Who’s ready for another episode of Dashboard Dialogues?!
For this week’s podcast, we’re joined by Jake Silveira, Consulting Team Lead at Dealerslink, customer service wizard, and the notorious “Burrito King”.
Watch as Jake and Sam converse on:
– Dealer/vendor relations
– Finding the right vendors for your dealership
– What to look for in an automotive vendor
– Jake crashing his first car
Transcript
00:00:16:16 – 00:00:30:02
Sam Flecker
Hello and welcome to another episode of Dashboard Dialogues. As usual, I’m your host, Sam Flecker. Today I’m joined by Jake Silveira, our consulting team lead and an all around automotive wizard. How are you doing, Jake?
00:00:30:04 – 00:00:32:14
Jake Silveira
I’m doing well, Sam. Thank you. Thank you for having me.
00:00:32:15 – 00:00:44:05
Sam Flecker
Thanks for coming on. Absolutely. So Jake is basically known as the guy who can get it done here and the Dealerslink office, whether you’re a client or a employee or anything in between. He’s the man to ask.
00:00:44:05 – 00:00:57:23
Sam Flecker
He’ll get you your answer quick or a quick fix anything that you’ve got going on. He’s also I also like Jake a lot because we call him the Burrito King. He is the man who brings us breakfast burritos every Wednesday, so I’m very fond as Jake as well.
00:00:58:17 – 00:01:18:27
Sam Flecker
So today we’re going to be talking about vendor relations and how Dealerslink operates in relation to its competitors. Jake and his team serve as the main point of contact for our clients and vendors. So he’s a great person to kind of discuss how Dealerslink interacts in the environment around it.
00:01:19:27 – 00:01:20:12
Sam Flecker
Ready to go?
00:01:20:17 – 00:01:21:08
Jake Silveira
Absolutely.
00:01:21:08 – 00:01:24:22
Sam Flecker
Let’s do it, awesome. Well, first thing’s first, tell us about your first car.
00:01:25:11 – 00:01:44:11
Jake Silveira
Yeah, yeah. I had a 2000 Acura Integra Type-R bone stock. Yeah, everybody wanted to race me in town. We we definitely had a group of guys that really loved their Hondas and they souped them up. They put turbos.
00:01:44:12 – 00:01:58:13
Jake Silveira
I had a guy. I had a buddy that I used to hang out with. He put a a semi turbo on his little Honda Civic hatchback. That thing was probably pushing 550 horsepower. Wow.
00:01:58:15 – 00:02:00:18
Sam Flecker
Not messing around.
00:02:01:00 – 00:02:08:21
Jake Silveira
No, no messing around. I definitely did not have a car that fast. Then I ultimately crashed that thing and totaled it.
00:02:08:21 – 00:02:12:23
Sam Flecker
So well, that’s one way to do it.
00:02:14:06 – 00:02:17:04
Jake Silveira
You’re not having fun unless you’re you’re creating a little damage, right?
00:02:17:05 – 00:02:30:01
Sam Flecker
Yeah, that’s words to live by. All right. So let’s start off. Let’s just quickly define what a vendor is in your mind, a typical definition and its value to a dealership.
00:02:30:14 – 00:02:50:29
Jake Silveira
Yeah. Yes. So a vendor is basically a company that is going to provide a good or a service to another company and in the dealership world what we’re looking at is vendors of all different types. The importance of these vendors to dealerships is that, I mean, really, it’s based upon the value and the need that the dealership has
00:02:51:06 – 00:02:51:13
Sam Flecker
. Yeah.
00:02:52:29 – 00:02:55:15
Jake Silveira
That’s what I would say as far as what a vendor actually is.
00:02:56:02 – 00:03:02:17
Sam Flecker
Ok and along those lines. What are some of the most common vendors that a typical dealership utilizes?
00:03:03:05 – 00:03:19:22
Jake Silveira
Yeah. So we’ve got DMS systems, dealer management systems, inventory management systems, CRMs websites, lead generation services. Those are the main characters when we talk about different vendors in the automotive space, for the most part.
00:03:20:03 – 00:03:30:26
Sam Flecker
Cool. So do you mind telling us a bit about your role at Dealerslink and how you interact with some of our vendors, how dealers interact with some of our vendors?
00:03:31:10 – 00:03:51:03
Jake Silveira
Yeah, yeah. So I’m the consulting team lead, My my job primarily surrounds taking care of the customers. Yeah, making sure that the team members in the HQ office and our outside reps are getting the support that they need so that they can support the greater dealer community that we have our clients.
00:03:52:16 – 00:04:02:04
Jake Silveira
And really, when it comes down to taking support phone calls, answering the questions for these dealers, first call resolution is a big thing that we’ll talk about. And I’m sure in a little.
00:04:03:13 – 00:04:11:13
Jake Silveira
My my job, my primary function is to make sure that our consulting team and our support team is running as well as we possibly can.
00:04:12:06 – 00:04:14:22
Sam Flecker
So a lot of phone calls I imagine
00:04:14:22 – 00:04:24:14
Jake Silveira
Lot of phone calls, a lot of emails, text messages. I think I was looking at my cell phone plan and I’ve got over 2500 text messages sent this month, and I’m not that popular of a guy.
00:04:24:21 – 00:04:40:08
Sam Flecker
I like to think I’m pretty popular, but I don’t get anywhere near that. Anyways, OK, so when a dealership is choosing a vendor, what are some of the most important things that it should kind of look for, keep in mind when it’s choosing the vendor?
00:04:41:00 – 00:04:53:29
Jake Silveira
I think cost the value ratio is probably the biggest. You know, if I was running a dealership and I was looking at my choices for vendors, cost to value ratio is going to be one of the most important ones on my list.
00:04:54:21 – 00:05:06:12
Jake Silveira
There’s a lot of different vendors out there. A lot of them are doing the exact same thing that others are doing. Some of them do it a little better. Some of them do it a little different. Ultimately, though, it comes down to what are you getting out of that service?
00:05:07:12 – 00:05:28:11
Jake Silveira
What we see most often now is that dealerships are using far less than they are paying for when it comes to their vendor services. And that could be their inventory management system, their appraisal service or even their websites. So cost to value ratio, they’re paying a lot of money, sometimes an absolute premium.
00:05:28:13 – 00:05:32:20
Jake Silveira
Some vendors ask all the money, all the tea in China and the cart that it came in on, right?
00:05:33:18 – 00:05:34:10
Sam Flecker
Well put.
00:05:34:13 – 00:05:39:08
Jake Silveira
Yeah, they’re using 30% or less in most cases of their vendor services.
00:05:39:09 – 00:05:42:14
Sam Flecker
So you want to just get the most bang for your buck?
00:05:42:14 – 00:05:54:25
Jake Silveira
100%. And obviously, you want you want quality there, too. Right? Yeah. The main thing, though, is does that does that value actually equate to the cost? And are you getting the quality out of it and all that stuff?
00:05:54:25 – 00:05:55:26
Jake Silveira
So yeah, yeah.
00:05:56:04 – 00:06:15:00
Sam Flecker
It’s a good thing to keep in mind, for sure. Absolutely. So how does Dealerslink stand out as a premiere automotive vendor? Because, you know, we are a vendor in every sense of the word. Yeah, for our clients, how would you say Dealerslink stands out in the automotive space as a vendor compared to its competitors, other vendors?
00:06:15:20 – 00:06:33:25
Jake Silveira
Yeah. one of the things that we pride ourselves. The most on especially downstairs in the consulting team and the support team is that we still answer our phone when our clients call. Yeah, more often. We’re talking with dealers that are dealing with all kinds of vendors.
00:06:33:25 – 00:06:50:25
Jake Silveira
They’re dealing with CRMs and websites and lead gen services. Their biggest complaint is they have to wait two, 3, 4 days, sometimes for a phone call back or a resolution to the issue. What we pride ourselves on is first call resolution, so we do a lot of training towards that.
00:06:50:26 – 00:07:24:16
Jake Silveira
A lot of support issues are recurring and some of them are not. We have an incredible team of support guys that pretty much have the answer for a lot of the issues that do happen to come up. Yeah, first call resolution, we answer our phone calls and I think one of the biggest things these days is that vendors tend to like to point the finger at other vendors. Well, that’s not our problem. That’s somebody else’s problem you need to call them. We’ve historically always taken the approach of, OK, this doesn’t seem to be an issue with us, but let’s go ahead and call your other vendor.
00:07:24:16 – 00:07:37:17
Jake Silveira
Let’s call up your website and see what’s going on there. And if we can get it fixed for you, we will. Or let’s call up your your DMS and see if we can get some inventory that may be stuck or it’s not coming over to us correctly.
00:07:37:17 – 00:07:49:24
Jake Silveira
Instead of telling the dealer, Yeah, that’s not our problem, you have to go through the steps yourself and the channels. We really take the initiative there, and I think that really sets us apart from the majority of vendors out there.
00:07:49:28 – 00:08:18:19
Sam Flecker
Yeah, I tend to agree and I think that all kind of circles back to the fact that we are a company that’s, you know, we’re not just some kind of people we outsource to different departments and everything on tech and, you know, call center. We’re all car dealers we are, we were all car dealers and we know what it’s like and we want to get something done, get it done right. And everyone here has worked a dealership or is a car dealer, so we know what the car dealers are going through. Absolutely. It’s such a cool part of this company.
00:08:18:26 – 00:08:20:04
Jake Silveira
Definitely. 100%.
00:08:20:08 – 00:08:38:06
Sam Flecker
Yeah. Cool. So let’s see my next question. How does Dealerslink continue to refine its processes every year, every quarter and sharpen it skills to continue having the reputation as being the best of the best? The Premiere, you know, automotive vendor?
00:08:38:27 – 00:09:09:22
Jake Silveira
Yeah. one of the biggest things that we do is on on the leadership team of of this side is we sit down on a weekly basis, myself and Devon our VP of dealer services. And one of the things that we’re doing there is we are focusing on how do we best support our clients, what is working and what’s not. And that’s on a weekly basis. Sometimes, you know, it might be a quarterly thing where we’re actually reviewing exactly what did work and what did not work, and then we kind of scratch some things off the table.
00:09:10:06 – 00:09:28:15
Jake Silveira
We just recently inked a partnership with Zendesk, which is going to bring a huge amount of efficiency to the support ticket issues that dealers are submitting, things that sometimes would fall between the cracks if given the opportunity, that’s going to be less and less.
00:09:28:23 – 00:09:37:21
Jake Silveira
And so we’re always looking at how do we create this efficiency at the same time of maintain the quality of support that we’re actually offering our dealers?
00:09:37:21 – 00:09:38:20
Sam Flecker
It’s a great way of putting it.
00:09:39:14 – 00:09:39:25
Jake Silveira
Thank you.
00:09:41:08 – 00:09:46:21
Sam Flecker
Cool. Yeah, I’m super excited for that partnership. Yeah, take things to the next level.
00:09:46:21 – 00:09:47:07
Jake Silveira
Definitely.
00:09:47:17 – 00:09:58:02
Sam Flecker
Automotive is so innovative. Always kind of every, you know, more so than other industries. You’re always going to be. Something’s always changing every year. New technology. I mean, we just saw that color changing car.
00:09:59:17 – 00:10:01:25
Jake Silveira
That BMW is pretty awesome. Tell you that.
00:10:01:25 – 00:10:06:05
Sam Flecker
We’ll see if that takes off. I think I’m fine with the color red for my car now, but I.
00:10:06:07 – 00:10:09:09
Jake Silveira
Just in case you’re not, you can change it with your phone.
00:10:10:05 – 00:10:27:24
Sam Flecker
Exactly. It’s cool. All right. So I’m sure a lot of car dealers know there’s a lot of kind of big corporations out there that kind of take up a lot of the the market share for, you know, vendors, regardless of what kind of sector they’re in.
00:10:28:18 – 00:10:45:05
Sam Flecker
But, you know, Dealerslink is more of a kind of smaller, more nimble company as we like to to to phrase it as, you know, quality, not quantity. How do you think that aspect of our company plays to our advantage as opposed to being some big kind of corporation?
00:10:45:23 – 00:11:01:05
Jake Silveira
Yeah, I think being small and nimble is one of the things that we do best when it comes to being able to answer the phone calls and being able to tend to issues with a lot more attention to the individual issue.
00:11:01:06 – 00:11:32:21
Jake Silveira
Yeah, it definitely helps. I think our dealers see that as a whole. And the biggest thing, you know, these large corporations, they’re going to have thousands upon thousands of support tickets and they’re going to have integration issues and they’re going to have other things that are going on that ultimately will increase the time’s you’re going to wait for resolution. And make no mistake, we are definitely a busy company. We’ve got, you know, we’ve got a dedicated support guys that are handling thousands upon thousands of requests every month and every quarter.
00:11:32:29 – 00:11:33:10
Sam Flecker
Yeah.
00:11:33:18 – 00:11:52:29
Jake Silveira
We have found a way to increase our productivity in that area to where we can actually reduce our time to completion on those tickets to one to maybe two days at most. Through that one or two days. There is constant communication from our support guys and our our dealer consultants and performance managers.
00:11:52:29 – 00:12:06:13
Jake Silveira
They are always actively looking at the troubled tickets and the work orders that are coming through, and they are usually the ones on the front lines contacting the dealers, getting the information that they need so that we can get a quicker resolution.
00:12:06:21 – 00:12:21:17
Jake Silveira
A lot of times what we see in other scenarios is OK, the trouble ticket was created and it’s been assigned to the correct team, whether that’s the inventory team or as the other WizBang team that this corporation has decided to come up with.
00:12:21:17 – 00:12:33:04
Jake Silveira
And we have again pioneered this, this method of really focusing on what the issue is and targeting the quickest route to resolution.
00:12:33:10 – 00:12:38:22
Sam Flecker
Yeah. So very, you know, we’re very specialized. Every department is the best of the best. So very.
00:12:38:22 – 00:12:39:01
Jake Silveira
Very Much
00:12:39:06 – 00:12:49:12
Sam Flecker
That’s very cool. Well, you know, I don’t want to take up too much of your time on this Friday. So do you mind telling us, what are you looking forward to most in trying do?
00:12:50:12 – 00:13:08:03
Jake Silveira
Yeah, I think I’m looking forward to what I think everybody in the auto industry is looking forward to at this point in time is a little bit easier times when it comes to inventory, the chip shortages. It’s like this ebb and flow of, hey, we’re probably looking at another twelve to 18 months and then the next week
00:13:08:03 – 00:13:22:07
Jake Silveira
you’re looking at a story that says, well, things could get better than sooner than later. Yeah, I’m really looking forward to figuring out exactly how the dealership, the brick and mortar location is going to look as far as their lot space.
00:13:22:07 – 00:13:41:28
Jake Silveira
Are they going to be packed full? Are they still going to be running skim and then direct to consumer model? I would like to see I know GM just recently put out a direct to consumer website, so consumers are actually able to go and order a vehicle directly from GM, much like they do with Tesla.
00:13:42:01 – 00:13:52:00
Jake Silveira
Yeah, I’d be interested to see exactly how that that plays out and if it trickles down into some of the other manufacturers. Yeah, I know Ford is kicked around the idea as well.
00:13:52:03 – 00:13:59:14
Sam Flecker
Yeah, it’s exciting time and very exciting time, and it’s going to be crazy to see how how the year progresses.
00:13:59:16 – 00:14:00:06
Jake Silveira
Absolutely.
00:14:00:08 – 00:14:03:21
Sam Flecker
So awesome. Well, thanks so much for coming on Jake, Burrito King.
00:14:03:22 – 00:14:09:00
Jake Silveira
Thank you. I’ll make sure to have your burrito extra hot next Wednesday. Okay.
00:14:10:10 – 00:14:26:24
Sam Flecker
Well, cool. All right. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of Dashboard Dialogues. We’ll be back soon with another episode. If you want to watch all of our past episodes, check us out on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud and now Google Play as of this week.
00:14:27:04 – 00:14:29:21
Sam Flecker
Thanks so much, and we’ll see you soon.
