Driving Revenues with Better Customer Service

Our client is a multi-franchise automotive dealership in Connecticut. With 7 locations throughout the state, they were looking to centralize some of their operations to not only save money, but also to provide better customer service and ease of internal communications between franchises. While many employees work at a desktop, a significant number of sales professionals, mechanics, warehouse staff and other team members are constantly on the go. In such a fast-paced environment, when every moment counts, efficient, reliable communications is integral to the company’s success.

They had older Toshiba Strata systems at all 7 locations, each with its own voicemail systems and receptionist.

Business Challenges:

The corporate management team needed to be able to communicate with all franchise locations personnel, but had to have voicemail boxes in all 7 systems- they wanted to be able to share voicemail messages without having 7 different mailboxes, it was a user and administrator’s nightmare.

They needed to be able to provide greater customer service to callers reaching incorrect dealership. If a call came into the Chevy dealership for Ford, they had to instruct the caller to hang up and dial another number. They wanted to be able to pass calls between dealerships seamlessly and not inconvenience the customer

They had to have 7 different receptionists sitting at 7 different locations answering calls after normal business hours during typical sales hours, after 5 pm and weekends. They wanted to be able to answer calls for multiple dealerships from one centralized location off business hours.

Our Custom Solution:

We upgraded their existing Toshiba systems to CTX670’s and CTX100’s and added VoIP networking capabilities over their existing private data network. We gave them one centralized voicemail system- messages could now be easily passed between all employees no matter which dealership they worked for.  We implemented a centralized operator and automated attendant, so that during sales only hours, there is only one receptionist who answers for all 7 locations. The distributed architecture of the Toshiba CTX  platforms results in a seamless and transparent network that links all of the dealers sites, as a result calls coming into one of the dealership’s office are easily routed to any of the other locations, significantly increasing the efficiency in handling customer calls. Many of their existing Toshiba components from the older DK systems were re-used in the CTX 670 and CTX100 systems, including existing digital telephones and circuit boards, illustrating true investment protection in this custom solution for this successful automotive group.