Here at C It Now we're always delighted by a consumer's reaction to a live video presentation of a used car. The fact that they can view the car live from the comfort of their home or office with the help of the dealer salesperson is a great benefit. No wasted journeys, no hidden surprises, lots of detail inside and out; far more useful than the photographs we're all used to. It's no surprise that the C It Now service is yet to score less than 9 out of 10 on any exit questionnaire.
But it's not all been plain sailing. One of our dealers, Rybrook Jaguar in Warrington has been very smart solving some customer reaction. It appears that not everyone is always comfortable with the idea of a live video presentation service. So much so that the sales guys no longer use words like 'live', 'video' and 'presentation'; instead they focus on 'more information'. It seems that some buyers feel that accepting a presentation is a sign of increased commitment and is not the right signal to be giving off at that point.
By only making an offer of 'more information', the buyer feels more comfortable that this is still part of the fact finding mission and not a sign that they are ready to purchase.
The sales guys like it because it enables 5 minute conversations to develop into longer video based conversations; valuable time to build up some rapport with the buyer.
It also appears to be working as Rybrook's sales figures for September show a 42% conversion to sale.
At the end of the summer I went to visit some friends in Aarhus, Denmark with my three kids. It’s a great holiday for lots of reasons. The most important from my kids point of view, was the lack of queueing for rides at Djurs Sommerland, Denmark’s answer to Disneyland. Danish and German school holidays are well and truly over which means we can give Thors Hammer a good hammering.
I’m truly glad to get back to the car by the end of the day.
In this case we'd hired a Sixt hire car, a very pleasant Honda Civic. I hired it from Aarhus Airport booking it online when I’d arrived in Denmark the previous day. I have to say, the Sixt experience was far and away the best car hire experience I’ve ever had.
In fairness location did help as the airport is small and also empty when I turned up at midday to collect my car, so no queueing again. There was only one Sixt person to sort out the paperwork which was all done very quickly and efficiently. It was the way that he did it that was really good.
There was no mention of extra insurance; my driving licence was only needed for a moment and there was no discussion about the paper bit which was neatly filed back in the UK. Because I had purchased the car hire from a Danish IP address I was not offered unlimited mileage which he corrected once the contract was printed. He also upgraded my car; okay, probably because he didn’t have anything else, but it all added to my experience. He was a very personable guy who during the admin process talked about his school days in England and how much he’d enjoyed it.
By the end I felt like I was borrowing a car from him, not hiring from an anonymous car hire company.
The product was great and totally exceeded any expectation that had been created by a really good online booking process.
This had expectation levels similar to C It Now, our live video presentation tool. We consistently score at least 9 out of 10 on our exit questionnaire once car purchasers have had a live video demo.
What a nerdy subject to be writing about!
I'm actually doing this because here at C It Now we're interested in a 'common sense marketing' approach to business.
I recently upgraded my Mac’s OS to Snow Leopard. For you deprived folk still struggling with Vista and XP, Snow Leopard is a major upgrade for Apple. Unlike a major Windows upgrade, with significant compatability issues with basic functionality like printing, I’ve had no problems to report. Until last week, that is, when I tried to use my 3G dongle from BT which is part of my business broadband package (and the reason why I decided to use their over priced under powered service in the first place).
It doesn’t work. After 4 re-directed phone calls I was given the news that BT’s Access Point software does not support Snow Leopard and there are no intentions to do so.
Given that I’m in a 24 month contract, this is not good news.
I’m now going through a complaints procedure with BT and have been told to expect a call on Monday or Tuesday. Given the lack of support for Apple’s latest OS I believe my contract is now non and void; I want out.
What do you think my chances are? I can’t be the only person who has bumped into this problem, although I do accept that BT and Apple probably aren’t great bedfellows.
Will common sense marketing prevail or will BT look to the small print?
C It Now is a start-up with a great product - a live video presentation tool.
Like most start-ups we don't have enough time to do all the stuff that we need to do. Take a look at this blog for instance - starved of fresh interesting content, even though we have plenty that we'd like to share.
We are a UK company whose focus is the automotive sector. This is going well and we now have dealers using C It Now to sell Volvo, Honda, Jaguar, Audi, Peugeot, Alfa and Mercedes cars. Our first bike dealer comes online on Monday and we'll soon be adding Saab to our list of car dealers.
We are looking to increase sales to UK car dealers and explore other vertical markets. We need help.
If you're looking for real responsibility in a start-up organisation that is making sales and has masses of opportunity for personal development, we'd like to hear from you.
There are no preconditions here. We'd be delighted to hear from experienced, seasoned professionals, semi-retired as well as students/graduates who potentially have something to offer our business.
We're looking for a diverse range of skills from copywriting and digital marketing to telephone sales activity.
There are no salaried positions at this time. Remuneration is based on results and we pay expenses.
If this sounds interesting we'd like to hear from you. In the first instance send us a one pager explaining what you can offer to donna.barradale@zype.co.uk.
Part of what we do is record what C It Now customers think of our service. It's an absolute privilege to meet and talk with real customers who have as a result of C It Now, purchased a car.
Thanks to Steve Holleran at Holdcroft Honda, who again was responsible for creating this extraordinary experience for our buyer, Robert on this occasion.
Much as we'd like to brag on about how great our live video presentation technology is, it's only as good the salesperson who believes in it, and as a result offers it to potential customers like Robert.
We're looking forward to interviewing more customers who have experienced the power of C It
Now as part of the decision making process, but before we do that, we're going to talk to Steve to get his
side of the story.
I recently caught up with James Newbold who had purchased a Honda
CR-V from Holdcroft Honda. I was interested to talk as James had
purchased the car using C It Now. Steve (Holdcroft) offered James the
video presentation over the internet as the dealership is in Stoke and
James lives in Kent.
C It Now is a live one to one video
presentation tool that car dealers are using to present cars to their
customers from the comfort of their home or office.
From the
interview, it's clear that James was delighted with the whole
experience, so much so that he's since recounted it to his friends and
now one of them has also purchased a Honda from Holdcroft.
I
really enjoyed meeting James and it was great to hear a 'real' customer
talk so encouragingly about C It Now. We know that a live video
presentation can create a great customer experience but it's really
rewarding to have that confirmed.
The row over MPs' expenses has given us all a good laugh. Most of us are astounded at the audacity of some of the claims, but perhaps not surprised.
Greed, despite what Gordon Gekko said, has never been good. Defined by the Oxford Dictionary as "the intense and selfish desire for food wealth power", it is universally accepted as a very unattractive quality.
In the wake of the banking crisis and so many stories about huge bonuses, our "greed" antennae are even more finely tuned.
So I found myself asking so where does success stop and greed start? Back to Ask Oxford and they define success as "the accomplishment of an aim or purpose/the attainment of fame, wealth or social status"
So it seems that there's a fine line: It's OK to accomplish wealth but not OK to have intense and selfish desire for it. Tricky, as I'm sure many of us really have a desire (often intense) for success - I for one am definitely hoping for our new product C It Now to be successful having spent months developing it...! I guess we need to constantly check ourselves to make sure that the success that we desire does not come at too high a cost, where we are in danger of sacrificing our principles or forgetting to be grateful for what we have.
The world of business seems to be evolving to reflect this. Open book pricing policy is far more common. Small start ups like us are often working from home to keep overheads down, being quite up front about that and no one minds. I remember the time when you were nobody unless you had a fancy office, with your name above the door and companies were judged by their over the top, no expense spared parties where excess was the name of the game.
And maybe that's the word we need to keep in mind. Excess - more than is necessary - is greedy and as we have witnessed this week and over the last few months, greed is a definite career limiting quality...
The row over MPs expenses will be, in the long term, a good thing and has lessons for us all. In the main they do a good job, work long hours and are away from home a great deal. I, for one, will definitely be trudging out to vote at the next election.
Steve (the man in the photo) is quite obsessive; he watches what he eats, in between working out at the gym at least three times a week. In his spare time, Steve climbs challenging rock faces and probably watches a bit of telly too. He's also a very nice guy and sells cars for Honda Holdcroft.
Steve's also special for a very different reason. He's the first car salesman in the world to use C It Now regularly to show potential customers a live video presentation as part of the sales service offered at the dealership. This appeals to any customer who wants to purchase a Honda but lives more than 5 minutes away from Holdcroft in Stoke. And given that most people use the internet now to find a potential car to buy, Steve is kept fairly busy.
How does CIN work?
Holdcroft have some great deals so Steve regularly gets calls from other parts of the country. Customers are of course surprised and delighted when Steve is able to offer them a video on demand presentation of the car.
When a customer rings, Steve finds out what they're interested in. If
they have access to the internet and a few minutes, Steve offers them a live video presentation of the car. Whilst talking
to them on the phone he uses a video camera to broadcast a live presentation to the customer's PC (it's probably better described as narrowcasting). Customer's love it because they get to see what they want on the car, directing Steve and his camera.
Steve's happy too, as he gets to sell more cars to happy and satisfied customers.
Well no, not really!
This week a great article about C It Now came out in Autoexpress, written by the talented Mike Brewer of second hand car and TV fame. Only problem is Zype has become Zupe.
Turns out a sub-editor at Autoexpress needs a new prescription for their glasses.
Zupe is not even a hot German broth (Suppe) it's a musician from Pennsylvania.
I'll put a link to the article here, once we have permission.
One of our freelancers is based in the US and that doesn't bother us a bit. He's an expert at what he does and it's so easy to work with anyone, anywhere these days (and he's also particularly good at early mornings). But honestly, it seems the most difficult part about working with someone overseas is not working with them at all, but paying them.
I was particularly disappointed last week to discover, having made a special trip to the local HSBC bank (an hour out of my day, not very useful), that the woman who had promised me she didn't need a particular code (and who's fantastically frantic typing speed and obvious familiarity with the back button also made me extremely nervous) had actually in fact needed it very badly and the result being that the money we sent came bouncing back two days later. Bad enough, but no one called to tell us. Worse still, when I phoned the only-option central number to complain and try and get the payment sent through correctly, they said 1) still 6 days 2) another £25 charge as it was MY FAULT the numbers were incorrect (even though I'd gone in armed with it)!
Forget it, I said, I'll go elsewhere!! Paypal, I thought, got to be easy! I've paid for the odd thing on Paypal before, so everything's set up, great! Er, no unfortunately not. The annoying thing is, I don't even know why I couldn't get the payment through! I just got a ridiculously unhelpful error message "you have stumbled upon this page from another area". No I haven't, I just pressed CONTINUE!! I then spent 15 minutes trying to get through to a human on the end of the phone, no joy. What is the point? What I really needed was a nice friendly operator on the end of the phone who could have taken me to a URL, showed me a picture of my error message (preferably using our person2person service of course!) and said "is it this error message you're seeing? It is! Oh well that means..." Needless to say, am still ignoring the "phone handling opinion needed" Paypal email in my in tray.
So, two very disappointing customer experiences and 3 hours later (yes, really), I decided to google "wire money". Ignoring the obvious Western Union (why are their outlets in such weird places?), the next option was American Express FX. So, quickly called them, spoke to a nice lady who assured me it was only £10 a transaction and that she would get someone to call me back asap. Lo and behold a very nice man (Hi Marc) called me back to say he could get my money sent in a couple of days and not only that, he was in my area that afternoon and could pop in and show me how to use the ever-so-simple online service! What a relief - and how nice to see a person! I'm just keeping my fingers crossed for the news that the eagle has finally landed...