Auto|Motivated - BDC - thing of the past or way of the future?

With the rise of online and mobile enquiries, dealer groups have invested in Business Development Centres (BDC) to centralise their enquiries, aiming to create efficiency and consistency as well as taking much of the leg work away from the sales team on the floor. There have been some successful examples on how a BDC increases appointments and, in turn, sales but there are a number of challenges in managing large volumes of leads, and team members, in a consistent and efficient manner.

Some large dealer groups in the US have moved from a BDC to Direct Sales Model and are seeing uplifts in conversion, gross and customer satisfaction. Equally, by scaling down BDC resource as well as rationalising the sales floor, has seen an expense reduction, and in turn increased returns.

From a customer experience perspective, the biggest disconnections in the BDC process are:

1. The customer is inevitably transferred to a sales team, meaning they have to establish rapport and trust all over again.
2. The process for the customer onsite, in a dealership, is still very different to the experience offsite (online).
3. BDC's are still about selling appointments, not providing solutions.

In this digital age, is it time to rethink the BDC? With the emergence of online tools, designed to help customers and sales teams share information more transparently, does a more direct model start to add more value to the customer experience? In a BDC environment up to 6 people can be introduced to assist the customer in their decision. Are we making it easier for our customers or just easier for ourselves?

Imagine the impact to customer experience if your digital team was able to empower and educate your customers throughout the research phase of their purchase journey, providing just in time insights about your business and it's solutions, keeping them engaged and off the market. Creating a team of your best sales professionals and arming them with managing the customer experience from enquiry to delivery in a 'non-traditional' sense. Your 'Purchase Concierge' are key members of the team and assist the customer through their research, qualification, personalisation and funding needs, meaning the customer has a single point of contact for their entire purchase journey. Furthermore, consider the efficiency gain your sales team

Our industry, in many cases, seem to be holding on to old philosophies and continue to withhold information from the customer for the illusion of control. If you don't provide your customers the information they are looking for they will get it from other sources, losing you the control you never had.

85% of customers are more likely to purchase from you if you provide them online tools to complete the sales process even though only 7% complete the transaction online. The underlying point here is that online tools will create engagement, a more qualified customer and yield stronger conversion - which all leads to productivity gains and maximising ROI.

While there are many synergies between the current processes of the BDC and a Direct Sales model, the core differences are:

1. BDC is about customer throughput, Direct Sales is about customer experience.
2. BDC focus on enquiries, direct sales focus on connections.
3. BDC can be heavy resource management, Direct sales can be insightful performance management.

Technology continues to enable the sales process and we need to work more collaboratively with our partners to share our data (securely) and further streamline the experience for our customers. We need to continue to challenge our thinking, as well as that of our data providers to provide solutions to ensure our relevancy and avoid disruption.