The Mission
Christian Brothers Automotive is a faith-based automotive repair chain with over 270 locations across the United States. Since 1982, Christian Brothers Automotive has sought to change the way customers think about auto service by providing knowledgeable, honest, and genuine car repairs. Since that time, the organisation has assisted countless individuals and families with their auto service needs and gotten them back on the road with as little hassle as possible.
The Challenge
Because auto repair is a complex purchase, many consumers prefer to call their local service location to schedule an appointment. These calls are vital to Christian Brothers’ business — over 80% of its appointments are scheduled over the phone.
However, Christian Brothers Automotive had fragmented and delayed visibility into which of its marketing campaigns were driving the most, and highest valued phone leads — this made it difficult to optimise its media spend to drive the best possible ROI. The company also lacked visibility into what was happening on the phone calls it drove to its franchise locations. Christian Brothers needed to ensure that it was providing a seamless and consistent experience for every customer.
The Resolution
Optimising Media Spend to Drive More Revenue
The Christian Brothers Automotive corporate marketing team runs multi-channel campaigns to drive phone leads to its franchise locations. Prior to using Invoca, the team lacked the right attribution to determine which campaigns and search keywords were driving the most phone leads — and how much revenue those leads ultimately converted to. Without this data, the team had difficulties optimising its media budget to get the highest return.
With Invoca, Christian Brothers Automotive is able to attribute revenue from phone calls back to the marketing channel that drove them. This revenue matchback capability allowed Christian Brothers to double down on the campaigns generating the most revenue and cut spend on campaigns that weren’t impacting the bottom line.
With Invoca, we can attribute all of our revenue driven from phone calls back to the original source channel. We use that data to optimise our digital marketing campaigns. This helps us make the most of our marketing budget and it has significantly increased our ROI.
Kevin King, director of digital marketing at Christian Brothers Automotive
Connecting the Digital-to-Call Journey
In the past, Christian Brothers Automotive couldn’t connect the full digital-to-call journey — instead, they viewed them as siloed experiences, which sometimes created inconsistencies. With Invoca, the marketing team is able to unify the full customer journey, allowing them to understand exactly which website page or digital marketing campaign drove the phone call. This helps them provide seamless experiences that improve customer satisfaction.
For example, in the past, if someone called from an advertising promotion offering a discount, but forgot to mention that discount over the phone, they would have to pay full price. This created a poor experience for customers and some had to contest their bills after service was completed. Now, with Invoca, Christian Brothers can automatically apply a discount when customers call from a relevant promotion — even if they didn’t mention that discount over the phone. This creates a better experience that is more likely to build customer loyalty.
Ultimately, we want our customers to have the most seamless and frictionless buying experience possible. We want to exceed their expectations — and Invoca helps us do that.
Kevin King, director of digital marketing at Christian Brothers Automotive
Improving Coaching to Standardise the Call Experience
The core of the franchise model is consistency. If a franchise doesn’t maintain a consistent experience across each of its locations, it can lose credibility and customer loyalty will suffer. But with 270 different locations to manage, it was difficult for Christian Brothers to monitor the phone call experience at each location — and to make the right changes to standardise it.
Christian Brothers solved this problem with Invoca by setting up AI-powered signals that detect key moments in every phone conversation at all 270 locations. For example, the team set up signals that detect if each representative uses the company’s standard greeting when they answer the phone, if they initiate a request for an appointment, if they ask the caller if they have any questions, and if they close the call correctly. The team also uses Invoca signals to make sure that, when customers are having serious issues with their cars, the reps are correctly explaining the implications of these problems and the urgent action they require.
The company then uses Invoca to create location dashboards for each franchisee, so they can see the performance at the shop, what their close rates look like, how well their team is sticking to the right scripts, and more. They can then use this data to better assess their representatives’ strengths and weaknesses and coach them more effectively. Christian Brothers also sends a dashboard to the operations team, so it can manage the franchisees from a high level and ensure the phone call experience is standardised across locations.
With Invoca, we can quantify nearly every aspect of the phone call experience — we no longer have to rely on guesswork. It’s completely transformed our reporting. We can now centrally manage the customer experience at our 270 franchise locations. We can see exactly what changes our service advisors need to make to improve their close rates, and we can coach them with hard data.
Kevin King, director of digital marketing at Christian Brothers Automotive
The Results
- Double-Digit Increase in revenue percentage, store count, and car count growth each year since implementation
Invoca is constantly propelling us forward — the customer service has been amasing. Invoca’s experts are always helping us spur the kind of thinking that can take us to the next level. They have a deep understanding of our business — their recommendations aren’t generic, they’re specifically tailored to our industry and our needs. Their guidance has been extremely valuable for our company.
