As a follow-up the Kelsey’s Marketplaces 2009 conference, my friend Peter Krasilovsky wrote “online leads for cars are broken.” I agree with Peter that auto shoppers will not complete a request for information form because they’ve been trained that the dealer will not follow-up. (The dealer in turn has been trained that the consumer web lead often has inaccurate and stale information). Supporting this argument, I have reviewed data indicating that voice leads (tracked phone calls) outnumber web leads about 9 to 1.
It’s interesting to compare this weakness in the “web lead” market to recent developments in voice applications. For example, Google’s relaunch GrandCentral (Google Voice), has a popular feature that uses voice recognition to transcribe voice mail to text. Google also leverages voice search in its Android, iPhone and now Blackberry mobile applications (you can say the search term using the mobile phone microphone for input.)
What do these developments have in common? Voice is a natural input and often superior to a text search. Occasionally when we need a specific part / size / brand at a local retailer or we are shopping for a service we call around to see if the part is in stock or if the service provider is available and does the type of work we need. Voice is a natural way to present this information (“Hi, I am looking for a (part) for a (thing) in size (xyz).
With voice recognition and transcription we can convert the input to text and search for the results. For example, we can search local retailers to satisfy the user’s request, and then present the request to the retailer as voice or text. Presenting the search query as a voice message in a phone call would be an efficient and quick way to deliver the lead to the merchant and satisfies the consumer (“press 1 if the thingy is in stock").
Is this where Google, and ergo the industry, is headed with voice input and voice recognition? It’s a compelling use case.
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3 comments:
9 to 1 voice over Internet/email. Amazing!
Surely, that ratio falls if the online portion gets fixed. But it suggests a great short term opportunity for you Rich.
Peter - the 9 to 1 data represented phone calls over web forms. I assume these were completed forms - I didn't see the raw data on the form side.
PS. I enjoyed your notes from NAA
In reference to the brilliant Peter Krasilovsky's comment that “online leads for cars are broken”: One of my largest clients over the last few years has been automotive and what I have observed is that online inventory searches are growing and are highly correlated to sales, but online quote requests (where auto shoppers complete a request for information form that identifies who they are along with contact information) are slowly but steadily declining, but not because they have been trained that the dealer will not follow-up as your wrote, but rather because the dealers will incessantly follow-up. It is true that some dealers continue to hold-on to the outdated notion that Internet leads should be serviced lastly, but the astute dealers have developed operations that the web lead is a hot lead. The provided information may be inaccurate perhaps, but as long as the contact information is correctly supplied that lead is an eager and informed shopper.
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