It is not unprecedented for a car dealership's manager and/or staff to effectively "game" a CRM application for the purposes of inflating the overall performance figures of their department. There are literally dozens of tricks that can be employed, and without proper oversight, all will go undetected.

Here are five examples:

1.) BDC Call center staff routinely review the incoming call reports so as to enter prior calls (that were never answered) into the CRM system as leads; falsely elevating their performance and covering for missing the calls.

2.) A new Internet manager routes all incoming leads to a separate, online CRM service, then instructs staff to manually copy the leads into the house CRM system – only if an appointment has been scheduled; boosting the appointment ratio of the department to very high levels.

3.) Departmental staff monitor floor scan data and enter the names, addresses and phone numbers of walk-in traffic into the CRM application as leads and kept-appointments; falsely elevating their performance.

4.) Call center staff, in an effort to circumvent the permanent timestamp (marking the time a lead was entered) create leads with fictitious names in the CRM system, and later return to update the false leads with actual customer data from sales occurring after the timestamp; falsely elevating their performance and giving the appearance of legitimacy.

5.) Call center staff create false leads with fictitious names in the CRM system, including actual phone numbers gleaned from the missed call report; later, tracking floor scans and matching phone numbers, the leads are updated with real customer information; falsely elevating their performance and giving the appearance of legitimacy.

With performance based compensation, the temptation to falsify performance is strong; and all that was required in each of the above-mentioned examples, to recognize the impropriety, was simple oversight. Technology made possible the misdeeds, but it also betrays such behavior; if understood and managed competently.

Of course, when exploits are discovered, modifications should be made to the house CRM application to eliminate future vulnerability.

My Last Internet Manager Stole My Database:

An Internet manager was fired from a dealer group, and shortly after having departed the premises decided to log in to his former employer's online CRM system and send the dealer's entire database his contact information at his new job as Internet manager at a competing dealership. The Lesson here is to quickly change the passwords of the online CRM service after terminating an employee with prior access. Which means that contact must be made with the service by management to have the password changed; or that management must possess the password prior to termination.

Better still, choose an in-house CRM system and your database will be much more secure.

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Internet / BDC reference