Manager Forum

I have been wondering why occasionally my CRM sent are a little inaccurate and today shed some light on this. I assumed that the mileage figures were based off all the history of the vehicle. Meaning if it has been in 20 times then off the avg of that. But it is not its only the last 2 times in which seems unusual and would explain the inaccuracies. Just thought I'd let everyone know.

I'll admit I didn't understand this at first, but the methodology makes sense. After speaking with my agent Alex Susral, he shed some light on this. By taking only the last two mileages, the program can respond to a recent change in vehicle usage much quicker than it can with using all the histories. In fact, a long time customer with many many invoices may never react properly to a recent change, which means repeated inaccurate contacts. That weakens the value of the product. They call it 'Velocity Calculation'. If you have only one history, it uses the standard 33 miles per day factor. If a customer goes to the site and enters their own vehicle in. there's a field for them to enter this data and they can start getting reminders without any actual SH on your system.

Alex said that if anyone wants a more detailed explanation, they can call him directly.

All this is because vehicle usage can vary alot, but programs are rigid.

Hi Brian and Ric!

There is a process that is done to calculate a given customer's usage. That current process is contingent upon other factors...the two most recent RO's is just one component of this whole process. It's an oversimplification to say that we only look at the last 2 RO's as there are many things going on within the program that are all handled case by case. As Ric stated the database is a very fluid environment with information that is constantly in motion day in and day out as RO's are created. Not every customer is the same...not every customer will have extended periods of illness, customer driving habits change, etc. So the process is designed to handle a wide spectrum of information using the most relevant data. By that I mean...RO's from 7 years ago when I worked 40 miles away are not relevant to my current situation. This issue is best handled on a question by question basis where one of us support reps can look into your specific mileage issue and address anything that is specific to that situation. Anomalies could come from a number of different data sources.

If anyone has any further questions or would like an explanation on any mileage anomalies the CRM support team would be happy to discuss them at any time.

I am by no stretch of the imagination the "authority" on this process nor did I program any of these features into the product so I will leave any "technical" responses to Brian Warfield as he is the product manager for the CRM and OAS products.

The reason I brought it up was I had a customer with exactly 10 previous visits, the last of which did have more than normal mileage driven but was at approx: 150k on the odometer. The next reminder they got was for 300k+. SO I brought it up as to why would this happen with such a lengthy history?

My rep said they only use the last 2 and then it makes sens why my customer received what they did.

brianp87 wrote:The reason I brought it up was I had a customer with exactly 10 previous visits, the last of which did have more than normal mileage driven but was at approx: 150k on the odometer. The next reminder they got was for 300k+. SO I brought it up as to why would this happen with such a lengthy history?

My rep said they only use the last 2 and then it makes sens why my customer received what they did.

Brian,

To see where the issue came up I would look at the RO before the last one to see what the mileage on that RO was. If the RO was abnormally low on that RO then 150k on the next one the system will come up with a crazy mileage profile for that customer. For example if the 2nd previous RO is missing a digit and entered at 14k instead of 140k and the last RO is entered correctly at 150k then the system thinks the customer drove 136k miles between visits. Im not positive that this happened here but one thing to look at to see where the issue is.

The last 2 were 117k and 140K and both were with in a year. It doesnt really matter. I just found it unusual. I was also under the impression that the total history is were the mileages came from.

I understand.

Im going to assume that it calculated 23k miles between the visits then did the daily average and spit out 300k.

There is a way to be proactive and look for mileage issues before customers contact you.

If you go into your CRM reports and look at the CRM sent tab...there is a mileage amount for reminders sent. I would look for anything that doesnt jive with the year of the vehicle and see if there are any "fat finger" errors in the last few RO's.

Of course if you have any specifics like this just let us know.

I agree I saw the one that said this and that it was sent as such. I then asked my rep about it and now I know that its only the last 2 invoices.