• Be the first dealer to notify: As soon as the Recall is announced on the NHTSA side, there is ample for a manufacturer to prepare to supply parts to the dealerships and start accepting the recall repairment payment reimbursements. During this time, if your dealership notifies to the customer of upcoming recalls along with the contact information, the customer saves the information.
• Common Mistake: Waiting for a manufacturer to notify of parts availability and then notifying the customer of the recall would bring down the chance of winning customer recall repair by 50%.

There are 4-5 different sources to compile the list of VINs qualified for Recalls:
1. Dealer DMS Customer Database

2, Dealer CRM  customer database

3. Dealer OEM manufacturer’s PMA customer-allocated database

4. OEM’s unretained customer manifests

5. Conquest Database – please contact DealTimer’s for Contact Database acquisition!

It is a known fact that there are thousands of vehicles with recall repairs not completed.
Here are the common reasons for recalls not being completed on that vehicle.

1. The customer owning the vehicle could not have been contacted, as the vehicle was sold many times in recent years!
2. The contact information of the most recent owner is not available. DealTimer helps to procure the contact information!
3. The vehicle may not be operating on the roads or met an accident and there could several reasons!
4. DOT registration on the VIN # in any of the 50 states can only be the source of proof if the vehicle is still operating. However, no one can access the DOT registration information, for federal privacy protection of consumer act!

Damage Control: The only choice the dealerships have in hunting for the customer is to find the customer with VIN through conquest customer data acquisition. 

Recalls that do not need parts are qualified to be contacted immediately. These types of recalls can be completed with minute adjustments in software or calibration of parts, etc.

1. Act Immediately: DealTimer brings it to the attention of the service manager to jump on running the campaigns for these types of recalls.
2. Save a Date: DealTimer sends  “Save-A-Date” on such recall campaigns to the customer, educate them  on the call, and offers a provision to schedule an appointment
3. Multi-mode communications: DealTimer is the only vendor offering soliciting customers in over 10 different communication modes in reaching out to the recall customers. We never know for which type of communication mode the recall customer would respond to.

Most of the Dealerships follow the “Reactive-Way of Pending-Recall Check.

Reactive Pending-Recall Check:  Typically when the customer calls into the dealership or brings the vehicle to the service drive, the service advisor or service BDC Rep asks for the customer VIN # and enters the VIN # onto the OEM portal to check if there are any pending on that VIN and inquires with the customer if the calls could be fixed by scheduling an appointment.

Proactive Pending-Recall Check:  The proactive pending-recall check requires one to enter the VIN on the OWEM Portal and check if that VIN has any pending recalls.  This check has to be completed manually every few months, as there is a chance that the vehicle could have gotten its recalls repaired in any part of the country!  That is why most of the vendors do not offer this service, whereas DealTimer offers this service to the dealerships!!!

The more the communication modes in reaching out to the customer, there is a more chance of scheduling recall repair appointments.

1. Email campaigns to reach all recall customers – most of the vendors offer it!
2. SMS campaigns to reach all recall customers – 50% of the vendors offer it!
3. Recall Survey Campaigns:  It is very important to know the status of the vehicle through survey questions. DealTimer customizes the recall survey questions matching to the vision of the service or BDC director.
4. Interactive Voice: DealTimer is the only vendor offering customized interactive Voice Tele service for recall repair appointment scheduling
5. Ringless Voice Mail Drops: Ringless voice maildrops are popular ways of notifying customers of pending recalls.
6. Outbound AI Call Campaigns: DealTimer offers AI Based outbound call campaigns that would interact with the customers on pending recalls and schedule appointments. This saves tens of thousands of dollars in staff wages to the dealerships.
7. Empowering Dealer’s BDC staff to make calls:  DealTimer is the only vendor offering Recall-BDC with AI support to empower BDC  staff to make 300-500 calls per day per BDC rep with DealTimer’s AI Technology. For Details on this proprietary technology, please contact DealTimer.
8. Interactive Chat: DealTimer offers Chat-Services to interact with the recall customers powered by DealTimer AI technology customized to the whims and wishes of the service director. Please contact DealTimer for more information on this powerful communication mode!!!!  No other vendors offer this communication!!!
9. Trackable Web Forms: DealTimer sends Trackable Webforms to customers with pending recalls and tracks customer reactions and generates analytics.  This is a very innovative technology from DealTimer only!
10. Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp Messenger modes:  We never know how the customer responds to it! DealTimer offers to engage customers through Facebook and WhatsApp messenger communication modes in order to increase the chance of winning the customer!
11. SMS Surveys: Instead of sending SMS messages and asking customers to call back, DealTimer customizes SMS surveys to acquire customer reactions in real-time and even propose an alternative in scheduling appointment. This is a custom development process offered to the Dealership groups with some understanding of custom software building.
12. AI and Human Hybrid Campaigns: DealTimer is the only technology partner in the Automotive industry offering this powerful feature that saves tens of thousands of dollars in wages for each of the dealership locations!  If you are part of the dealership group,  DealTimer can save millions of dollars by implementing this technology. Please reach out to DealTimer, if you want to explore this outside-the-box technology idea!
13. Service CRM APP:  DealTimer offers Service CRM App building to dealers to publish the app with a link to the customers sent and upon customers loading the service CRM, the recall announcements are communicated to the customer through APP’s push notifications to interact with the customer instantly.   The service CRM can be custom-built to the whims and wishes of the dealership’s own vision and this service CRM app can control entire customer interactions with the service drive for 6 of Dealtimer’s service CRM products.  This feature is only available for Dealership groups larger than 10+ locations and with Service Fixed Ops Director having some idea of custom software development!
14. Social Media Interactions: Modern programming interfaces offer dozens of ways to interact with customers through social networking and programming. DealTimer is the only vendor offering such innovative programming interfaces to the dealership with a hunger to explore these initiatives. DealTimer does not want to be selling its products and services to tens of thousands of dealers with cookie-cutting products with a monthly fee!!! DealTimer is a technology partner for a few dealerships or groups!
15. Snail Mail USPS:  This is the scammy marketing choice chosen by most of the dealerships spending tens of thousands of dollars in reaching out to customers on snail mail postcards to win a recall customer.  It is very unfortunate that the dealerships are not tech-savvy enough to see this and they spend a huge percentage of their service drive profits in paying for these snail mail campaigns!    Please reach out DealTimer and we will be happy to explain such campaigns can be avoided with a complete education on what happens in these campaigns!!

Typical recall campaigns follow the blindfolded campaigns. Recall Customer Heat Maps are the coolest ways to understand your own customer base, your customers in the backyard of your competing dealers in a 10-50 mile radius, etc. Let us study further on this:

1. Customers in Primary Zip codes: DealTimer heat maps will show how many of your customers are with in the PMA region allocated to your dealership, typically by zip codes.
2. Customer in Secondary zip codes: DealTimer HeatMaps show how many customers are located in the zip codes surrounding the dealership, and they are called secondary zip codes or in-between zip codes.  Typically the customer in these zip codes could switch their loyalty to any of the dealerships around them, based on the traffic, drive time, convenience of scheduling service appointments, proactive customer communications with reminders, etc.
3. DealTimer offers the coolest communication campaigns based on customer heatmaps to ensure that dealerships can win more customers from the secondary zip codes by downloading and processing the customer lists from various sources and customizing the campaigns in conjunction with the service director’s vision.
4. Customer in Competing Dealership Backyard zip codes: These Heat maps show your customers are in the backyard of your competing dealerships in a 10-50 mile radius. This may happen for several reasons, such as the customer’s bad experience of the past with the dealership, poor communications from competing dealerships, etc.
5. Heat Maps of Your Unhappy Customers with DealTimer’s 1000s of reviews and OEM Surveys:   This is very crucial information to know, so your style of interacting with such customers should be very creative.  Please discuss with DealTimer on this, as DealTimer offers the most innovative CSI Platform that can be exploited well in acquiring customers for Recalls with the least friction possible from a 5  to 50-mile radius. Please note the customer’s BAD CSI reasons may not be Dealership staff, the Dealership itself, bad feelings with the Brand,  or love for a competing brand arisen recently, etc.

Do you know Vendors charge over $1.30 per snail mail, whereas it costs them around 0.40 to $0.60 cents per piece, depending on many factors? When you send 10000 mail pieces, vendors are hiding their profits on these campaigns?

How to minimize Snail Mail Campaign Budgets:

• Separating customers who already completed their recall repairs from the customers with pending recalls is a very important job.  Unfortunately getting the clean list of customers with pending recalls requires some manual labor, and hence many vendors do not offer this service.
• In addition to the vendor’s manual labor services, often the manufacturers take 2-4 months to update their database of completed recall repairs, and it is possible, we are trying to run campaigns on recalls that are already completed and customers may not be knowledgeable enough about recalls.
• Combining multiple recalls on the same vehicle VIN reduces the recall budget.
• Using DealTimer’s 15+ communication modes brings the snail mail postage budget by 95% compared to most of the vendors.  This alone saves tens of thousands of dollars per year per store.

Depending on the dealership size, number of repair orders, number of service advisors, whether there are service BDC reps available or not, if the telephone technology supports AI Tele-BDC of Dealtimer or not, we at DealTimer will customize the Recall Solution to empower Service Advisors’ to have minimum spent on Recalls.

For more information on this, please send an email to info@dealtimer.com and one of us will reach out and schedule a time to discuss with you further on this.

Handling Big-Ticket Recall Repairs: DealTimer customer Heat Maps a clear vision to the service director in optimizing the campaign selection affecting the appointment ratios in the following categories of campaigns:

1. DealTimer offers a special service in prioritizing the big-ticket recall repair service campaigns by working in conjunction with the service director and parts manager.

2. It is easy to win a new customer with a big ticket time, even from a 50-mile distance, because the big ticket items offer provision for providing a free rental call and other reimbursements,

3. It is very important not to lose your own customers to the competing dealerships’ jumping on board with big-ticket recall repairs!

We all know how OEMs fix a very low recall repair fee on certain recalls. Here are a few considerations in choosing the recalls, and recall customers that would maximize the profits to the dealerships.

1. Less expensive recall repairs: Manufacturers often rub less expensive recalls onto the dealerships with hardly any profits on those repairs, such as airbag recalls from certain customers.
2. Often Dealers need to fill the bays with these less expensive recall repairs for several reasons, a) to meet a minimum number of repair orders per month, b) to bring in customers for recall repair that would make customers turn into loyal customers switched from competing dealers around.

Typical Dealerships accept what is offered by the vendor when it comes to recalling BDC strategies.

There is no reason to follow a specific recall marketing strategy, because of a lack of choices in a reactive way. Dealtimer, being an engineering company, with a thorough understanding of Service CRM Technology, follow-up operations, dealership limitations, etc, DealTimer can advise the right thing to do when it comes to recalls.

1. In-House Recalls Handling:
2. Full-Service REcalls Handling
3. Outsourced Recalls Handling
4. Hybrid Recall  Service  BDC work..

DealTimer assists dealerships in analyzing how service advisors are loaded with work if the dealerships have service BDC staff or not if DealTimer can implement AI Tele-BDC technology for Hybrid Recall Campaigns or not and then advise on the bests stategies to handle Recall marketing campaigns.

How many Service Directors are aware of the $1000 to $2000 monthly fee being charged by the OEM on behalf of the smart vendor who convinced the OEM to run campaigns on behalf of the dealer, by portraying that the dealerships are ignoring recall repairs and it affects branding loyalty from unhappy recall customers trading in the vehicles and switch the brands?
On top of the OEM fee for Recalls, Dealerships are indirectly paying fee for Recalls to 1-3 vendors month after month, because recalls are added as an add-on feature on top service marketing companies.

Here are a few choices for dealerships to make when it comes to selecting a Recall Solution partner:

1. Independent Recall Marketing: Recall Product or Solution as a separate offering from the recall vendor with a monthly billing:  This depends on customer base, customer heat map, dealership size, whether it is an urban dealer or rural dealership, etc.
2. Recall marketing can be part of service marketing:  Sometimes Service Appointment Schedulers offer service marking solutions for a monthly fee and many dealers get tempted to ask to include Service Recall solicitation as part of the service marketing monthly services.  When Recall Solicitations are becoming part of service marketing, depending on the vendor, the recall solution could be a mere email broadcast campaign without going thorough recall marketing operations mentioned on this page and it produces very few appointments for recalls.
   If the dealership has fewer than 400 repair orders per month and sells less than 50 vehicles per month, having service recalls as part of service marketing is a kind of acceptable solution, that too depending on the vendor. If the dealership has more than 600-2500 repair orders per month,  it is better for such big dealerships to have chosen a dedicated Recall Marketing solution independently.
3. Remove Duplicate Vendors for Recall Marketing: Have only one vendor for Recalls,  and avoid paying multiple vendors, without even knowing that they are paying multiple vendors. Almost 50% of the dealers are paying for recall promotions from more than 2 vendors without even them knowing they are paying double.
4. Is the OEM forcing the dealer to pay for recalls? Please read the OEM documents and utilize the provision to remove the OEM vendor from sending USPS Recall Cards at a hefty fee of $1.30 to $12 per piece mailed.

DealTimer with 25 years of Automotive industry experience in building innovative software products after careful analysis, DealTimer can provide consulting and analytical support and advise on the right steps to be taken by the dealership when it comes to recalling operations to maximize the profits for the service department.

Please send an email to info@dealtimer.com for additional information or to schedule a 3-minute FREE Consulting on Recall operations or choose the right combinations by looking at these 16 strategies for Recalls on this page!