recommended, and keywords in the advisors comments.

If I can now send someone who declines tires a coupon to come back and get tires...I am going to do a cartwheel in my service drive.

Also got a very polite personal call from Sean Stapleton which I thought was a nice gesture.

Is it all too little too late? I hate that it took so long and so many missed milestones to get to this point, but I am impressed with what has been done since I went public on twitter and Dealer Refresh with my issues. I am sure the people at VIN think that I took pleasure in roasting them in public, but this was after MANY failed attempts to get a resolution using support channels.

I also looked at Dealer Socket (thanks again Kiley O'Brien for the well timed call) and then iMagicLab. I was impressed with both products.

I am torn now between moving my store forward with Vin after this experience or spending my efforts implementing a new CRM.
 
#66
Any updates on VIN issues from Dealers? My company just had a demo of the VIN CRM solutions -- they certainly sell a lot of sizzle! I found, of the dealer responses on this thread, over 7 pages, there seems to be pretty consistent "feel" or trend.

(Please, no VIN employee responses -- looking for unbiased, Dealer feedback. Thanks!)
 
#67
It is very interesting how this thread keeps getting bumped. It has continually been bumped by DR administrators and/or non-vin customers over the last 11 months. The original post was from Chris Hawley and he posted the following (on this thread):

"Quick update. Vinsolutions has diverted a ton of resources and good people to correct our issues. We still have some issues, but are making good progress and it was impressive to see them step up and respond. Very rarely do vendors put forth the kind of effort they have to make things right.

At this point, I would and have recommended Vinsolutions to anyone who is looking for a good All-in-one solution. I would also like to thank the DealerRefresh team for creating a forum like this to help keep everyone honest.

Fell free to contact me with any questions. Happy selling!"

That post was 9 months ago, since than this thread has been bumped to the top about every 3 weeks. There are plenty of reviews of VinSolutions on this site, Driving Sales, Kain, ADM, and others. I think you will find the answers you seek with a little "homework"

And yes I know you asked for no responses from Vin Employees but I just could not resist.
 
#68
Fascinating. Truly Fascinating. Ever since Alex mentioned "Pull," I've been imagining an advertising world where people's "words" are frozen in time and space. Alex wrote that a company's deeds and actions will be their advertising.

I guess we have an example here?

Mr. Morse, my Friend, I don't know you -- no need to send me messages. But I don't think you are helping your cause here much. Remember, what you say, and what your company does will be frozen in time for all the world to see at their leisure. I work for the MotorWorld Automotive Group in Wilkes-Barre, PA until November 30th. I am the CRM guru for this group until I leave. And just because my replacement attended the demonstration in Baltimore yesterday doesn't mean that I am not involved. Your presentation was yesterday, my research is today. Kinda hard to assert any shenanigans with that time-frame.

And by the way, I really have no idea why Jeff made me an Administrator last week (I think one of his kids was playing on his laptop), but please be assured that I've not administered a punctuation mark on the blog or forum.

I find it fascinating that you would jump-in defending a negative when any one of your happy clients could have posted something positive. And if I was one of the dealers whose feedback you just brushed aside, I'd be less than enthused. And there it is, frozen in time and space.

Soooo.... as a DEALER, our company viewed a demo yesterday. Any dealers care to update their experiences or add anything to the discussion?
 
#69
My dealer group has been a customer/partner with VinSolutions for a little over 3 years now. We experienced some of the same issues in the beginning of our relationship that have been voiced in this thread, ie support wait times, ticket updates etc. I think they have done a great job of admitting that they were wrong in those instances that were probably fueled by the rapid growth of the company. But we worked through those issues, both at our level and on their side of the phone also. Their new customer portal that is built into the sytem for contacting support, submitting tickets, and ideas for new processes is a big plus.

There was another thread on the forum the other day titled "He gets It" I reference that thread because in our dealer group there are those of us that "get it" and we have embraced the technology and benefits that the tools that Vin provides to us and our dealerships. Unfortunately there are a few stores in our group that view, not just Vin, but any tool that they are given as just a place to log floor and phone traffic, send a few emails etc and are nowhere near enjoying the benefits of the system that the rest of us are. We "get it" and are enjoying the benefits.

I was talking with another vendor friend of mine just the other day and we were talking about systems and technologies that dealerships are buying. The more succesful dealerships are those that embrace the new technolgy that they are stroking a check for each month, and have formed a partnership relationship with their vendor. I feel sometimes from what I read about some dealers displeasure with a vendors product are one of 2 things: 1 - they havent taken the time to learn how to use it effectively 2 - they havent really formed a solid relationship with the vendor to get the most out of the product. VinSolutions is no different. Their system and any system that we buy and put into our dealerships take work and effort to get the most out of them. They are not set it and forget it autopilot technologies. Those of us in our dealer group who are active in their training, attending their top notch training meetings are reaping the benefits of having their product.

I had a real treat the weekend prior to Digital Dealer. I was invited to sit in on the VinSolutions Dealer Advisory Board meeting. It was great to meet a lot of successful dealers from all over the country, that are leaders in their markets for their brands, who have also embraced the tools that Vin provides and doing a great job. It was a combination training meeting, and updating us on new features that are coming down the road. The most impressive part to me though is when they asked for our input and ideas of what they could do better. The open mindedness and being willing to listen to us, their customer, and agree to put some of our suggestions into play was pretty impressive to me. Some of the larger groups in attendance, and hope I'm not speaking out of turn here, are named Penske, Wyler, Harnish, Crossley, just to name a few. All of those guys "get it" also and doing a great job.

I hope this post answers the question of how a VinSolutions dealer feels about the product. I approached the answer more from a training/relationship standpoint. If there are specifics about the system and how it operates that you would like feedback on, feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer. Another thread recently encouraged me to quit being a "lurker" on here and start writing input more. Didnt mean to write a book for my first post!
 
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#70
We currently use VinSolutions and have had it since April. I'll list my thoughts concisely.

Pros :):
1. We don't need 8 different systems to run the dealership. They sell integration, I think the idea works.
2. Level 1 support is eager to help and very nice to deal with. Called them more times than I can count!
3. Accountability. I like the reporting features (mostly).
4. Our VinPro is very nice to work with and spends a lot of time and energy to make us happy.
5. Vin Cameras are fabulous to use, albeit expensive.
6. We enjoy the desking tool and find it very useful.
7. Good SEO
8. Mai with website support is FABULOUS. She will help you achieve anything you want.
this is where the pros run out....

Cons :(:
1. When the server goes down, you lose access to everything and have to resort to your DMS or 10 key.
2. After level 1 support, they forget your issue. I have issues still unresolved from setup day.
3. What I don't like about reporting, is the data is very flat and technical. Presenting the data to a car guy requires translation and a little spice.
4. System goes down or freezes every day, sometimes for excessive amounts of time. Other times it's very slow.
5. Email distribution fails if sending to too many emails, have to split into multiple submissions.
6. Mobile apps are half-baked and very limited.
7. NADA shows incorrect data and missing data (not all the time).
8. Their incentives provider shows incorrect data.
9. ADF emails have to be composed perfectly to be posted into VinSolutions as a lead.
10. Correctly composed ADF emails occasionally bounce so the leads are not received (i do however receive them to my email).
11. Specials are very limited. You have two options. Either it IS a special or NOT.
12. Using NCC to pull credit is very linear. No way to see previous activity.
13. Video stitching for inventory photos does not work. They always say they're backlogged.
14. Not easy for the less tech-inclined of our salespeople. Takes constant training. Very complicated.
15. Over-promised on features that doesn't exist (we bought too much into the sizzle :(, our fault)


Issues still unresolved from Day 1 :mad::
this deserves its own section because these are things directly promised and not delivered.
a. incorrect mapping from ADP on sold deals -- the numbers are wrong for reporting.
b. can't reliably push data from VIN to ADP. Only about 60% success rate.
c. eBay posting module still doesn't work correctly, we don't receive leads from posted vehicles.
d. photo feed sends broken photo links if overlays are applied (we overlaid first photo only), so we can't use them.

I want to like VinSolutions more than I dislike it but I'm to the point now where I'm out of energy trying to get these issues resolved. Our DP likes the idea of the system and I want it to work correctly as much as the next guy, but the feeling I get from support (the integration dept, developers, etc) says they are unsure what to do so they close the ticket without resolving the issue and I'm tired of reopening tickets.

VinSolutions can be a fantastic investment for you. It's not perfect, but it's not all bad either.

our vin website: www.machaikdodge.com
our mobile vin site: Mac Haik Dodge Chrysler Jeep Ram Temple
 
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