How fast should a dealership reply to an online enquiry?
A dealership should reply to an online enquiry within minutes during trading hours, and send an instant acknowledgement after hours so the buyer knows a person will follow up. Fast replies come from setup, not effort: every enquiry in one inbox, pushed to a salesperson's phone and logged against the car. Social Agencies builds that setup for dealers.
Why does reply speed matter for car enquiries?
Reply speed matters because a buyer enquiring online is usually comparing several dealers at once, and the first useful answer often wins the test drive.
A buyer on AutoTrader or Cars.co.za can message three dealers about three similar cars in two minutes. The dealer who answers while the buyer is still holding the phone gets the conversation. The others get a polite "already sorted, thanks".
Dealers know this and still lose leads. On the DealerRefresh forum, dealers talk about "so many leads that go no where". The problem is rarely laziness. It is that enquiries arrive in too many places for anyone to watch them all.
Where do dealership enquiries get lost?
Dealership enquiries get lost in the gaps between channels: portal emails, website forms, Facebook messages and personal WhatsApp numbers that nobody checks as one list.
Each channel on its own seems manageable. Together they make a job no one owns, so enquiries sit unread over lunch, after hours and whenever the salesperson who holds that phone is off.
The fix is not to watch more channels harder. It is to pull every channel into one list the whole sales team can see, so an enquiry never waits on one person's phone, and a manager can tell at a glance which leads have had no reply.
- Portal lead emails going to an info@ address one person checks once a day.
- Website forms sending to a mailbox nobody has open on their phone.
- Facebook and Instagram messages answered only when someone opens the page.
- WhatsApp enquiries landing on one salesperson's personal number.
- Missed calls with no record of which car the caller wanted.
How do you set up a dealership to reply to enquiries fast?
Set up one inbox for every channel, push each new enquiry to the right salesperson's phone, and log it against the car it is about.
The steps below turn reply speed from a habit you hope for into a system you can check.
- Route portal emails, website forms and ad enquiries into one shared inbox.
- Put a WhatsApp button on every vehicle page that opens a message naming the car.
- Send each new enquiry to the duty salesperson's phone as a notification.
- Record the car, the source and the time received on every enquiry.
- Mark the time of the first reply, so slow answers show up on a list.
What should happen when an enquiry arrives after hours?
An after-hours enquiry should get an instant acknowledgement that names the car and says when a person will reply, then land first in the morning queue.
Get My Auto suggests dealers ask any provider this: "A lead comes in from my site at 9 pm on a Sunday. Walk me through the next five minutes." The honest answer for most dealers is that nothing happens until Monday.
An acknowledgement buys you the night. It should confirm the car is still available if the feed says so, promise a reply by a stated time, and never quote a trade-in value or finance decision on its own.
How does a dealer measure enquiry response time?
Measure the gap between the time each enquiry arrived and the time of the first reply, and review the slowest ones every week.
An average hides the problem. Look at the slowest ten enquiries each week and ask where they came from and who held them. The pattern is usually one channel or one time of day.
Dart Motors moved its enquiries into one inbox, and a sale closed the day it went live. Nothing about the buyers changed. The lead simply reached someone who could answer it.
What should the first reply to a car enquiry say?
The first reply should confirm the car is still available, answer the buyer's question in one line, and offer a clear next step such as a test drive time or a call.
Buyers often ask one thing first: is it still available, can it be financed, will you take a trade-in. Answer that exact question before anything else. A reply that ignores it and pastes a sales script tells the buyer nobody read their message.
Use the buyer's name and the car's name. Offer two test drive times rather than asking when suits them, because a choice between two is easier to answer than an open question.