Be Omniscient, Efficient, and Explicit

While many definitions of operational efficiency exist, we’ll go with the first option Google coughed up to facilitate this discussion. Dr. Google’s algorithms  defines operational efficiency as “the ability of an organization to reduce waste in time, effort and materials as much as possible, while still producing a high-quality service or product.”[1] In short, operational efficiency boils down to a simple concept: produce the best possible product while using the least amount of resources. In the Fixed Operations world, this “product” consists of satisfied customers driving safe and reliable vehicles. Time go make a bunch of ’em.

First, we will define operational efficiency’s limiting factor as the one resource that you can never increase: time. As a dealership, you can increase inventory, hire more mechanics, and build more service bays; but despite your best efforts, you cannot create more time. You’re stuck with 24 hours a day whether you like it or not.

In the context of fixed operations, time governs the number of appointments your team books. The number of appointments determines the number of cars in your service bays, which ultimately defines your bottom line. Therefore, we will focus this discussion on the first step of this process. And while you can’t create more time for your team to book appointments (unless you have learned how to break the laws of physics) you can leverage AI technology to enable your team to book exponentially more appointments during business hours and allow them to focus on the critical tasks that an AI can’t perform.

Now, we will apply the formula we referenced in last month’s blog and use labor productivity as our operational efficiency metric [(Total Output/Total Input) = Labor Productivity].[1] Let us assume that it takes a proficient BDC member four minutes to book a recall appointment. Assuming that they “stay in the zone” for seven hours of an eight hour day (we’ll given them an hour for a lunch break and fantasy football sidebars…nobody is perfect). Let’s run the numbers:

• 7 hours translates to 420 minutes (total output of labor).
• 1 appointment every four minutes (total input) gives us 105 total appointments per seven-hour labor session

Therefore, our labor productivity for a single employee gives us 105 total appointments per day assuming that employee does nothing but make phone calls for seven hours (e.g. a best-case scenario). Let’s also assume that three people comprise your BDC team. Therefore, on a perfect day and while dedicating every iota of their bandwidth to booking appointments, your BDC team can book 315 appointments.

Compare this output to what an automated customer experience, like Sophi CX, can do for your business. In one of our past recall campaigns, Sophi CX contacted over 14K people in seconds and scheduled the necessary appointments without requiring a second of the BDC staff’s time unless the customer had issues. 14K appointments with minimal human intervention vs. 315 appointments with a total consumption of bandwidth; that’s a 4,444.4% increase of labor productivity.

One can further argue that since your BDC is no longer consumed with dedicating every second of their day performing the routine task of scheduling appointments, they can direct their skills and efforts to other problems that are decreasing the labor productivity in other teams. As previously mentioned, you can never create more time for task-saturated teams to solve a backlog of problems. Therefore, by optimizing the labor productivity of one team (i.e. servicing more customers in less time); you can offload the task backload of one team to one whose workload just significantly decreased.

While no one has figured out how to produce more time, Sophi CX performs  the routine tasks that prevent employees from dedicating their time to the tough problems that machines can’t solve. Despite industry’s best effort, no one  has invented an AI that is capable of dealing with a disgruntled customer who is threatening to burn your dealership with a nuclear Google review. Further, no one  has invented a robot who asks an over-worked teammate what it can do to help. Employees should spend their limited time on building both customer advocacy and a positive workplace culture and Sophi CX can help them do that.

You and your team have limited time. Make sure you spend it doing the things that matter most.

[1] How to Calculate Workplace Productivity | Smartsheet

[1] https://searchbusinessanalytics.techtarget.com/definition/operational-efficiency