Building Customer Loyalty with David Regn and Kayla Kody

Kyle Mountsier: 0:06

All right, we'll see you later

‍Paul J Daly: 0:14

okay, we're already laughing thank you for joining us. So we're gonna start by talking about life aspirations. I'm just getting an inside joke. No. But I'm Kayla. Things have been changing. You're always seem to be out front. What are you thinking about this year as you approach the show, and you're kind of like walking the floor on day one.

Kayla Kody: 0:34

So for us, it's gonna be a lot about building loyalty and continuing to build that loyalty within our dealerships. So any tools that allow us to do that by using our own data, usually, in order to build that loyalty and make our salespeople sound a little more informed, and our advisors, some inborn form, as well, when you say some more informed What do you mean? You shouldn't be calling a customer and not understanding how many times they visited you, you shouldn't be calling a customer and not understanding that they have a massive billing service or that they haven't been to visit you in a really long time, or that they're defects or whatever that might be

Kyle Mountsier: 1:06

it wouldn't it be nice, I saw I have a couple of hotel programs like where I've still I'm sure you guys same type of things, right? And every time I hotels have this great, and the hospitality always does, right? You go in what else you check in? And they just say, hey, thank you so much for being a loyal member of ours for four years, seven years, whatever it may be, right, like, even just that little thing. It's not much it's only one data point. But it means so much to me. I think we could, as an industry at least find one one way to say thank you. Yeah, we

Kayla Kody: 1:37

talk a lot to our service advisors, especially and sales about just saying welcome back. Like, I don't need you to give them a dissertation on everything that they've done with us. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Kyle Mountsier: 1:49

You know, when, like, we're sitting here talking about marketing and gotten saved from stream. And one of the things that I think our industry has just been, like riddled with, is the fact that we spend so much money on net new customer acquisition. Yeah. And it is always a losing proposition. Because you've got stream company and 38 other marketing companies all pointing like laser guns at every single customer that's quote, unquote, in market, trying to gain net new customers for a dealership that has how many 1000s of records sitting in there 1020 30

David Regn: 2:25

cases, some of

Kayla Kody: 2:26

them are even right with email addresses everything.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:32

Like this partnership, I'm sure if you're thinking about that, you're probably challenging this partnership with how to be marketing, not just to net new because we still need to acquire customers, we know that loyalty is that on all time. So we're going to be able to take advantage of that. But how are you making sure that that's integrated into every single piece of what you're doing in the market? Yeah,

Kayla Kody: 2:51

so we want you spoke about is one of my biggest veins in life, like why do we pay for the same customer over and over and over again, like where's the loyalty piece? I've been my stream companies for seven years now, which is loyalty vote right there. This industry is not now. But a lot of the things that we do together allow us to utilize our data, we use our full throttle tool as well, to kind of synchronize what we're doing. I think as dealers we do a really bad job of taking care of customers after the sale. Like why aren't we giving them regular touch points? Why aren't we helping them schedule their service appointments? Like why aren't we providing that type of information to them? Why aren't we saying hey, you've had your car for four years. And usually this is when we see people trade in like, Hey, you just hit the 100,000 mile mark, have you thought about that? And utilizing the data allows us to do that in a way that's not creepy or weird. It's just helpful.

Kyle Mountsier: 3:43

Yeah. How are you leveraging like technology and your people resources to make sure that that's possible?

David Regn: 3:49

Yeah, I think one of the things when we were thinking about building technology was not thinking about it from the agency utility or the dealer utility, but thinking about the customer first. And I think a lot of times in our industry people don't think about the customer first and so we build a platform that allows you know, the dealer or the brand provide value to the customer on an ongoing basis. I know it sounds you know, very elementary, but think about you get your bank statement, you get your your Marriott statement. And it builds loyalty, right you want to see it you want to see your point balance go up and all these things. So we built what we call the vehicle wallet, which provides a monthly communication to every customer via via email. That is it's dynamic, meaning it builds intuitively based on where you are at in the lifecycle. So instead of getting a birthday email, you're due for service you're in a in an equity spot next to you know the dealerships blasting seven emails out to the customer within two days and three different platforms. Yes, we provide You know, one, one vehicle wallet statement that will say, Happy Birthday, Mr. Customer, by the way, your health score is your health grade for your car's a C, that's because you haven't been in to service for, you know, nine, nine months. And by the way, you know, you're no three months left on your lease, putting all that information into one message out value to the consumer

Kyle Mountsier: 5:25

next, they all want to know that. It's not like they don't tell you what the largest

Kayla Kody: 5:29

asset and we don't give them a good way to track what that asset is worth. And then we expect our sales teams to magically hit this brilliant moment when they're ready to trade in. And so when we utilize this tool, they even tell us if they've sold it. Yeah, we have customers calling, like how do I get this crap? I don't have it anymore, because they can't figure out how to click the button. Yeah, I mean.

David Regn: 5:48

Yeah, so one of the most brilliant things that a mall on the full throttle side built was, he's like, if we provide enough value to the customer, they will give us the information. So in the vehicle wallet, you can update your own vehicle information. So you can say, I've already I sold this, I don't own this car anymore. Or by the way, here's my mileage. Yeah, here's my write mileage, or I'm servicing at the, you know, local tire shop, and I'm not serving you with your dealer. And by the way, trust, that's what it's all about building trust with the consumer, which I think again, we're about this industry is about selling the next car. But it would be a lot easier to sell the next car, if we built value with that customer

Paul J Daly: 6:39

over goes right back to cars initial point spend so much money for net new customers when it takes this much to keep the customer but it takes a lot of intentionality. Right? That's the trade off. It's money versus intentionality. And let's face it, when we're living in 30 day cycles, money, sometimes it's a lot easier to spend that time and intentionality, especially coming out of two years when there's been a lot of money to spend. Yeah, so it does seem like this season where everyone's realizing profits are drying up or going back normalizing a little bit, that intentionality might go a lot, a lot longer. And dealer dealers might be more, you know, ready to give it some intentionality versus just throwing another check on it.

David Regn: 7:16

I have you walk into my office, I have a couple Henry Ford quotes. And my my favorite one is, you know, if I listen to the customer being the dealer in this case, I would have built a faster buggy versus building building a car. So the way they

Kyle Mountsier: 7:32

think I've heard that quote seven times in two days, I feel like it's the theme of this NADA.

David Regn: 7:37

But I think it really is, but I think it's really about the customer and where things are going versus Hey, I'm trying to get 1% better. No, let's get, let's get 50% better, let's get 100% better. And the way to do that is providing value to the customer.

Paul J Daly: 7:54

So I over the last year when used car values were very high, right? I just got a bunch of value from my car one car I don't even have any more. But I wanted what's a Carvana? Um, let me see how this thing works. I still get emails. I've never told them. I don't have the car. I don't even know how to do it. Right. That there's something about it's like almost like looking at a stock after you've sold it. Yeah, right. It's like, Oh, I see what the Kia Telluride is worth. Oh, went up. It went down. What your some little, like, fact that I haven't like unsubscribed because I still like getting that. You know, I don't know what it is. Once for a car sold actually want us for a car still have them sending it to keep it? Yeah. Because there's value there, right? Yeah. enough value there that I'm willing to have it in my inbox. And just feel like because I even see the value in the header. So you have that open the email.

Kayla Kody: 8:41

And I think for the vision Ford Auto Group, like we're all about, like, how do we treat our guests, we don't even call them customers like how do we treat our guests? How do we build this family? Like how do we build loyalty, and this tool fit really well into that. So it's almost like a seamless integration when we started informing our teams like, Hey, guys, it's not 30 day cycles in a customer's mind. Like we need to be there to assist them in the research phase, we need to be able to assist them afterwards. And that's what a lot of the insight we get from full throttle because it'll kind of show you what the shopper lifecycle is Yeah, and it's so cool to see that and then you also encourage your salespeople because you know which ones are in market so it's not cold calls, and they sound informed and the customers waiting for them in a way and it's really annoying.

Kyle Mountsier: 9:24

David, I love this partnership. You can tell there's like a lot of synergy and there's challenge in it and you're really caring for the customer. So thanks for joining us today and hanging out talking about how we serve

David Regn: 9:35

yeah, thanks guys for Thanks,

Kayla Kody: 9:37

guys. You know one of my greatest aspirations

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