Measuring Where Customers Come From

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dan
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Measuring Where Customers Come From

Post by dan »

Before the upgrade to 6.0: we were able to use a custom report to see what drove a customer in and the $ spent for a given date range based on the customer source/referred by field.

1- I only see 1 report in Mitchell: Reports/Management/Referral Marketing. This is similar to what we are looking for. It categorizes each source well, EXCEPT it reports lifetime totals, cannot select a date range.

2- I see 1 report in Report Pro: Marketing/Customer Referrals. Gives you a date range and then can double click a source to see all the names, EXCEPT it does not show an invoice #, dollars spent, or doesn't show the referring friend like the Mitchell report does.

I'm not referring to the Mitchell Management/Referral-Inv sources report, which sources the reason for visit (Breakdown, maintenance, diagnosis, repair). However that reports works well by date range, $'s spent, invoice #'s and sub-totals per source. A great report "why the come in". Not sure why a similar report is available for "what drove them to you"?

I doubt I'm the only one that wants to see what drove customers in and what that source earned, by any given date range. You can't manage what you can't measure. We use coupons to track as well, but there are many other ways people find you without a coupon right? Yelp, Google, Drive-by, Billboard, Parking garage sign, Repeat customer, Towing, ASA, ect...

Maybe there is already a report and I don't see it? If not, how do I request and get one?

Thanks, Dan
Regards,
Dan Dumbauld

The Auto Shop Inc.
901 N. Central Ave.
Phoenix, AZ 85004
voice 602-256-6164
fax 602-256-0379
dan@phoenixautoshop.com
www.phoenixautoshop.com
ARS
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Re: Measuring where customers come from

Post by ARS »

In Report Pro they have a couple reports that might work called Customer Spending & Visits- It does not have the vehicles that the customer has or had though.

I would try contacting Bolt On & see if they can develop a report for you. They are usually pretty good about that.

Hope it helps.
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dan
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Re: Measuring where customers come from

Post by dan »

Thanks ARS for the reply. I saw that report but it doesn't source what drove them in ; AAA, ASA, TV add, Towing, press release, NARPRO, BBB, Yelp, Google, ect...

Guessing by the lack of input here, the number of views and missing concept in Report Pro, not many interested in the ROI of sourcing new customers.

Thanks, TAS
Regards,
Dan Dumbauld

The Auto Shop Inc.
901 N. Central Ave.
Phoenix, AZ 85004
voice 602-256-6164
fax 602-256-0379
dan@phoenixautoshop.com
www.phoenixautoshop.com
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Re: Measuring where customers come from

Post by greasemonkeyGARAGE »

I would be very interested in a report like that.
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Re: Measuring where customers come from

Post by timbre4 »

The Referral INV Source report is also of some value in terms of what brought them in with date range and totals per Source field entries.
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dan
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Re: Measuring where customers come from

Post by dan »

Tim, Thanks for the reply.
Maybe I've got it wrong? I have always used the "source" field in the Order Tab to source the reason for the visit. So we can monitor the trend of what the reason for the visit was, whether it was a maintenance, breakdown, diagnostic, LOF Only visit. Great info here as the reasons for visits blend has changed significantly over the past 10 years and a huge change over the last 25. I'd like to keep that report option available.

Tim,
1- That report that you are referring to under the ORDER Tab is titled "Reason for visit"; is this the way it was intended to be used? If I remember correctly, that field was added later than the "Market tab" and the "Referred field"?
2- Has there been any development with the "Market tab" that I don't know about and could it be used to source where new customers come from?
3- I'd think the "Referred field" is what this was intended to be used to track new customers. Do you have any idea how I could extract this data with a date range and $ amount to measure what motivated a new customer to us? It'd tell me where to spend marketing dollars. We do use coupons and it tracks well, but most of the time a coupon is not the motivating factor for a first time visit today. And then we can only use 1 coupon discount per invoice, right?
4- I'm open to any suggestions ...... please, we sorely miss this particular report that Alpine Lou made for us and consider it valuable.

I really appreciate you stepping into this subject.
Thanks, Dan
Regards,
Dan Dumbauld

The Auto Shop Inc.
901 N. Central Ave.
Phoenix, AZ 85004
voice 602-256-6164
fax 602-256-0379
dan@phoenixautoshop.com
www.phoenixautoshop.com
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dan
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Re: Measuring where customers come from

Post by dan »

Tim,
BTW, I did fail to tell you how well the "Referral-Friend/Customer" report works, that thing is awesome! :D
Kudos
Dan
Regards,
Dan Dumbauld

The Auto Shop Inc.
901 N. Central Ave.
Phoenix, AZ 85004
voice 602-256-6164
fax 602-256-0379
dan@phoenixautoshop.com
www.phoenixautoshop.com
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Re: Measuring where customers come from

Post by timbre4 »

The way that I generally explain it during the workshops (leaving for Scottsdale event tomorrow) is this:

"The Referral feature answers the question 'how did this customer get into my database?' and the Source feature answers the question 'how did this order come to be written?' Source entries could be website, CRM coupon, outside salesperson or anything you can dream up that you feel would be applicable."

1 - Correct
2 - No change
3 - Referral Friend has a date range; thinking the third report should have one too. I'll have to ask why that is not the case.
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Re: Measuring where customers come from

Post by dan »

Tim,
Hate to bring up this "dead horse" again, but since this topic was posted 5 shop owners have called me asking how I track ROI on new customers. I just got off the phone with another shop and once again explain the manual process we use to calculate this. As the others has said; if all the data is there, why isn't there a report for such critical information? I promised him that I'd repost, hoping to get an update to this or find a reasonable solution.

I have recommended to each that I have spoken to, to reach out to BoltOn for support. A couple of these have called to find they are willing to build a custom report to fit our needs, for $300 to $400. Two common discussion issues come up:

1- How is a marketing report like this not as important as a Daily Sales Summary Report within Mitchell?

2- we already pay more for BoltOn subscription than we do our Mitchell POS subscription, to "compliment" Mitchell. How is a marketing report like this not as important as a Daily Sales Summary Report within Mitchell?

You have suggested that we could use the Source Field (on the order screen) to compile this dataYou have suggested that we use the Source Field as an alternative means to this marketing / referral report. Of the 5 that I have spoken to use the Referral Field to track where our customers come from and they are using the Source Field for 3 different purposes. If Mitchell does not address this and we choose not to purchase a "custom report" from Bolton, would you please explain how we setup the source field to enable us to get a report of the past 24 months of marketing history?

If Mike is reading this post and it is of interest, we'd like his input and suggestions as well. There is much confusion with the query builder. Is it possible for us to build exactly what each of us want with this feature?

Thanks, Dan
Regards,
Dan Dumbauld

The Auto Shop Inc.
901 N. Central Ave.
Phoenix, AZ 85004
voice 602-256-6164
fax 602-256-0379
dan@phoenixautoshop.com
www.phoenixautoshop.com
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Re: Measuring where customers come from

Post by timbre4 »

Dan,

Just back for Orlando workshop event and catching up...

Please understand that any inactivity on this question is not because it is a "dead horse", it is because there are dozens if not hundreds of such requests to consider. Each of these is championed by one or more users and each is deemed critical and we are left to do our best to sort out and prioritize which items will get attention. You may have read or seen that we are all currently heads-down getting an amazing scheduler module into the program which requires much of the available resources to get done. This was a relatively easy priority as it has universal appeal to our users.

As for the relative importance of the report request to Daily Sales Summary and why don't we have it, please consider this. We're celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Manager program and Daily Sales Summary has been there pretty much from the beginning as it was deemed obvious in our view at that time. As the years went by, marketing data has became more and more important to shops; just as important as the fiscal performance reports that have traditionally been made available. We have added some reports in this direction including the Referral and Source options mentioned earlier. At roughly the same time, we also recognized the need for a product that was specialized in marketing to customers using the service activity or recommendations in their repair shop Manager database. That was the beginning of SocialCRM as launched back in 2005 for those shops who wanted to do more in this regard.

Fast forward to the relationship with Bolt-On as a technology partner; there were specific features that we were very excited to integrate with Manager. They had also developed quite a body of reporting options and together we came up with the feature set and the ProPack modules for those who were inclined to want them to compliment Manager and get more rewards out of it. The success of this partnership has now taken us into Manager on tablets with Mobile ManagerPro. I suspect this product evolution will continue.

As for what can be done natively in Manager, the Source field is provided to use on-going; you could use it to START coding invoices into the future, it would have no effect on past invoices already posted. maybe I read that wrong but that's what I think you were asking. It was suggested to me to use the Mail Merge Query, however it lacks the Source or Referred By fielded data. That's all I can tell you at this point, perhaps Mike R will chime into this topic.
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Re: Measuring where customers come from

Post by MRISICH »

Dan and Tim,

We currently have a feature request created for this type of report. We don't yet have a date of completion, though, and it will likely take several months to complete if its complexity isn't too involved.

Dan, if this is something you'd like to pursue, give us a call so we can discuss the details and feasibility of completion. This would, however, fall under custom reporting which would involve a cost.

Hope this helps.

Mike

610-400-1019
Michael Risich
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Re: Measuring where customers come from

Post by Bill Coniam »

I paid another shop owner to write me a program when I had 5.9.

It was very affordable and would track the source of all my customers (which marketing source like Angie's List, Yelp, Google Search, etc) and also track only the new customers. Both reports had: number of customers, average RO, total dollars, etc. This information is so important to a repair shop that I used to manually calculate it. Proper tracking of source of customers (what marketing works) allows me to spend half of what my friends spend on their marketing. I guess, since a similar report is not available from Mitchell or my Pro Pack add on, I'll call him and do it now that I have SE.

It seems a shame that I pay both companies for data...and still have to contract a third when this data is a must for any shop owner.
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Re: Measuring where customers come from

Post by MRISICH »

Bill Coniam wrote:I paid another shop owner to write me a program when I had 5.9.

It was very affordable and would track the source of all my customers (which marketing source like Angie's List, Yelp, Google Search, etc) and also track only the new customers. Both reports had: number of customers, average RO, total dollars, etc. This information is so important to a repair shop that I used to manually calculate it. Proper tracking of source of customers (what marketing works) allows me to spend half of what my friends spend on their marketing. I guess, since a similar report is not available from Mitchell or my Pro Pack add on, I'll call him and do it now that I have SE.

It seems a shame that I pay both companies for data...and still have to contract a third when this data is a must for any shop owner.
Hi Bill,

Thank you for reaching out to us. We actually have started work on reporting like this. The complexity, however, is rather advanced and will take some time to test and complete. It likely won’t be finished in the near future.

In the meantime, as a starting point, there is some data that you can gather by using the ‘Customer Spending & Visits for Export report. As we continue to expand our reporting functionality, more of these reporting options will be added to Report Pro.

Hope this helps.
Michael Risich
Founder & CEO

BOLT ON TECHNOLOGY™

610-400-1019
http://boltontechnology.com/
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Re: Measuring Where Customers Come From

Post by Bill Coniam »

Thank you, it was a VERY helpful report. Feel free to contact me about what it did - I believe it has strong marketing potential for you to the SE clients
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Re: Measuring Where Customers Come From

Post by MRISICH »

Bill Coniam wrote:Thank you, it was a VERY helpful report. Feel free to contact me about what it did - I believe it has strong marketing potential for you to the SE clients
Hi Bill,

Thank you for your offer. As we move closer to this type of reporting, we’ll keep you in mind and may reach out for more details.

In the meantime, please let us know if we can help with anything else.
Michael Risich
Founder & CEO

BOLT ON TECHNOLOGY™

610-400-1019
http://boltontechnology.com/
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