Jessica Stafford, Senior Vice President of Consumer Solutions for Cox Automotive, joins Emma Hancock to discuss how omnichannel dealers are leveraging connected solutions to deliver a seamless buying experience, and how they are outperforming their peers and closing deals at a higher rate. 

Timestamps 

0:00 – 2:40 – Highlights of the Cox Automotive Retail Study 

Emma Hancock introduces the episode and asks Jessica Stafford, Senior Vice President of Consumer Solutions for Cox Automotive, about the results of the new Digitization of Automotive Retail Study from Cox Automotive, and the benefits of offering an omnichannel car buying experience. 

2:57 – 5:19 – Dealership Benefits of Going Omnichannel  

Jessica explains why dealers who leverage omnichannel buying experiences tend to outperform their dealer peers.  

5:20 – 8:00 – The Omnichannel Difference 

Jessica helps dealers understand the difference between omnichannel and multi-channel experiences, and why omnichannel feels like one seamless buying experience.  

8:01 – 10:14 – The Relationship Between Omnichannel Experiences and Close Rates 

Jessica explains why omnichannel dealers are improving their close rates, and how Cox Automotive’s new AI-powered deal-making solution, Deal Central, is helping dealers leverage cutting edge AI capabilities and tools to work deals alongside buyers and boost close rates.  

10:15 – 12:35 – The Cox Automotive Omnichannel Experience 

Jessica gives dealers a glimpse into the daily workflows of going all in on a Cox Automotive omnichannel experience, and how this type of experience allows dealers and buyers to build deals together with a fully modern AI-driven deal-making process.    

Transcript 

Question: Cox publishes so many useful studies, and the new Digitization of Automotive Retail Study just came out. What can you share with us? What are some of the highlights?  

Answer: This study showed that dealers who are truly leaning in, who are digitizing their processes, hence the name of the study, and connecting experiences are really driving efficiency in their operation and they’re elevating the consumer experience.  

And when you do those things, you’re driving even better results for your business. And so those dealers are leaning into what we’d call an omnichannel retailing experience, so meaning shopping and buying that is connected across any and all channels online in store everything in between. And when they’re doing that they’re outperforming their peers and they’re achieving even greater efficiency in everything from sales to marketing and driving even higher conversion rates and sales overall.  

So with all of these tools, we’re really enabling a more digital shopping and buying experience and the study showed that when you do that, there’s this huge impact across a lot of metrics that really matter. A couple to call out, I think dealers are really excited about gross profit is seeing a 67% positive impact. We see close rates up 78% when you’re embedding these digital retailing tools.  

Another really interesting factor that I think kind of contributes to the business results is the employee experience. We talk a lot about consumers being really excited about these digitized connected experiences, but it’s also driving a positive employee experience for dealers. Seventy-nine percent said digital retailing is positively impacting their employee satisfaction. When the employees are satisfied, they’re driving an even better experience for the customers.  

Question: Really compelling evidence for investing in the omnichannel experience. It’s clearly outperforming, I think you could say. What’s your theory on why it’s contributing to that out-performance?  

Answer: At the end of the day, it’s actually pretty simple. These dealers who are 

outperforming are leaning into what customers want. They want a seamless shopping and buying experience they want a connected experience across shopping platforms like Autotrader and Kelly Blue Book and a Dealer.com website, straight into the 

showroom.  

What we’re doing at Cox Automotive to enable this is a lot of what dealers are looking for these days. We’re taking this massive amount of data that we see every day on cars on car buyers on car sales and we’re unifying it and connecting it to create personalized and intuitive experiences for consumers out there for what we would say our dealers’ customers kind of the customers’ customer, if you will. And when those folks have this experience, it drives higher more profitable sales for dealers and it connects to what we’re really seeing in this study on who’s driving success in their business. 

The concept of leveraging data to create amazing consumer experiences and to drive insights really allows dealerships to provide amazing consumer experiences, not just in shopping and buying, but it flows through the whole dealership operation into service into trade-in and into repeat purchases.  

So not only are these dealers seeing some of those statistics we were just talking about – higher gross profit and business metrics – but we’re also seeing big-time progress on repeat customers and loyalty, which makes a ton of sense. I mean, people go back to retailers that they have a good experience with, no matter if it’s cars or you know groceries whatever. You’re going back to those experiences that you enjoyed, that seemed simple, and good for you. So, it’s driving loyalty, and not only loyalty, but I would also mention these consumers that are having those great experiences, they’re telling all their friends about it.  

When they’re satisfied with that car buying experience, our studies are showing that they 

are four and a half times more likely to post about that great experience on social media—which is awesome, we want as much of that marketing as possible—they’re three times more likely to recommend the dealership they had that great experience at, and they’re three 

and a half times more likely to buy from that dealership again. So really big progress on how much you can amplify the results for your business by leaning in here.  

Question: We started by talking about this term omnichannel, and you mentioned you know this success is a is a result of the unification of all of this data. So, this may be an obvious 

distinction Jessica, but the term omnichannel, it’s not the same as multi-channel. I mean, let’s face it, dealers have offered a multi-channel approach for years. The real wow factor with omni channel is that it’s like multi-channel, but it feels like one. Is that right?  

Answer: Yes, you’re totally right. So, the power of omnichannel actually lies in the connection between all the channels, creating like you mentioned, this kind of unified experience that feels seamless. It feels intuitive. It feels simple. So, I like to think of myself as a shopper. This means, means that your information is flowing with you through your shopping behaviors.  

So, the basics might mean that you don’t have to re-enter information from website to website that you’re shopping on, or maybe in the store that’s the basics, but the magic really happens when you’re leveraging technology to take that data to take that experience and create maybe an AI-driven predictive experience for your consumers that makes that whole process more enjoyable. And a plus is that it drives even higher sales and profitability for the dealers as well.  

And you know, like you mentioned Emma, multi-channel, it’s been around forever, since the beginning of time for automotive, for sure. Consumers have shopped across all different channels. Maybe in the past, it was, you know, the newspaper and then driving down dealer row, going into the store. So those channels may be different today. It’s not the newspaper or the local Autotrader magazine, but it’s online on Autotrader. You’re checking your prices on Kelly Blue Book, you’re checking out social media, you’re looking at reviews online, you’re looking at the dealer’s website.  

And so, when we connect all of those channels together with a thread, that’s what allows us to kind of pin together that data that’s under the covers, if you will, and create what we’re calling an omnichannel experience, meaning that we’re bringing all those things together into one.  

And when we look at retailing, this is all possible because it’s digitized now. So, digital retailing isn’t necessarily just a widget that it once was in our industry, it’s the concept of digital buying that connects your shopping and buying steps, whether you’re online or in a store. It’s surrounding the buyer, surrounding the consumer with kind of a 360-degree ecosystem of retailing tools that work together to enable this buying experience that both the buyer and the seller end up loving.  

Question: Close rate is certainly a big piece of improving that profitability picture. How are these omnichannel dealers improving their close rates?  

Answer: That’s right. The study showed that dealers who are enabling this digitized experience, this omnichannel experience, are seeing much higher close rates, which is logical. When you focus on connecting all of those tools together, you allow this flow from one step to the next and you have transparent data. When you do that, you get quality, what we would call in our industry, leads, or consumers who are ready to buy into your virtual or physical door, so onto your website or into your store. Those quality car shopping leads are what turn into buyers at a higher rate. So, this is what’s creating an increase in your close rate, and therefore higher productivity of your business overall. 
 
I really believe that close rate is a super valuable metric to look at overall. You can judge so much by close rate. You can look at the success of your marketing by looking at close rate. Are we bringing in quality buyers? You can use close rate to judge your talent in your dealership, of course. How are they performing at getting the right people into the right cars? But one of my favorites is also to kind of look at judging your technology, your tech that you’re using, by looking at close rate as well. Is it enabling kind of a simple deal-making experience that doesn’t break down in the middle and therefore it’s not disconnected and you don’t see consumers walking away? Or maybe your dealership staff getting frustrated? 

We actually have an all new AI-powered deal-making solution at Cox called Deal Central and we use close rate to measure success there. It drives a lot of value across a lot of metrics, but with a tech platform like Deal Central it really allows dealers to use cutting edge AI capabilities and tools that enable them to work a deal alongside a buyer, whether they’re shopping online or in the store and we’re seeing big-time close rate increases over two times higher close rate for dealers who are using that tool. With Deal Central, we see 15% higher back-end profit. We see hundreds of dollars more in profitability per deal. So, I think you know looking at that close rate metric is actually a pretty interesting way to judge success across a lot of your tools. 

Question: You mentioned Deal Central, and of course there is a universe of Cox Automotive solutions, so let’s do a little day in the life. Let’s say you’re a dealer and you’re all in on Cox Automotive. You have all the platforms and you’re 100% omnichannel, what does that look like? How does that work behind the scenes from the dealer’s perspective, and what is it like for that shopper?  

Answer: Well, your days would look pretty good. Dealers who are all in with Cox Automotive actually see metrics like nearly 30% more monthly profit, over 50% more leads, 17% higher close rate overall. I mean, these are big-time metrics that are really amplified when you use all these tools together in this in this kind of omnichannel solution.  

At Cox Automotive, our mission is to connect the dots across the ecosystem. That’s something we’ve set out to do years and years ago, and we want to build amazing experiences for consumers, all to drive more profitable growth for the industry. So to do that, of course we partner with a lot of different vendors in our space that our customers use to integrate as much as possible.  

But if you were really going to lean into the omnichannel vision like you mentioned, and go all in with Cox, it might look like connecting everything from your Cox Automotive marketing and your Autotrader listings to drive demand, all the way connecting that marketing to your Dealer.com website, where you have digital retailing tools like Accelerate My Deal that connect on Autotrader, look the same on your Dealer.com website. And then that would connect the dots all the way into the platforms that are used, not just online, but straight into the store.  

So those deals and those leads would come in and could flow right into the tool we were just talking about, Deal Central. As a platform, that would enable the seller in the store and the buyer to work a deal together. You could be leveraging VinSolutions CRM and Dealertrack DMS, which would enable a fully modern AI-driven deal-making process, if you really wanted to go all in. And if you’re ready to go even yet a little bit further, we also have some tools we could activate that offer automated F&I that drive a virtual checkout process, even allowing a consumer to check out from their phone if they want.