[Webinar Transcript from March 2022]

Ben:

Hey everyone. My name's Ben. I'm on the marketing team here at Kenect. We really appreciate you joining us on this webinar. Today, we're going to talk about how to generate more revenue as we head into Q2. We know that we've dealt with some of that in the first part of the year, and we really want to try to get you off to a better start as we get into the second quarter. First off, we're going to talk about who is Kenect for about five minutes, then get into the meat of the webinar should be about 20 minutes altogether. I don't want to take up too much of your time. If you have any questions, please feel free to type them in into questions tab over on the side panel and I'll get to them as we get through this webinar, or for sure at the end, when there's more time. So with that, let's get started here.

Who is Kenect?

First off, who is Kenect. We're based in the Silicon slopes of Utah. That's just outside Salt Lake City. We're a text messaging platform for dealers throughout North America. And we're founded by dealers and built for dealers like you. So we help you communicate more efficiently, generate new leads, collect payments via text message, and drive online reviews. We're the 25th fastest growing software company in America. And we've seen a lot of growth over 2021 and into 2022 as more companies are realizing the benefits of business texting. And why did we choose business texting? Because your customers prefer it. 89% of consumers would prefer to interact with businesses via text message rather than a phone call. And 98% of all text messages are open with 95% of those read within three minutes. It's really quick and easy to get a hold of customers, especially with important issues such as inventory or staffing.

You know, you probably have your phone right there on your desk waiting for a text message. And if it pops up, you're going to read it. So that just shows you how you are using it, how we're all using it. That's just how quick people are responding and how quick people read these text message. 96% of consumers find phone calls to be disruptive. And 78% of US consumers say receiving a text message is the fastest way to reach them for important service updates and purchases. So just one of the dealers that uses us says we used to call customers, but 75% of the time they wouldn't answer. So now we text them with Kenect and they immediately text us back.

So what does it look like when somebody does actually text into you? Well, this is the platform. Similar layout to like an email where you can see who's texted in, what their message is about, what time, and where the conversation left off. You can also assign people to it. So you can have your employees, whoever you decide you want to have access to this, you can assign them to each customer and then you can have them respond and it'll show what their response is. And anyone can read what the conversation. If they're gone, you can also respond to them through this platform also. All of this is done through your existing business line. So we hook up your existing business line and we enable the texting through your carrier. You don't have to deal with that. We're just adding this tool onto an already existing line. People can still call you if they need to. And so this is just done so that it's ease of getting the customer information and also them getting a hold of you easier because you don't have to give out your personal cell number. And there's not multiple numbers that they need to remember. They can just text into this main line and then they're going to get an answer from you because you have somebody assigned to them or anybody who's reading this platform can also see it and respond.

Similar to the computer app, this is the mobile app, and you can see same thing, same layout, like an email. But in this one, you can also send photos, use your camera to do video chats, which is also very helpful in your service bay especially when you're trying to explain things to customers. You can just show them. You know, start a video chat and show them what you're working on. It's all free in the app store. And it's really easy and convenient, especially for your employees who are moving around a lot, and they can really respond to a customer from anywhere.

Another tool and feature that we just added that we wanted to show you was broadcast messaging. This is something that dealers have been asking for over the pandemic, because we know that they want to message a lot of people all at once. So it's a way to conveniently send a message to a subset of customers by creating groups within your contact lists. You can schedule a message or send one right away, easily identify and reply to broadcast messages right inside that inbox, and then quickly filter out broadcast messages based on schedule or sent. So how does it work? You just click on the button over there on the side. You click add and then you start your own message here. You title it whatever you want to title it. So you can recognize it when somebody texts in and response to it.

The group, the subset of contacts that you wanted to add to it, however many you wanted to add to that group, you can put in there and then the message itself, whichever you want to send to this group and then send. And then it'll review. It'll show you how many people it's going to send to, how many people it hasn't sent to in your contacts list, and what that message is going to look like. Hit approve. And then it sends out to the customer. And then the customer can decide if they wanted to click that link. This is about winterization, of course, but you can do it about anything. You can do it about sales. You can do it about hours, if your hours are changing, especially with staffing issues. That becomes an issue for customers who are trying to come in to get something worked on. You can send it out to 10 people, or you could send it out to a hundred people to say don't come in today early because we're not going to be open until eight or something like that. So it's really easy for you to send that out. You don't have to do it individually. You don't have to send out a hundred messages back to back to back. It's just one send all at once to a hundred people. So really convenient and easy way to get information out to customers.

Top eight ways dealers are using Kenect: scheduling appointments, setting automated reminders, sending quick information, sending targeted warranty reminders, which we just kind of talked about, to schedule maintenance notices, collect payments via text message, video chat with customers, attach and send photos, videos, and invoices, generate online and reviews on Google and Facebook and capture more leads from Facebook, Instagram, and your website.

Increasing Revenue in Q2

We wanted to talk about ways to improve revenue in the second quarter, especially as we're dealing with a couple of big issues. One of them in particular is supply chain issues. We wanted to get through some of these issues here and then get into some of the solutions. So supply chain issues, inventory struggles, container ships not being off loaded fast enough causing a backlog in supply chain. Pandemic has made supply and demand volatile. We know that this is something we've dealt with over the last six months. It happened pretty much in the summer of 2021 when things started to open back up, and then we saw businesses say, “oh my gosh, there's demand and we need to improve our inventory,” and ordered a bunch of stuff. So supply chain was having a tough time keeping up because all those ships were coming in all at once and the ports were being overloaded. Now we're starting to see the ports sort of ease up. We are getting things out there, but the problem now is labor shortages, triggering factory shutdowns. Not enough workers to meet demand. And this is from supply chain analyst, Sea Intelligence, “as the current log jam has no precedent. But in past experience would suggest it will take eight to nine months for this to recover.” So what that means is you're probably going to deal with it to the end of 2022, maybe a little bit into 2023. So you want to make sure that you are keeping on top of the making sure that you're using what's available to you, and you're creating plans to help avoid backlog in your own service bay or your own supply network.

It's more important than ever to ensure service and parts are running smoothly. Keep track of what's coming in. This is a way for you to help keep the revenue flowing. Because if you are keeping of what's coming in, you can relay that to the customer. You can also tell them, “hey, that part's not in, not going to be in for another week, so no need to come in today.” Or “we know you scheduled to come in today, but we probably have to delay that a little bit and we'll let you know when it comes in.” It can also help you, if you're setting up a system to ensure speed and accuracy between employees and customers so your employees know exactly what to tell customers. And then also they can relay this message to them. Especially with a texting platform it's easy for them to just send out a message and say, “here's the updates from us.” You're keeping revenue flowing. You're not actually having to have people come in, have a log jam in your service bay, or come in for a piece of equipment they wanted to buy that really isn't there. That's time that they spent coming in that they don't want to do. Because the part isn't there. So they have to come back again and maybe they wouldn't come back. This is a way for you to try to keep them up to date making sure that they have the latest information, make sure that you have the latest information and that you're following what's going on in the supply chain.

Text, don't call. Your customers expect it. Make sure you are using that texting platform because over the pandemic, customers have really gravitated towards texting. It's mostly because of simplicity and convenience. We've seen a 55% increase in text messages per dealer year over year. Dealers are now completing entire transactions via text. That's sales and service and all of it's new. So we saw the trends start to head up north before the pandemic. And then as soon as the pandemic hit, it really skyrocketed and it really hasn't slowed down.

This is a way to save time and money in your service bay and for your employees. So this is also increasing your revenue because you're cutting the time they have to waste on communicating with customers. If dealers are now completing entire transactions, that's from lead to text to pay when they're at the end, that's new, and all of that is saving money for dealers because they're taking that time that would've been used to communicate with phone tag or leaving voicemails or anything like that, and they're putting it back into other areas that they need help with. Right? So your workers are being used elsewhere, and you're not tying them up on certain things like communication because you have a system in place that works.

And then text messages with images, this is also where you can help increase your revenue. 80% increase in MMS message per dealer year over year. And when pictures are sent back and forth, it usually indicates a service upsell or a serious sales engagement. So if you had somebody come in and you wanted to order a part for them, and you said, “yep, we'll order this. It's a little cheaper, but it'll take four weeks to get here.” They say great. But what happens if a week from now you get the same part, a little more expensive, but it's in there now. You can put it in the piece of equipment right there. Then you text the customer. You show them what it is and you tell them what's going on. You say, “hey, it's a little more expensive, but I can put it in right now.” Chances are the customer's going to say yes. And the reason is because they know that everybody is dealing with supply issues and cheap or expensive, doesn't matter. It's taking parts a while to get to where they need to be. We're seeing that backlog and they're seeing that backlog. So if they have the opportunity to get their equipment fixed fast, they're going to do it. They're going to make sure that they have, if they have the tools and the means to actually get that done, they're going to say yes. And they don't really care about the cost. It's all about what they're looking for in simplicity and convenience of what the part is and what they need in the moment so that's where the upsell can help. And that's where the revenue can be increased.

Some other keys here, I want to make sure you're being proactive. And what I mean is you're making sure that you are engaging your customers, even customers that you haven't talked to in a while, maybe you want to text them, people who've bought from you in the last three to four years. And what that means is you don't have to text them all at once. Right? You don't have to text everybody that you've bought from in the last three to four or years all at once, but you space it out. Maybe you say, “hey, we noticed you guys haven't come in for service in a little while, wondering if you needed something updated,” that kind of thing. Or maybe you need to upgrade your equipment and get something new. You know, you could send them a text or you can send a group of people a text from the people that have bought even the last three or four years.

Be transparent about how long things take. You don't want to lie, of course, or omit things because then customers kind of know that's happening because they realize that most dealers are dealing with staffing issues and they're dealing with inventory issues. It's not a mystery. You're not the only one that's dealing with this and customer have seen it. So if you're transparent about how long things take and what's going on, that's something that the customer says, okay, they're being truthful with me. And they really do care about my business. And they really do care about what I think. So you're being transparent. You're making them feel like they're part of the team, like they're in it with you. Also don't wait for them to reach out. That's for sales and service. So like, if the part comes in early, your service department should be on top of it telling that customer, “hey, we got your part in. Come on in. We're ready for you.” Or for sales, maybe you ordered something and you said it's going to take six weeks and it showed up four weeks. So you will want to make sure you're telling customers when things are happening, keeping them up to date. Don't wait for them to ask you, hey, where's that part? You know? Has it come in yet? You want to give them updates maybe weekly and with text that's easy to do because all you do is type in a sentence or two, really easy, couple seconds, and you're sending it out. Over communicate. Make sure you are giving the customer more information than you think they need. There's no disadvantage to that. You know, just keep them in the loop. Make sure that they're part of it and make sure that they have all the information that you have so that there's no mystery between the two of you. You're being transparent. There's no guessing and that's the key here. You want to make sure that the customer knows that you care, and you want their business and you're willing to give them any information that you have.

Using Text-To-Pay in Your Business

Remote forms of payment. This is another way to increase revenue. And we can go through the list here in just a second, but it's gained momentum over the pandemic really hasn't stopped. Customer convenience via contactless interaction. Cards aren't going away, but we'll shift to remote forms of payment. And what this all boils down to is simplicity and convenience. Consumers say they would prefer to continue to shop online or on smartphones for home delivery freeing time up for people and activities more important to them, such as family, friends, work, physical wellbeing, leisure, or entertainment. So this is all because we've seen this over the pandemic. I'm sure you've seen it too, especially with other businesses, but the customers, they know. They know this is happening. They've seen it. They're kind of demanding it of businesses now.

If you don't have a text-to-pay feature or remote payment feature, you want to make sure that you're adding it or at least thinking about it because customers are expecting it. I'm not going to say that they won't come to your business if you don't have it, but it's really simple to add. And it's just another tool for you to allow the customer to pay. It's just another easy way for them to get payments to you.

So why use text-to-pay? I don't want to go through all of these, but I do want to hit on just a couple. It allows for after-hours pickups and remote drop offs by collecting pre-payments. So this is key when it comes to your service bay. You want to keep revenue flowing. Right? You want to keep things in and out that service bay. If you're allowing for after-hours pickups or customers to prepay for things, then that means that you can text them an hour out and say we're an hour away from being done on your piece of equipment. Say: “here's the text to pay link. Go ahead and pay for it and I'll meet you outside with the equipment,” and off you go. You know, easy. They don't have to come into the service bay. They don't have to wait around. You don't have to a wait around for them to pay. So you're keeping them up to date. You're keeping things moving and all of those texts take a couple seconds. You're just keeping things flowing just by taking a couple seconds out of your day to say, okay, come on and pick this up. And also getting paid faster and reducing accounts receivable.

This is where it comes to cutting down on staffing issues, which a lot of people have experienced over the last year. But getting paid faster and reducing accounts receivable, that means your employees don't have to deal with customer billing. That's less time they have to deal with on the phone or taking down numbers of credit cards, because that takes time. And it all adds up, you know, minutes here, minutes there, days here maybe. It takes a lot of time. So if you are having the customer fill that information out themselves, that's cutting down on the time your employees have to spend on accounts receivable.

We wanted to also show you the text-to-pay growth here, four times year over year growth per location. Some dealers are actually running 80% of service and parts payments through text to pay, and like I told you just a little bit earlier, service bays are using these as a way to keep things flowing. If you have prepayments that people are paying ahead of time, and then you're just meeting them outside, that's keeping things in and out of your service bay. No problem. You're in and out. You're flowing. You're having more people come into the service bay and you're keeping that revenue moving. Simplicity and convenience, that's what the name of the game. That's where custom customers want to be. That's easy for the customer and easy for you because you are cutting the time you have to waste on all these billing things and you're allowing the customer to fill it out themselves.

So what does that look like? You click the icon down at the bottom here. This is through the texting app that we showed you and you click the little icon. Enter the amount, the description of what it is, and then your customer completes the transaction. They fill out the name on the card, the card number, all the pertinent information. And then at the top here, you see this logo, this can be custom to whatever logo you want, your logo, whatever it looks like to you. And you can tell the customer, even send them a text beforehand and say we're going to send you this text to pay link. You'll know it's from us because you'll see a logo at the top. That'll increase trust. That'll make the customer feel good about what they're doing. And they're filling out their information and feel more confident in sending this to you. And like I said, customers are kind of expecting this. So it's not going to be a huge ask from customers. In fact, you probably see a little uptick in these, even from people who are calling in their payments. Now you might see an uptick in people that want to use text to pay because it's that simple. You're just typing in your credit card information and you're sending it off and then it's paid so making sure you're adding this because customers are expecting it.

Another point I wanted to impress upon you is improving communication. Dealers sometimes struggle setting communication boundaries. Some give out personal cell number to customers, and that's not what we want. Stop giving out your personal cell number. Stop taking customer calls after hours and balance responsiveness with boundaries. This is increasing revenue because you're actually putting a platform in place where you don't have to use your personal cell number. The Kenect platform is used through your existing business line and anybody who you want to have on that platform from your employees, from your business can use it. That's what you want. That's where you want to have all of these texts coming in. You don't want to have to have somebody text you while you're in the middle of dinner or maybe in the middle of the night where you can't respond right away. If they're texting into that one platform and you can't respond, like we showed you, somebody can respond for you and put it through that existing business line. It's all coming through that same number. They answer the customer's text or question, and that's easy for the customer to get a response.

You can also set up an automated response so anytime a customer has a question way after hours like midnight or something, and nobody's there to answer to respond or send a message back to them, then you can actually have that automated message say, “hey, we're not in the office right now, but we will be at 5:00 AM and we'll be able to respond to you then. Thank you for your text,” something like that. It shows the customer you're giving a response and it also shows them you're monitoring their texts. And it also gives them a response in some form or fashion, doesn't leave the message just hanging out there for hours.

This is typical leads, but it works for text messages as well, like I just talked about. A typical of lead will wait over an hour to be responded to. That's on average. But there's a large variability between after-hours response times. And that is three and a half hours a lead will typically wait to be responded to in after hours. What that means is if you have a texting platform in place, you're setting up an automated text or you have somebody monitoring these texts at certain times, you can set up employees and say, you're monitoring it from 10:00 PM to midnight or you're monitoring it from 6:00 PM to 10, something like that. Or you can just say we'll set up the automated text as soon as at the last person leaves and then we'll get back to them in the morning when somebody comes in. That way somebody's getting a text back or response back every single time. And what that means is this response time is down to zero. So you are going to show the customer that you're monitoring this. You're going to show the customer that you really do care about their lead that's coming in or their question that's coming in and you're going to respond to them when you come back.

Increasing revenue in your service department, like we just talked about setting expectations about communications with employees and customers, making sure they know what you're dealing with and what employees can talk to customers about. Be transparent. Make sure that you're telling them as much as you can because the more transparent you are, the more trust they have with you. Try developing solution like standardizing workloads. Don't get left behind. Keep track of what's going on. Make sure you're monitoring the supply chain, monitoring staffing issues, monitoring what customers are looking for. I know that's sometimes difficult, but it's easy to just maybe ask a customer saying we just added this feature. Maybe you ask them about business texting. Have you used this before? What do you think of it? And you might be surprised about the answer. My guess is that a lot of them have used business texting already and have used text to pay. This is really something that we have seen over the pandemic grow, and it really isn't going away. It's not a flash in the pan type of thing. It's something that's here to stick around.

Automate certain tasks. Like we talked about, especially with leads, you can set up automated responses for customers and then text versus call. Do not call anymore. You got to text. It saves you time. Make sure the at you're meeting customers where they want to be. Texting is where they want to be.

Six benefits of texting, generating more leads via website widget that we can add to your website. You can generate dozens of five star reviews, standing out online and selling more units. You can also use video chat, which we showed you. Collecting deposits of payments from sales and service customers via text message. Texting from your existing business line instead of your personal cell phones. Save time and sell more by sending photos, videos, and surveys.

So with that, if you have any questions, please feel free to text us in. We can also give you a free demo. You can call if you need to. And we'll show you exactly how this platform works for your business, some of the tools that might help you, some of the features that you might want to add to make sure that it looks good for your business and make sure that it works for you. So don't hesitate. If you have any questions, please feel free to text us and reach out to us. We're ready to answer anything you may have. And with that, I don't want to take up too much more of your time. So thank you very much for joining us today and have a great rest of your week.

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