Response time is important. Done. Ding. You can stop reading. Open the door and pull out the food you nuked, the food that is either hot on the outside and cold on the inside, or mushy on the outside and mouth-destroying lava-like on the inside. Waiting for your food to cook in a microwave, patience or not, as the clock slowly winds down to mealtime, can be exhausting. Still 1 minute to go? I thought I had a minute to go 2 minutes ago. Microwave minutes feel longer than they are. So too does the time your customers are waiting on you for… well, everything.
Not just hearing back from you when a lead is submitted. That is only the most obvious microwave minute. That is why every OEM has pushed response times for the last 20 years, and dealers have their own 5 minute goal, because people just hate waiting. Do you know who I am? Why should I have to wait on you? I’m trying to pay you money. What is this, the Apple Store?
Microwave minutes exist everywhere, hospitality, restaurants, retail. How long do I have to wait in this line if I already paid in advance? Where is the person to take my order, I’ve been waiting forever! (“Forever” usually meaning 4 minutes). How much time must pass as I peruse this store before someone helps me? When you’re waiting on others, it feels longer than it is. So while response time is important, so too is all places where a customer is waiting on you.
Microwave minutes math:
- Submitted a form fill on a website: 5 minutes = 10 minutes (and not just because it is probably 7 minutes by the time the lead funnels into your CRM).
- Waiting for sales to pick up the phone: 4 rings feels like 1 minute.
- Waiting for a text reply back from your salesperson: 1 minute = 10 minutes because they must not care about you.
- Waiting for service to pick up the phone (and sometimes never does): 1 minute = 2 minutes, not including being put on hold after they pick up.
- Waiting for a salesperson to greet you on the lot. 5 minutes feels like 20. (It’s cold out here.)
- Waiting to hear how much your trade is worth, what your bank rate is going to be, and just how much they’ll come down on the vehicle price to get you within $200 of your preferred monthly payment: 10 minutes feels like an hour.
- Waiting to get into F&I after you’ve already agreed to the price. 30 minutes is the equivalent to an hour and a half, even if you’re on your phone watching TikTok or looking for a better price at another store.
Microwave minutes matter. The time we spend waiting for others to do their jobs just feels longer. Anyone who has responded to a dealership review of a customer stating they waited in the customer lounge for 2 hours for their oil to be changed only to dig into the system and realize it was actually 1 hour and 14 minutes proves my microwave minutes math.
Want to make customers happy? Get faster at everything you do, and keep them occupied while you’re doing what needs to get done. Identify things shoppers and customers alike can be doing while waiting on you, be it fill out a questionnaire, watch a video, customize accessories for their vehicle, go through a pre-paperwork delivery, get educated on F&I products before the box, shoot a testimonial video, or simply keep them engaged in conversation… it is the waiting that causes customers to dread coming to a dealership. What have you put in place to make microwave minutes zoom by like a breeze?
Read my partner Bill Playford’s blog next about Why Response Times Suffer
