A telesales service available to Q8Oils automotive customers has provided Brindley Groups 12 Franchised Automotive Dealerships with 3151 confirmed service bookings and 166 MOT bookings in its first year, and resulted in 13,235 litres of additional Q8Oils being sold.       

Equally impressive is the increase in profit of more than £370,000!

Founded more than 80 years ago in Wolverhampton, the Brindley Group is the largest family-owned car dealership group in the West Midlands with 12 franchised sites representing Honda cars and motorbikes, Vauxhall, Kia, Nissan, Chevrolet, Mitsubishi, Mazda, Volvo and Hyundai.

All Brindley dealerships generate service and MOT bookings through an actively managed customer database using a combination of letters, emails and phone calls, all of which is relatively costly. So when Andy Harris of Q8Oils mentioned the Q8 Telesales service during one of his regular meetings with Brindley Group aftersales manager Darren Nicklin, Darren realised that it could help close a gap between where Brindley’s current customer service sales results were, and where he wanted them to be.

Says Darren: “The service focuses on calling current customers ahead of a scheduled service or MOT, taking time to discuss their ownership experience, and following the conversation by offering our service and MOT facilities and making a booking. And importantly for us, it does not include contacting lapsed customers.”

Darren was impressed enough to agree to a 60-day trial at one of Brindley’s sites and was extremely happy with the results achieved, so much so that he decided to stop the postal campaign, with its high cost and relatively low returns, and rolled out the Q8Oils campaign throughout the group’s 12 dealerships. Reporting on the roll-out Darren says the Group results were also excellent, adding that bookings were much higher, but even more impressive was the quality of the customer feedback, which was very encouraging.

Commenting on specific aspects of the response information, Darren says it highlighted how easy it can be to misunderstand the reasons why customers’ who had bought cars from Brindley didn’t continue as aftersales customers. “With 12 dealerships we were amazed how many new and used car customers had sold their vehicles after the first year and no longer needed our service facilities. We were also surprised how far new car buyers were prepared to travel to get the best deal, and were then choosing to service the cars closer to home rather than make the longer journey to reach us. And we found that many people who had bought used cars were servicing them at independent garages to save costs.” 

Data and customer feedback from the programme was entered onto Brindley’s database, and as the telesales service continued the quality of data improved. In addition, Darren believes that, due to skills and training of the people who make the calls, they were actually having conversations with customers and were able to remind them of additional benefits such as Brindley’s collection and delivery service or suggest a more convenient Brindley Group dealership where appropriate.

Also important from a cost viewpoint, they were able to qualify customers who hadn’t responded to the group’s passive emails, texts and letters and who, for whatever reason, no longer qualified to be on the database, which meant that it was continually being cleaned.

Commenting on other benefits to the business, Darren says the Q8 Telesales programme proved that using annual new and used car sales figures to forecast future service and MOT business was flawed as it was based on unreliable information, so while the increase in bookings provided by the telesales calls is impressive, we believe the quality of customer feedback and the information available in ownership profiles has a far greater long-term benefit for the business.

“We now know that the people we are in touch with are genuine customers who have the potential to benefit from the offers we make. It also means that we no longer need to offer service or MOT discounts to customers that we know won’t use us, and it also questions the need to offer similar discounts to committed customers who are already happy with the service we provide.” He adds that in his role as Brindley’s aftersales manager he is now able to monitor the performance of the whole group based on unbiased results from an independent source, which he says gives him a much better understanding of the business.

Following the initial trial, the Q8 Telesales programme is still providing data more than 12 months later, having contacted approximately 50,000 Brindley’s customers and provided quality information and customer response data at no cost. So, if during a service call the customer mentions that a suspension problem needs attention the information is included without charge. Costs are only incurred when the programme provides actual service or MOT bookings, so Darren only pays for results that translate directly into profitable business for Brindley Group, with a typical MOT and service booking costing approximately £12.

The Brindley Group uses its own customer service team to offer activities such as vehicle health checks and brake system safety tests, and Darren says the close working relationship with Q8Oils ensures that customers are not ‘pestered’ by calls from both services and adds that the increases in service and MOT bookings has also generated additional sales of non-oil products through the dealerships.

Summing up, Darren says: “We have been a Q8Oils customer for 10 years and buy all our workshop lubricants from them. And while I accept that they will sell more oil as a result of this excellent customer relationship programme, I still think it is impressive that the service is free to car dealership customers. By helping us to create better relationships with our customers, Q8Oils has also reinforced an already strong relationship with the Brindley Group.”

Commenting for Q8Oils, AndyHarris says the first year result is impressive and proves that the Q8Oils’ customer relationship programme is extremely successful because customer data is current and accurate, and includes qualitative as well as quantitative information.

For further information on the Q8 Telesales Service, visit www.Q8Oils.co.uk, email Marketing@Q8Oils.com or call +44 (0)113 235 0555.