F&I and Showroom, January 2016

www fi magazine com 14 F I and Showroom January 2016 TECHNOLOGY Burgiss If you want to quote a realistic monthly payment on a vehicle service contract you have to rate it based on the car and the dealers financing terms That means you need to know what credit tier the customer is in to get the right APR and terms The last thing the dealer needs to determine is what his markup is going to be on the product above wholesale whether its a dollar amount or a percentage If you do all four things now you can give your customers a realistic estimate of the products monthly payment And when you give them the option to choose the length of coverage and the deductible they can see in real time how the payment changes By doing this youve lifted the curtain on how all the pricing works which builds trust And when customers trust they buy more F I Im sure youre aware the industry has been reluctant to move any part of the F I process online Burgiss The goal here is not to replace the F I manager but to augment and extend the time the F I manager has to speak with the customer Today youve got 30 to 45 minutes to complete the process including all the regulatory items F I managers have to deal with So you dont have a lot of time to explain the product benefits to the consumer So lets say Im in there on a Saturday Its busy I say Yes and sign the deal sheet not the buyers order Then I say Im coming in on Tuesday to take delivery Great sir When youre at home why dont you review these options with your family Now youve got four days to allow that person to engage in the process which again builds trust educates the customer and makes the conversation in the dealership all that much smoother F I That all sounds great but you do realize not every F I manager is going to embrace that right Burgiss I believe theres a shift that will happen in F I which is that we have to price the product not the customer If you believe youve got to price the product the online experience starts to make a whole lot more sense If you dont believe it the regulators are going to make us get there F I But realize that a lot of F I managers dont even want their salespeople endorsing their products They want that first objection to happen in their office to make sure the benefits arent misrepresented Are you concerned you might create a situation in which consumers may decide to not buy any products before they even step inside the dealership Burgiss Go Google F I products What do you see F I Nothing positive Burgiss Right As we see the vehicle purchase move more online there are some players out there that want to go direct to consumers and bypass the dealership process entirely If you think that wont extend to F I products you have your head in the sand What I would love to see happen is for dealerships to embrace this When they do all of this becomes Google content In other words the dealerships become what people are seeing not the bad stuff F I So which F I product providers are behind this Burgiss American Financial Automotive Services was our first connection There are more but the other names I can mention right now are JM A and Wise F I F I The F I industry has been trying to update the F I experience with tools like the tablet menu How do those attempts play into F I Connect Burgiss The iPads are absolutely a component of this process and the first version of our iPad solution will be out later this year And as we talked about earlier were just now beginning to engage Dealertrack and Dealer com about what the product roadmap looks like Think about it at a high level Dealertrack has a heritage of transactions They fund loans and theyre really good at it They know the transaction process very well Autotrader has its heritage in consumer experience and engagement MakeMyDeal was born out of that heritage F I Powering F I Connect is F I Express Tell me about that relationship Burgiss Cox Automotive owns slightly more than 49 of the company and Im one of the board members So weve integrated into F I Express to facilitate product ratings So the way MakeMyDeal knows how much a dealer prices his or her F I products is we get it from F I Express which by the way is the same econtracting platform the dealer uses in the store And its connected to upwards of 80 providers So that solves the problem of How do I present products from multiple providers F I And F I Connect was rolled out with select providers in June correct Burgiss Yes and its in early testing right now And every two weeks we release additional features and functionality to increase consumer engagement F I Can you share some early results of that testing Burgiss We do have a handful of dealers that have some experience with F I Connect but we dont see consumers adding F I products to their deal structure online as the primary value and benefit to the dealer We expect the consumer to engage the content and to engage in the self penciling to learn about the product benefits and come up with a monthly payment for the products And those activities are happening but adding the product to their deal structure is so new to the consumer This is going to be a process of engaging consumers in the coming years not just over the next few months MakeMyDeal revealed that through consumer surveys of more than 1000 users of its online deal making tool and dealer communications platform shoppers rated their experience 40 better than their previous car buying experience in four key areas communicating with the dealer receiving quotes negotiating a deal and time spent at the dealership