“It’s a great day at ABC Motors…”

“It’s a great day at ABC Motors…”

“It’s a great day at ABC Motors…”

As a trainer and a coach, this is something I hear hundreds of times per week, and thousands of times per year. The monotonous repeating of words, with no inflection, emotion, or authenticity. Sort’ve like when someone says “bless you” after a sneeze. It has become something of a chant. Maybe even a dull drone. It comes through with the sincerity of a debt collector.

While robo-dialers are quite active these days, robo-customers are still decades away. On the other side of the phone is still a living, breathing, human being. A human being that may have kids screaming in the background, water damage to their ceiling, power steering fluid stains on their garage floor, and many other real-life problems to deal with. If they’re calling your place of business, it’s likely that they are calling because they need help fixing one of those issues. Are you going to be part of the problem or part of the solution?

We at DealerKnows, have long advocated using call guides, as opposed to scripts. However, call centers, big and small, still rely on scripts to provide consistent and prompt responses. I’ll freely agree it puts uniformity in. Unfortunately, it takes all the human out. Some would argue that’s the whole point of scripts. If that’s the case, scripts are pointless.

We live in a FAQ world. At the time of this writing, there are 4.7 billion indexed web pages. How do I know that? I looked it up on the Internet. On my phone. Google even told me it took 0.50 seconds to determine that, or about the same amount of time to unlock my phone screen. People aren’t calling because they want to run an obstacle course of voice automation, just go through an unnatural conversation about something they already read about. No, they’re calling because they wanted to talk to a damned person. Don’t believe me? Maybe your script didn’t ask them.

We reap what we sew. If we are constantly asking our customers if they’re calling about the “big sale,” don’t they come to expect a discount every single time they call? Still asking about manual transmissions on new vehicles? Stop it. Only 79 of the 226 vehicles currently offered in the US offer a manual transmission. Zero manuals are available on half-ton pickups. Zero manuals are offered on all wheel drive SUVs. If you engaged your human sensibilities, you wouldn’t bother asking. If you are saying “that’s a nice one” regarding a vehicle that ended up being wholesaled a few days ago, you just lost the majority of your credibility. If you are saying things strictly for the purpose of moving the call forward, then save your breath. Customers make commitments to individuals, not three ring binders.

It’s time we put meaning back in our words. It might really be a great day at ABC Motors. It might also be a sunny day at ABC Motors. It might be Christmas Day at ABC Motors. It might be a wild and crazy day at ABC Motors. For all we know, it could be a busy day at ABC Motors. Because every day is different at ABC Motors. Just like the customer that is calling.