In this rapidly evolving automotive world, dealerships need BDC services to engage their customers with a customer-centric approach. They handle customer interactions and manage leads with perfection. Though BDC software alternatives are essential for dealerships, they may not fit into your goals and requirements, which may vary from business to business. It may be lead conversion for one or enhanced customer engagement for other dealerships.
In this blog, we will discuss why dealerships are switching to BDC alternatives, their features, and the top 10 BDC consulting alternatives for driving efficiency and productivity across automotive operations.
Why are Car Dealerships Switching to BDC Software Alternatives?
The Business Development Center (BDC) generates leads and manages customer interactions. Conventional dealerships are switching to BDC software alternatives in order to improve customer interactions, organize and prioritize high-intent leads, and increase automotive operational efficiency. They often deliver fixed responses without personalization and have to invest in a dedicated staff to manage BDC processes.
With advanced BDC software, car dealers provide omnichannel communication support tailored to individual customer preferences and categorize leads according to their intent. Additionally, they could reduce training and staffing costs, driving overall BDC operations with efficiency.
Top 6 Key Features of BDC Software Alternatives
There are several key features to look for in the BDC consulting alternatives, including integration abilities, personalized communication, and automation in automotive fixed operations. Here is a list of the top 5 key features of BDC software alternatives.
1. Effective Lead Management
The BDC alternatives help dealerships capture and nurture leads, prioritize them, and track them from initial inquiry to final purchase. This enables your sales reps to focus on hot leads and put in efforts to convert them.
2. Handling Inbound and Outbound Calls
Handling high volumes of incoming and outgoing calls is just a blink of an eye for automotive BDC companies. They can make back-to-back calls, route them to the right sales reps, and track customer interactions to improve agents’ performance.
3. Repetitive Tasks Automation
A dealership workflow looks like setting up multiple service appointments, following up with customers, and booking test drives, which sounds repetitive and time-consuming. The BDC alternatives take over these tasks and save you time and energy.
4. Insightful Reports and Analysis
Data-driven reports and analytics enable you to get insights into agents’ performance, call handling processes, and improve the automotive BDC metrics like conversion rates, customer satisfaction, etc.
5. Easy-to-Operate Dashboard
The software dashboard is easy to use for the BDC agents with a user-friendly interface providing customization options according to the business requirements.
6. Organized and Secured Customer Data
BDC comparisons help you choose the right software for BDC, which provides contact management software for car dealerships, which is a centralized hub for storing and managing contacts. It facilitates end-to-end encryption and safety protocols for sensitive information.
10 Best BDC Software Alternatives for Car Dealerships
BDC software is required to streamline dealership operations and manage customer engagement processes. We have got a list of the top 10 BDC software alternatives for your dealerships, depending on your goals and requirements to provide automation, customer management, and precise analytics.
1. Spyne
Spyne provides AI-powered BDC software specifically designed for automotive dealerships. We provide automation in BDC processes to streamline the workflow and make the lead generation process efficient. We support smooth automotive CRM integrations with BDC software for efficient operations. Spyne offers features that automatically prioritize leads, rank the hot leads at the top for sales reps to convert them into potential buyers. Additionally, we provide consistent communication to customers at all times of the day with personalized responses across various channels, ensuring you don’t miss a lead from source.
2. Impel
Impel is considered a BDC alternative for automotive businesses, providing AI advancements to execute dealership operations. It helps you to reduce the need to hire dedicated employees for BDC operations and provides features like lead management, personalized customer interactions, and appointment reminders.
3. DealerSocket
DealerSocket offers several BDC-related services, such as lead nurturing, consistent customer engagement, helps improve your BDC with CRM integrations with other dealership systems, and other repetitive tasks like following up and setting up service or sales meetings.
4. AutoAlert
AutoAlert can be considered as one of the BDC software alternatives, specifically designed for the automotive industry. It helps in identifying and capturing leads, prioritizing them, and converting the high-intent leads into sales opportunities.
5. Pam HQ
Pam HQ provides automation to streamline dealership processes and replace traditional BDC practices. It handles the call processes, improves customer experience, and integrates with existing dealer systems to drive efficiency and productivity.
6. CDK Global
CDK Global helps dealerships manage the customer lifecycle throughout the sales process with the help of trained BDC agents and automotive sales consultant to handle lead management activities, track performance, and identify areas of refinement.
7. ACV MAX
ACV MAX focuses on inventory management for car dealerships, integrating BDC alternatives with inventory to provide BDC agents with information about the leads and vehicles. This helps them manage customer interactions and provide customized vehicle recommendations and offers according to their preferences.
8. TOPdesk
TOPdesk provides full visibility into the team’s activities through integration capabilities. It tracks customer interactions, handles incoming inquiry calls, and tracks agents’ performance through the automotive call monitoring software.
9. Zoho
Zoho provides a comprehensive solution for businesses to manage leads, customer interactions, and sales processes to drive profitability. It is an affordable and scalable solution for businesses of various sizes, providing customization facilities.
10. EasyVista
EasyVista is one of the BDC consulting alternatives that provides outsourced BDC benefits like automation facilities for business processes, reducing manual efforts, and organizing information to reduce data silos.
How to Choose the Right BDC Software Alternatives for Your Automotive Business?
When choosing the right fit among BDC alternatives, you must evaluate several factors, including needs and requirements, scalability, and advanced customer engagement tools. Here is how you can make the right choice for your dealership.
1. Scale as Your Customer Increases
Dealerships must choose an effective and scalable option among the BDC software alternatives, which is capable of storing and managing high volumes of data as the customers increases and the business grows.
2. Smart Call Handling Features
Conduct BDC comparisons to pick the one which have smart dialing and call attending qualities. It should provide features like call diversion, routing calls to the appropriate sales representative, and auto-dialing the leads that can be converted into profitable opportunities.
3. Integration and Customizable Options
For a smooth data flow and visibility into dealership workflow integration of systems are very crucial. The right BDC software connects well with other systems and provides customizable options tailored to specific car dealers’ needs.
4. Insightful Decision-Making Assistance
Data-driven decision making is essential for dealership success. You should choose the BDC alternatives that provide real-time reports and analytics to gain insights into customer interactions, overall BDC performance, and follow automotive BDC tips to make improvements in the processes.
5. User-Friendly Software with Cost-Effective Solutions
Since large dealerships could afford expensive BDC software, effective BDC alternatives are those that can be afforded by small to medium-sized dealerships as well. With a user-friendly interface, a dealership can reduce costs in training or hiring technical staff to operate the software.
Why Spyne is the Best BDC Software Alternative for Your Dealership?
Spyne offers comprehensive Retail AI solutions for BDC software alternatives with the help of AI and automation. We use smart and intelligent approaches to handle customer interactions, manage leads, and improve dealership operations.
1. Converting Hot Leads into Potential Buyers
Spyne helps you identify and capture leads automatically, prioritizing them according to their intent. We help your sales reps focus on hot leads, converting them into profitable buyers to increase dealership profitability and sales performance.
2. Human-like Interactions with Personalized Responses
Customers will like to engage with your dealership because of our conversational AI facilities, providing human-like natural interactions with personalized responses, fostering long-term customer loyalty, and increasing the retention rates.
3. Omnichannel Engagement with Smooth Integration
No more checking leads manually across every channel. We support smooth integrations with communication platforms, providing an omnichannel contact center to engage customers across every touchpoint, and that too in their native languages.
4. Automated Workflow to Enhance Efficiency
Spyne offers an automated lead follow up system for car dealerships to save your staff time to focus on core sales processes. Our system supports sending follow-ups to customers, scheduling appointments, and booking test drives.
5. Day in, Day out, Customer Support
Now you can sleep peacefully as Spyne handles calls, captures leads, and offers communication support even after regular business hours to engage customers who browse at midnight to ensure you never miss a lead.
Conclusion
Nowadays, the Business Development Center or BDC is a necessity for dealerships to provide superior customer service to their customers to gain long-term loyalty and success. Instead of conventional BDC practices, the BDC software alternatives provide advanced features to handle customer interactions, manage incoming leads, and offer integration capabilities.
Spyne offers this all with automation and artificial intelligence to enhance buyers’ engagement processes, streamline sales and service operations, and drive overall dealership growth and success. Experience increased retention rates and profitability in your dealership by scheduling a free demo with Spyne today.