Carsales improves leads control

By Neil Dowling on 23rd October 2021 Dealerships, News Carsales, VACC

CONCERNS by dealers about the way carsales.com.au manages lead volumes has been taken onboard by Victoria’s peak industry body and resulted in a fix to give dealers more control over the inflow of vehicle sales leads.

The Victorian Automotive Chamber of Commerce (VACC) this week said carsales.com.au (carsales) has introduced a new ‘configurable automation’ feature that followed meetings with the company by the Victorian Automotive Dealers Association (VADA) dealer advisory board (DAB) .

VACC industry policy advisor Michael McKenna said the DAB meetings were triggered by dealer feedback.

“An issue was raised at the DAB with regards to controlling the volume of leads per item published,” he said in a VACC bulletin.

“To assist dealers in regulating how many leads were coming through per inventory item, carsales was requested to provide a solution that would assist in controlling the volume of leads dealers receive per inventory item.”

Carsales responded with a more efficient and automated method of notifying dealers when a lead count for inventory items has been exceeded.

Mr McKenna said carsales’ current ‘configurable automation’ tool allowed dealers to set rules to send an escalation email when leads are unactioned.

But dealer feedback at the DAB meetings highlighted that dealers required an automated process to better manage high lead volumes, he said.

“As a result, carsales has enhanced the ‘configurable automation’ tool in AutoGate Pro so that it triggers an escalation email when a specified inventory lead count is exceeded,” Mr McKenna reported.

“This new alert will help managers take better control of their high performing inventory and is available across all AutoGate Pro accounts.”

The VACC said that the benefit of the new ‘configuration automation’ tool was that dealers could configure a rule that when an inventory item receives more than five inquiries, it will send an email notification to the designated manager.

Mr McKenna said the fix was a result of the DAB working for its members and finding a solution to problems facing dealers. The initiative was driven by VADA chair, Sid Cetindag, and DAB delegates Adam Sawicki, Rod Ayoubi, Sue Alford, Emma De Ruiter, Srecko Lorbek, John Buskes, Paul Hopper, Rob Parisi, and David Strapp.

Mr McKenna said in the bulletin: “We are fortunate to have the pragmatic approach of the carsales executive team headed by Michael Holmes and Matt Heggie in providing the remedy to many issues facing dealers.”