Recently, the CBT Automotive Network was on-location at NADA 2020 in sunny Las Vegas where host Jim Fitzpatrick spoke with Anthony Giagnacovo, CEO of CallRevu.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Jim Fitzpatrick: For the few dealers that are not as familiar with CallRevu, tell us what you guys do for dealers.
Anthony Giagnacovo: We’ve been around for over 10 years now. We were built by dealers for dealers with dealer people, so we are pure automotive players. What we do is really the call analytics or what people would consider to be call tracking and call monitoring, now known as more call intelligence.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Okay.
Anthony Giagnacovo: So we provide all of the insights that happen when the phone rings. As one of our customers said to me once, and I promised that I’d use it and he allows me to, “If the phones aren’t ringing, your door’s not swinging.”
Jim Fitzpatrick: That’s right. That’s exactly right.
Anthony Giagnacovo: So we are really the core of making that door swing.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Yeah, for sure. If a dealership’s got a BDC center, they need a CallRevu as well, right?
Anthony Giagnacovo: Absolutely.
Jim Fitzpatrick: So for the dealers that say, “Oh, I got a BDC center and we monitor calls or whatever.” But that’s just one part of it, right?
Anthony Giagnacovo: Correct. You’ve got to remember, it’s all about the calls. A couple things happen. First of all, dealers spend a tremendous amount of money on the advertising part of it.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Oh, yeah. That’s for sure.
Anthony Giagnacovo: So there’s a lot going on out there, and then what happens is 67% of all leads come through your phones.
Jim Fitzpatrick: That’s right.
Anthony Giagnacovo: That’s a given thing nowadays. So what happens if they’re not connecting, for whatever reason, you are losing money. It doesn’t matter how many more-
Jim Fitzpatrick: I agree.
Anthony Giagnacovo: … calls you get, but if you’re not connecting, you’re not going to happen.
Jim Fitzpatrick: That’s right.
Anthony Giagnac…: So we do in the beginning is we understand how to connect those calls and also understand what calls are not being connected, how to correct it.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Wow.
Anthony Giagnacovo: That’s because we’re automotive centric. We understand what that means. How do we correct that? How do we enable you, Mr. Dealer, to correct that immediately so you don’t lose that opportunity? Because if it’s not connecting, you know where they’re going.
Jim Fitzpatrick: That’s right.
Anthony Giagnacovo: Not your dealership; they’re going somewhere else.
Jim Fitzpatrick: That’s exactly right. Everybody does it from their cell phone now.
Anthony Giagnacovo: Absolutely.
Jim Fitzpatrick: They’ll shop online. That’s what they’re doing in coffee shops, is they’re … And then they make the phone call. They want to talk to somebody about a specific vehicle. To your point, if they don’t get somebody, and they don’t connect, and that person isn’t a happy sales person’s going to take care of them or a BDC person, that’s another issue. But you guys come in to say, “No, we’re going to monitor the number of calls that come into the dealership and then tell you, Mr. Dealer, what happened to those calls.”
Anthony Giagnacovo: Exactly.
Jim Fitzpatrick: And how exactly they were handled, right?
Anthony Giagnacovo: Yeah, and take it one more level, because we’re not only figuring out how many calls are coming through, but how many calls are you not getting? How many calls are getting lost? What’s happening in that process? Let me help you increase that productivity, because they’re, we look at how to increase productivity. There’s two things you can do: efficiency and effectiveness.
Jim Fitzpatrick: That’s right.
Anthony Giagnacovo: So efficiency, it’s all around time.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Right.
Anthony Giagnacovo: So you think about it, we’re fully integrated with all the different CRMs.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Yep.
Anthony Giagnacovo: So your sales guy doesn’t have to worry about pushing that in there. We’re doing it for them. Increase that efficiency, and the effectiveness is now making sure that you’re getting the right calls, the right information, and then teaching you on how to answer those calls properly so you get that guy to come in, that person to come in and actually buy a car from you.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Yeah, for sure. What separates you guys from some of the other players in this space?
Anthony Giagnacovo: That’s a really good question.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Why CallRevu? For the dealers that are watching, why should I give them a call and speak to Anthony about this?
Anthony Giagnacovo: Well, the first thing is because we are full automotive centric. We don’t do anything else, so every dollar you invest in me is reinvested back in your business.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Right. There are some other players that you’re probably referring to, where they do a multitude of different industries.
Anthony Giagnacovo: Absolutely.
Jim Fitzpatrick: That’s a different deal, isn’t it?
Anthony Giagnacovo: Correct.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Yeah.
Anthony Giagnacovo: And it is because we talk about AI a lot. Artificial intelligence is something we’ve been working with for the last three, four years now, and to master it, it can’t just be because I will it. There’s got to be a lot more behind it, and we have hundreds of millions of phone calls that we’ve actually listened to, recorded-
Jim Fitzpatrick: Wow, that’s pretty cool.
Anthony Giagnacovo: … and translated into text with our own human transcriptions, which now gives us data that allows us to really build a true automotive AI solution.
Jim Fitzpatrick: That’s huge.
Anthony Giagnacovo: It is. When your automotive centric, you are automotive specific.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Yeah, yeah, and because you guys are car guys, you know exactly what that dealer’s looking for-
Anthony Giagnacovo: Absolutely.
Jim Fitzpatrick: … in the phone calls, right?
AAnthony Giagnacovo: Yes.
Jim Fitzpatrick: I mean, that’s paramount, because if you just go in and go, “Hey, here are the calls, and this is what they sounded like. Here, go do what you want with this data.” But you guys do more than that. You go the extra step and say, “Here’s the problem. Now we’re going to also help you fix the problem.” Right?
Anthony Giagnacovo: I couldn’t have said it better, Jim. You’re absolutely right. So we’re actually addressing and identifying the problem, and then you can drill down to understand what needs to be fixed. Then go one layer lower, how to fix it.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Right, right.
Anthony Giagnacovo: So we’re high touch. We really focus heavily on helping our customers be successful. We have what we call the rapid response team that listens and monitors and calls you when we know. We prepare in advance. We say, “We’re anticipating a problem here, Mr. Dealer. Let me tell you what you need to do to fix it.”
Jim Fitzpatrick: Are you serious?
Anthony Giagnacovo: Yes we do.
Jim Fitzpatrick: That’s pretty cool.
Anthony Giagnacovo: And that’s AI.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Wow.
Anthony Giagnacovo: That’s part AI, part human.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Wow.
Anthony Giagnacovo: You got to have that interaction. That’s exactly very cool.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Can you detect whether or not a customer is upset when they call?
Anthony Giagnacovo: Love it. Yes. We’ve got a whole aspect of this where we do, we capture the sentiment and the emotion.
Jim Fitzpatrick: That is so cool!
Anthony Giagnacovo: Yeah.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Wow.
Anthony Giagnacovo: Then, what you’re actually able to do is pick up the gender as well. That starts to help coach people on how to handle certain type of calls and people and so on.
Jim Fitzpatrick: That’s huge. That’s huge.
Anthony Giagnacovo: It is.
Jim Fitzpatrick: This is a whole new ball game in CallRevu. I mean, the things you just mentioned, they’ve got to be relatively new, right? I mean, they’re so high tech that-
Anthony Giagnacovo: They are. I must say, we have a phenomenal team. In the last year and a half, we’ve been investing heavily in R&D, and now we’ve been able to roll it out. But we’re not rolling it out just because we want to roll it out. We’re rolling it out because this is what we’re working with our customers.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Right.
Anthony Giagnacovo: So it’s a hand-hand thing. I want to use an example, and this is a, it’s a testimonial that we’ve got on the web. The Germain Group had done work with us, and they said, so [Marcelo 00:05:42], one of the general managers of one of the stores, said that because of CallRevu and our partner, Marcom, we were able to increase his sales in the month of November, year-over-year, by 40 cars.
Jim Fitzpatrick: 40 cars.
Anthony Giagnacovo: He sold 40 more cars, and he attributed it to us.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Geez.
Anthony Giagnacovo: And that’s amazing.
Jim Fitzpatrick: That’s incredible.
Anthony Giagnacovo: A lot of people would say, “I increased the amount of calls-
Jim Fitzpatrick: You just added probably another $120,000 to the bottom line.
Anthony Giagnacovo: There you go. You’ve done the whole math.
Jim Fitzpatrick: That’s incredible.
Anthony Giagnacovo: Yes.
Jim Fitzpatrick: And your fee isn’t that much. I spoke to-
Anthony Giagnacovo: Absolutely.
Jim Fitzpatrick: … one of your clients that, in anticipation of this interview as I often do, to say, “Hey, what’s the real deal?” And they were like, “The CallRevu’s a no brainer.” I mean, it was really something that came in. We looked at it. One guy that I spoke to at one of your dealerships said, “We were a little skeptical at first. We were like, ‘Is it really this good?’ Six months later, we can’t live without it.”
Anthony Giagnacovo: Right.
Jim Fitzpatrick: So that, I think that’s a testament to the job that you guys are doing. When I was a dealer, and this is going back 15 years, but the call companies would come in and they’d say, “Hey, we recorded some of the calls that came into the dealership.” They didn’t have the AI that you guys have, and they would play the calls. They’d say, “Let’s start by playing the calls.”
Jim Fitzpatrick: I never got to the third call. I’d say, “Please shut it off. I can’t do this.” I spent $700 a car to get the person to call, and this is how we’re handling the calls. Right?
Anthony Giagnacovo: Well Jim, I love to tell the story of the way CallRevu got started. Chip King, who was a dealer principal.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Yep, I know Chip. Great guy.
Anthony Giagnacovo: You know Chip. Chip was about the fire his agency, his ad agency. He says, “You know what? You guys aren’t driving me any business and all that.”
Anthony Giagnacovo: And David Boice said to him, he goes, “Wait a minute. You know what? I think you’re wrong. You should not be firing us. You know what I’ll do? I’ll actually do something for free and if I’m wrong, at the end of the month, you don’t pay me.”
Jim Fitzpatrick: Wow.
Anthony Giagnacovo: And he actually recorded the calls, listened to calls, and Chip, on the third call, he said the same thing. “Stop that. I want that product, because you’re right. The problem isn’t the agency. The problem is our people.”
Jim Fitzpatrick: That’s right.
Anthony Giagnacovo: We need to be able to train them and help them and elevate them. That’s important. For me, from CallRevu’s perspective, what I call real important is a couple things. Uptime, we are 99.9% uptime. I mean, we’ve invested so much in our infrastructure.
Jim Fitzpatrick: What do you mean uptime? What does that mean?
Anthony Giagnacovo: It means your software’s always working, 99.9% of the time.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Okay, that’s strong.
Anthony Giagnacovo: That is really strong. Go back to what I said before, if the phone’s not ringing, the doors aren’t swinging.
Jim Fitzpatrick: The doors aren’t swinging. That’s right.
Anthony Giagnacovo: Right? If your system’s not working and it’s down, what do you do?
Jim Fitzpatrick: That’s right.
Anthony Giagnacovo: You’ve paid me for that. You pay me to make sure it’s up. So we’re real proud to say we’re 99.9% uptime. Because of the investment we’ve made on infrastructure, we’re top of the grade on security on all of that. We’ve done all of that, so that’s a great thing.
Jim Fitzpatrick: That’s fantastic. I think that the difference is that built by dealers for dealers is something, don’t underestimate that. If you’re a dealer that’s watching us have this conversation right now, know that these guys walk the walk. They know exactly what you all are going through every day with you want to pull your hair out of your head as to how calls are being handled.
Anthony Giagnacovo: Absolutely.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Right? In the dealership. As one guy said to me, he said, “At first I said, ‘I’m not going to do anything like CallRevu or any of these call trackings. That’s what I train my sales people for and my BDC.'” He goes, “Boy, did I get an eye-opener. I mean, I’m never leaving it to my own staff again.”
Anthony Giagnacovo: Well, I compare it to a gym membership, right?
Jim Fitzpatrick: Yeah.
Anthony Giagnacovo: So I get myself a gym membership. Does that mean I’m going to become a lot better?
Jim Fitzpatrick: No, it doesn’t.
Anthony Giagnacovo: No, it does not. So you got to go through-
Jim Fitzpatrick: Hence the extra 10 pounds, right? That’s exactly right.
Anthony Giagnacovo: That’s so true.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Wow, that’s fantastic. Anthony, I want to thank you so much for joining us here on CBT News.
Anthony Giagnacovo: Thank you, Jim.
Jim Fitzpatrick: I’d love to bring you back into the studio too, after NADA, and talk more about these issues because it’s a very hot issue, as you know, with all dealers that are out there-
Anthony Giagnacovo: Absolutely.
Jim Fitzpatrick: … going, “We’re spending a gazillion dollars. How is that phone call being handled?” A lot of dealers have their head in the sand like an ostrich over this topic.
Anthony Giagnacovo: Not only the dealers. You go down in the OEMs right now, and they’re all concerned about what’s happening in the future.
Jim Fitzpatrick: I know. That’s right.
Anthony Giagnacovo: And I spent some time with some CEOs of some large dealer groups, or dealerships, and they’ve said the same thing. “We got to control our phones. We got … ”
Jim Fitzpatrick: That’s right.
Anthony Giagnacovo: Because that’s the beginning of the customer journey.
Jim Fitzpatrick: That’s exactly right and the customer experience. So when somebody talks about the customer experience with that particular brand-
Anthony Giagnacovo: Right on.
Jim Fitzpatrick: … it actually starts right with that phone call.
Anthony Giagnacovo: Absolutely. Jim.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Thank you so much.
Anthony Giagnacovo: Thank you.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Yeah.
