Jimmy: A good afternoon, good evening, or good night, thank you for joining us. My name is Jimmy Lea. I'm with KUKUI. 

It's so excited to have everyone here with us. You have logged in to the right place. This is the right webinar for you. I am super gigged out, super excited about this webinar. 

As we talk about the deep dive into the Text Connect platform, I just can't tell you how excited I am for this to be happening. Screens are changing. There we go. Deep dive webinar. This is so exciting. 

And no, it's not March yet. This is still February. This is our deep dive into all things in the tech techs connect platform just to make sure that we're giving everybody a little bit more time to flood in the gate. Floodgates are open. Everybody's finding a seat. You're all flooding towards the front of the auditorium here. 

I know. I know, because that's the way it goes here at the music concert. The KUKUI concert. Everybody's here, bill, to answer your question. Yes, it's going to be recorded. We absolutely record all of these so that you as a client of we can watch this valuable information and have your service advisors watch this information down the road when they have questions about text connect. This is going to be one of those that you're going to want them to watch, because using Mike to feed those words, he uses the crap out of this text platform. And I'm so excited to share this with you. 

So before we get into that, let's take care of a couple of housekeeping things as everybody is still flooding in. Housekeeping items are number one, this is to be interactive. There is a questions tab within your GoToWebinar control panel. And to make sure everybody knows where this is, please go to it now and tell me where is it that you're enjoying this valuable information today? Where is it that you are sitting to consume this data and this information? What city and state are you joining us from today? Joining from the island of Hawaii, Las Vegas, Nevada. Thank you, Mary. Hawaii. Angie, snowy, Colorado Springs. Matt oh, my gosh. Well, thank you. I'm in sunny St George, Utah. Hanover, Illinois. Universal City, Texas. Good luck and God bless you there in Texas, people. Graham, Washington. Santa Cruz, Boise, Idaho. California and in Texas, bless all the people in Texas, please, glad you're happy, safe and sound there in Seattle, Washington. KUKUI Karl, thank you for joining us. Always great to have KUKUI Karl here, guys. Thank you, everybody, for joining us. We're all over the country. We're all over North America. Are we international yet? Anybody here that international and any of our friends from Canada or France, new Zealand, Australia, we've been quite a bit. Glenn, Glenn is here from Canada. Thank you, Glenn. I'm glad you're here, man. I mean, I'm excited. I am super excited about this content, this information. So all of you that are here, thank you very much. Good afternoon. Good evening and good night. Thank you for joining us. We're not going to good night yet because this is valuable information. 

My name is Jimmy Lea. I'm going to be your host with the most. I will be your voice. You have questions. We have answers. I don't usually unlock the microphones because I don't know if you have a mic. I don't know what the background noise is going to be. And it generally doesn't quite work. Right so to make it easy, type your questions in. I will become the voice for you to make sure that we're able to ask Mike all of these questions. So those of you who are joining us early, you know, there's going to be a special prize for everyone who attends live. Wait until the very end. So you can learn how to redeem this prize. Second thing is big announcement. Big announcement. No, I'm not going to tell you what it is. 

I have a special guest with us today. Big announcement. We decided that she was going to join very last minute. This happened yesterday. This is a huge announcement for us. So excited for this announcement. You must stay till the end to hear about it. Joining me today, and this is why you are here, is to hear from Mr, Mike de Fino. Thank you, Mike. Thank you for joining us. Are you there, mike? 

Mike D: Yes, I am. Jimmy, thank you for having me. 

Jimmy: Oh, my gosh, I'm so excited when Mike and I connected on this and he sat down and showed me what he was doing and I asked him some questions. He says, Jimmy, I got to tell you, I am working the crap out of this Text Connect module campaign. Stop working the crap out. Mike, I'm so excited you're here. Go ahead. Let's pull you up on camera. Let's have us here together. I want to have a high level discussion first and then I want to get into the nitty gritty and then we're going to get our hands dirty. So, Mike, if you're here, are you up on camera? I can't see. 

Mike D: I believe I am. I see you. 

Jimmy: Oh, OK. Good if you see me, then that's what's good. We're high level discussion here, Mike. Text connect. You are one of the early adopters and you're right, you are working the crap out of the system. Even within KUKUI, we would call you a super user. I don't know. You you you may or may not have known that you had superpowers. 

Mike D: Now I didn't. 

Jimmy: And now you do. You're a super user. That's super awesome from a high level point of view. Talk to me. Tell me about your experience, tell me about what it took and how you got started and how it is that you adopted this, that now you're working the crap out of the system as your main communication form? 

Mike D: Well, you know, I've been with KUKUI for quite some time now, and I have a fantastic coach. Ronnie takes care of me and helps me and holds my hand through it. And then I finally, you know, it soaks in and it's really easy when KUKUI builds these platforms for you. There, plug and play, you don't have to do anything, it just they go out themselves, but it's taking the time with your coach, building a great offer in your message, making it short so people just can absorb it quickly. And to be quite honest with you. One of my the first thing I noticed was the Google reviews I had maybe at the time, 20, 25. And that's after being in business for, you know, I've been in business 27 years this year. I've only been using KUKUI for maybe the past six, seven, eight years. And when did the tech platform come out. Two years ago possibly. 

Jimmy: Yeah Yeah. 

Mike D: So think about this. Two years ago I had let's just say 25 Google reviews after 25 years in business. One review a year, one review a year. Wow I'm doing good. Yeah I last checked, I was fast approaching 700 reviews. 750 You went from one a year to one a day. One a day. Wanted dead. Now, I'm not talking about website reviews, I'm talking about Google reviews, and ever since they came out this platform and they shoot the message out with a very simple click of the button, they're able to give you a review. 

Jimmy: So what have all these reviews done for your business, Mike? 

Mike D: Well, I mean, I think a lot of people today, they know, they rely on reviews. I mean, I know when I shop and buy, first thing I do is kind of read the reviews. And, of course, you want to see some bad reviews. I mean, you can't make everybody happy. So, yeah, it's awesome. A lot of people will call and say, "Hey, I read your Google reviews. That's why I'm here." 

Jimmy: So reviews and we've heard this reviews is the word of mouth marketing reviews, is now the way that people are talking, the way that they are discovering about products and they want to have a good experience. So here reviews are really helping your business to become that. Accredited business that everybody wants to be a part of. 

Mike D: I totally agree. 

Jimmy: Yeah, awesome. Awesome now let's talk about the texting from a texting point of view, texting your clients. I understand now this is one of the preferred methods for your shop. You're still doing a lot of other methods with emails, postcards, flyers and word of mouth as well. Texting. Why texting? What what are the results you've seen from that? 

Mike D: I mean, look, today, I mean, who doesn't text? That's the way that's the new way of communicating. And you need to get on the same platform with your customers as you are with your friends or your family or your kids. 

Jimmy: Right it's the preferred method of communication, texting. The fact that I have a few texts over here right now, it's hilarious. 

Mike D: And it's very powerful, like you, you know, in the beginning when we started to see our program and emails were the big things, we used to send these email blasts out and, you know, wow, it's like it worked and then it disappeared. And now the texting has taken over. And it's just the greatest form of communication. Estimates, pictures. 

Jimmy: Appointments, too, right? 

Mike D: Yes 

Jimmy: So are you are you seeing a leveling of the peaks and the valleys, the feast in the famine? Does it is it on just a steady climb now that you're saying? 

Mike D: I think, OK, you've got to find a way to go to market. As times change and obviously what we experienced globally last year was. Nothing that we've ever seen before.

Jimmy: Right. 

Mike D: So and when we get a little further down into this discussion, I'll show you the exact platform we use, but we use texting through past recommendations to really drum up business. I mean, it was dead. People weren't driving. 

Jimmy: Yeah 

Mike D: You know, and we got people wanted to work. They showed up every day. So we did our best to put in the work. Now, granted, I didn't set any records, but I'd have to lay anybody off. 

Jimmy: Yeah, that's wonderful. I love it. So so texting has improved. The shop has improved. The appointments that are coming in the confirmations much quicker, simpler, easier than emails, but emails still quite powerful, very powerful and still works as well, right? 

Mike D: It does. We use the emails as well. I mean, people primarily like to text their appointments, but we still do get the email appointments. And a lot of times if we are, we get a website question that will come through on a separate platform, the chat that we have set up on the website. 

Jimmy: Right. Right well, let's get into this, Mike. Let's let's dig into that was what you're doing. Show us, because you've got a process here every day at 9, 11, 2. What is it you do? How is it you're spending and how do you not flood the service advisers? 

Mike D: Well, I like to send thing on. This is this is not a proven theory. This is my theory. You know, it's my own wheels turning up. They're going, hey, man, let me go ahead and let me send 25 out at 11:00 and then I'll go to like maybe after lunch, let's say 1:30, 2 o'clock I'll be going up 25 or 30 out. Then I catch him around 4:00 and I'll throw a few more out then. 

Jimmy: So so why not just send them all at the same time. Why not send them all at 8:00 AM. 

Mike D: Well we'll do a little test but there's a possibility that you'll see how quick the response is. OK, so we do get a lot of response. There are some that I had saved in there from the past with my 11 o'clock blast that came through. So you sent 25. You get three people to respond. Hey, it, it works. I mean there's no joke. It does work. 

Jimmy: Nice nice. I love it. I love it. Let's pull your screen up. Can me pull up Mike's screen and share this with everybody. Because I got to tell you, everybody is watching this. When I saw Mike he saved me some messages and he saved the messages so that he could show here. I'm sending it since then. Since then. And the messages were just the responses were flooding right back in. It was amazing. So the show us to your texting platform shows where you do it, that 9,11... 

Mike D: You guys can see my screen.

Jimmy: Yes, we got your text.

Mike D: OK, so I'm in the Connect chat right now. So this is just some of the messages that have come through. You know, today you can see the times and then we go to the Text Connect and I guess we'll start off first, so important to take a little bit of time with your coach and set these up here, OK, get all set up the one month follow up. The appointment reminders, the 3,000 to 5,000. Just get all these set up. And this is auto, this goes, this is you don't have to do anything, it just shoots these reminders out for you. OK, so. That's that's the first thing I always recommend getting this done. 

Jimmy: So right now it looks like you had six of them set up at first and then you've added another two. So a lot of shop owners feel like, oh, my gosh, I'm afraid of setting these up. I don't want to bombard my customers. I don't want to send too many texts. I don't want to be spamming their cell phones. What ones did you set up and what advice do you have for shop owners there? 

Mike D: Well, like I guess the ones we set up in the beginning were just pretty much the basic reminders. And then the new stuff that had come out is the one month follow up, which if you guys can see this, this is new to me. 

Jimmy: This is new. Like yesterday, yesterday. 

Mike D: OK, I've only sent 35 of these out. I got a 20% Response rate. And I don't know if you guys can see in my corner when my emails roll in, these are people texting my service advisors right now. I mean, it just popped up two seconds ago. And the big one here is our recommendation or recommended services, OK, so that is also a new module that came out yesterday and I'm going to when we get to the point, I'm going to let my service manager, Michael Kersey, speak about what he has done. Now, we have our entire staff engaged in this. This is a main form of communication. OK, so this is like I said, this recommended services 50 days out. So this is somebody that came in. We made a recommendation and we put it in recommendations. OK, not revisions. So I don't know how many of you guys use Mitchell or whatever platform. I'm sure you've got recommendations and you've got the revision where you write the estimate. WEll the KUKUI platform pulls from recommendations. And when you get into this and I'll click on it. It's we made this up yesterday, my coach and I, you know, our little message and we gave an offer that we're going to give an additional $25 if you come in off the service. Now, when my service team does a custom one? We are already reading the repair order, and it may be a $1,500 bill. $1,800 bill, whatever. We will adjust our offer accordingly, so we may be given 50 bucks if we meet, even if we want the job bad enough we may even throw more off shore and we shoot that out. Now, the close rate on that is really, really good. I mean, those people will communicate back pretty quickly. Some people will come back and say, "hey, it was you know, I already have taken care of me, was a set of tires. They went to Costco or one of those places. So this is pretty, pretty new as of yesterday. But I will say the response rate has been incredible. I mean, how quick? you know 20, what did I say? We had like 20 percent, yeah, 20% on that one. So this is OK, I'm going to I don't know how many people know what about the KUKUI texting platform? So I'm just going to explain what I know and what I've learned. So the Auto Send up here, the Auto Send is what you saw in the first page. The only time you can auto send to your database is if they opt into the texting program - needs approval is because they haven't opted into the program and you need to go in and send them. And it gives you an opportunity to look at the history record. Maybe not send one in if you knew they just totaled that car, because there's no way unless you physically go in to remove a vehicle that the system knows that the customer no longer has that vehicle. 

Jimmy: Right. 

Mike D: Yes, so so I do go into this every day, I look at it, I've got 153 to approve for today and generally don't have those many. However, we turn the new modules on yesterday, so everything kind of ramped up. It's usually about, maybe 75 a day or so, sometimes 50 that I send and I like I told you earlier, I just do them in little increments. So we'll start at 11 and we'll go ahead and fire out, you know, 10, 15, maybe again at like 1:30, 2pm, then again towards the latter part of the day. Now, I don't send anything out to late. We close at 6 and I do have it on my phone, but it is kind of a pain to respond from home because you don't have the ability to look at your schedule and see if you can accept that appointment or not accept that appointment. So if it's OK with you, I'm going to shoot a couple out. So I've kind of already looked at these, so I'm going to send these out. 

Jimmy: So if Jeff you know, Jeff, he's an old buddy, you just send it right away.

Mike D: Now, this gentleman, he was he's probably one of my oldest customers. I've been here for 40 years. 

Jimmy: OK, let's say Andrew, stop on Andrew. OK, Andrew is a customer that maybe we don't want to send a follow up. Would you do then? 

Mike D: I would go to the Delete. We just got it. We just got one. We got to stop on the text, ok? And that happens. You don't get so. 

Jimmy: OK, so send some more. And while you're sending those, there's a couple of questions that are coming through here. One of the questions is once you hit send, is this customer automatically now opted in. 

Mike D: We got another message. All good. Thanks that was from Laura Murray. You can see it on your side. We can't see that little box. So let's do this. Let's OK, these are the messages that it came in while we were sitting here. All good, Thanks. That was one of the follow UPS for service. 

Jimmy: Oh, I love it. 

Mike D: You know, look, I got a thumbs up, thumbs up emoji loving that. 

Jimmy: OK, so the question is, are they automatically now opted in for future automatic text messages? Do you know the answer or not? 

Mike D: I do not know the answer to that. That would be one of our KUKUI representatives. Answer that. 

Jimmy: I got you. The answer is no. They're not automatically opted in. So and Glenn, you're asking the question, do you still need them to opt in to receive the automatic marketing, which is currently by sending it one at a time. This is a reminder that's going out to them once they opt in now, it can go automatically, but by sending it one at a time, it's not an auto dialer, ok? So, Yeah. And Glenn, if you did go to their profile and you did click on the Yes - I opt in option, then you as a shop owner, you're obviously you want them to have said, yes, opt me in. But then you are taking on that responsibility just to that they are now opted in. OK, Glenn, you're awesome. Thank you. He understands now. 

Mike D: So one of the things that I have done to kind of encourage people to opt in is I put an offer out right on the table where they run their credit cards.

Jimmy: So its on the front desk.

Mike D: Right on the front desk, right on the front desk. And it's $10 off any service. I don't care if you're here getting your tire repaired, you want 10 bucks off, opt in the tax program. And the other thing that I like is now, of course, cooking runs my website as well. So on my website, we've got the little box that comes up to fill out your info to get the $10 off. So that's another way to get people in, I think. I have over 600 in opted in. 

Jimmy: Nice, nice. That's perfect. 

Mike D: And that grows every day, you know what I mean? It grows every day and it's and then you still have this ability to go in here and shoot your follow up calls. You can go ahead and recommend it services right here. There's a couple that are pre generated. And this is somebody that I haven't seen in 12 months, and I see.

Jimmy: OK, so I was going to ask you to send from a different campaign as well to see if you get I'm wondering if we can send some 3000/5000 reminders. Well, for people to see that it's so easy to be just send them out and people are responding, they're saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, I need to bring in my car. 

Mike D: Here are some 3's down here. 3,000 miles services. Now, what I am finding, the responses I've been getting back sometimes on these three and fives is, hey, we're not driving like we used to. 

Jimmy: Yeah.

Mike D: So here's another 3,000. So we've pretty much went through now, of course, I've already sent some out, so the rest is going to be a one month follow up and the ones that when we haven't seen them, that we missed you in nine, we haven't seen you in nine months, love. And that is know, that is another way to reach back out. I mean, you go ahead and, you know, you haven't seen the customer in nine months. You look at their history record, you know, and maybe they were a first time customer. Maybe you didn't wow them like you needed to keep them and retain them. Or maybe they're just not driving. And we're finding that, like I said, to be more and more people just are not driving like they used to. 

Jimmy: Yeah so, I mean, this is the easy part. You're just clicking away. 

Mike D: It's simple. Yeah and I spent way more than I normally do in one shot. I still got my afternoon. 

Jimmy: Yeah Yeah. You got an afternoon to the one. So I've also got an expert in here you were asking for KUKUI, expert at KUKUI representative. I've got Kayleigh here in the wings. Kayleigh, can you come in and talk a little bit about these campaigns. And those that get sent automatic and those that do require a send? Help us out here, help us understand this more fully? 

Kayleigh: Sure absolutely. So I'm Karli. I'm one of the product managers here at KUKUI. And so I just wanted to speak a little bit to what we were talking about, what needs optins and what doesn't. So Mike is right. A lot of these like a recommended service or a lost customer or anything that has "special" associated with it, or is the text message that isn't associated with a service already in progress or that's already been completed, those all will go into this "approval needed" tab and you'll need to click Send for each one. If we had something like a follow up campaign that wasn't trying to bring them in for another service or wasn't offering a special of some kind. There's no sale associated with it. You can actually set those ones for auto. And so if you would like to just have those set and forget and just go out at a particular time every day or on the days of your choosing, that's something that you can set up for just the follow up campaigns that are set for maybe like a couple of weeks or a couple of months after a service to check in on that satisfaction. Same thing with review requests and appointment reminders. Since all of those are associated with a sale that's already been confirmed, you can go ahead and set those to auto send and people don't necessarily need it and often for those, those can just go to anyone who hasn't explicitly opted out. And I see a question in the chat that if somebody types STOP, does it keep them out of text campaigns automatically? Yes, it does. And that will stop them from being generated in either of these approval needed or auto sending queues. And in that case, they will not generate for these. But but in these communications that are about existing services, those can auto send to everyone, regardless of their opt in status. 

Jimmy: I just wanted to ask a quick question for you then. And Glenn, thank you for asking about the stop. Let's go on the other side of that now, they want to opt back in, how do we get them to opt back in? 

Kayleigh: There's a couple of ways they can opt back in, but both ways has to be from them. They have to text message the number that they opted out of with either the word START or the word UNSTOP. Yeah, and that is not a normal word. We didn't make it up, but that's the word that's required either. I prefer START for obvious reasons, but UNSTOP will work to that'll offer them back in. But they have to do that. 

Mike D: But one of the things I found is the website having it on my website coming up. And I don't know if you want, I could pull it over if you're still sharing the screen. 

Jimmuy: Yeah yeah, it's on your screen. You can pull it over. Could go ahead. Because I also want to see after you show this on the screen, I'd love to see those messages coming back as well. 

Mike D: This pops up. 

Jimmy: Oh, Yeah. There you go. 

Mike D: But you can get $10 off your next service. That's all you're going to need to do is put your little bit of information in here and hit submit. And simple as that, you know.  

Jimmy: OK, let's go back. Yes, Connect ChaT, do you have the messages coming back to you? That's where you get to see those messages, right? 

Mike D: Yes so connect chat is different platform, you got to switch it, it's not on the same, so we did here here's a perfect example. We we had to stop, OK, to stop here as well, and that's fine. And then we had this one here that all is good. Thanks. We got the thumbs up. 

Nice I remember. When the virus began, you were giving a great deal on breaks. 

Yes yes, and then great to hear, Jim, I really appreciate it. So, yeah, this is a common way. We, like I said, communicate so. Would you would you like to see how my service team what they do with this? 

Heck, yeah, absolutely, because for a lot that are here on it. Well, you're getting the service advisor. I'm going to talk here to fill up that little bit of space, because a lot of you shop owners that are on right now, you're saying, oh, my gosh, how am I going to be able to send all the messages and then reply to all the messages? And now we've got Mike. Mike, this is also another Mike. Mike is coming in to show his part of the process, his part of the machine, because dafina is not there answering all these text messages. Right, mike?

Mike A: I mean, he will. He will. But the way that we've typically split it up is he tends to do his 11 and 2 and look at how he wants to send them out and then we answer them as they come in the screen that he was shown just here. This guy, Jim, is he's been a good customer. And what really amazes me about this program is I don't know how many other people have this experience, but when you opt into a perks program, whether it's your auto parts store or whatever else that you're looking for, they send you text messages automated as well. And it has never occurred to me to answer them. So my bias has always been that no one is going to answer them. But you can see this guy got a "hey, here's could you give us a link for your recent service?"" And they want to talk to you. They want to say, hey, everything's great. I've recommended Fox run to several friends, like several friends, because we sent an automated text out. So a little glad to hear it. How are you doing, jim? I appreciate it. It's amazes me how many people answer those with actual responses, assuming that it's a human and not just an automated thing to answer them right back to a relationship.

Jimmy: It furthers the human side of what we're doing. We still want to connect. We still want to have conversations. 

Mike A: Right 

Jimmy: OK, so Mike, Vicky's asking a question. Do you answer do you reply to all the text messages from all the campaigns? 

Mike A: We reply to as many of them as we can. You know, sometimes when someone's just like I left the review, thanks, I might not hit every one of those every time. But if there's even remotely a question or something that a little, you know, enjoy the weather, have a great day. Right that relationship building is the key to the whole program. 

Jimmy: Right OK, so here's Cynthia's asking another question as well. Does it automatically send a reply when you're closed, if it's after hours is an auto message? 

Mike A: Yes, it does. You can actually see it on the screen that we're on right now. Allissa, it says she texted into the program early one morning. It was before 8:00 the other day. And you can see the green box right here that says we're currently closed, but your message is important. So you set that as your business hours so that you don't constantly be responding to some guy who's up at 2 o'clock in the morning wanting to check 

Jimmy: Because it does happen. Yeah, it does happen. Yeah OK, so when you came in then that morning, I see your response there, you would have come in at 8 o'clock and start the responses or. 

Mike A: Yes, Yeah. That's one of the know, like when you set your tabs on your Google Chrome or whatever browser that you use. KUKUI is obviously one of the ones that I open up first thing every morning. I go right to Connect Chat. I look to see if there's anything that needs to get answered right away and then just continue using it throughout the day. As far as communication goes. 

Jimmy: Nice so so your position in this whole machine is to respond to the chats, not necessarily to initiate it. That's DeFino's job. 

Mike A: Yeah, well, he initiated as far as the timeline follow UPS for certain mileages for the haven't seen the customers in a long time, but we use it to initiate all the time, just from the service advisor standpoint where you called the customer and they nobody answered you. And, you know, they're waiting to hear what's going on with their car. So you just shoot him a text because of the same way that, you know, you guys were talking earlier about how text is the way that most people communicate. Hey, can you pick up milk from the store? Nobody's calling you any more to tell you that your wife's just sending you a text to get what you need to get. I personally don't answer the phone if I don't know the phone number. So I have a main line or foxon automotive has a main line. But then if you go to KUKUIs phone number, it's got a different. It's got a different phone number on their right. So KUKUI's 597 number. So I can track where that phone call came from. That's right. So that's right. If you're calling the customer from my third line, it's a number that they've never seen before. So they may not answer it. Right, because like most people, you don't answer phone calls you don't know anymore, especially if you're paying for data and phone time and all that's up. 

Jimmy: Show show us the Google docs, show us the customization message that you guys send, because when things are getting a little slow. You guys have a Google doc, you'll copy this message and then you'll click on the client and send it to them. Show us what it is you're doing. 

Mike A: That's what we essentially do is I don't know how many of you guys use Mitchell. But because that's what we're focused on, that's what we're centric on. So what I normally would do is I would go to Mitchell's reports and I would go to the Management tab. And there is a revisions, open revisions by date button here. So you can choose that, pick your date range, export it as an Excel file. So you can update that Excel file to the Google sheets, share it with your team. And because there's two of us in the office, we just started opposite ends with my partner in the office. Robert starts with the A's. I start with the Z's and we meet in the middle. And what we're doing when we do that is I get a chance to see what the recommendations were by date. You get a chance to open up Mitchell. And then we send some messages out that just basically say a template and you just change the name. So can you guys see this one at the bottom here? 

Jimmy: Yeah Yeah. Good morning, Mr Wilson. Yes so you're changing to say the service that you need is x, y, z, that's you're changing the name and then the service that's needed is. 

Mike A: Yeah, we try to make it. I try to make it a little bit more personal by saying something specific, like, I know that you could make it even more generic and say we recommended some service on your vehicle. Here's the thing. But when you talk about personalizing again, you're trying to make it the customer feel warm and fuzzy. So not only are my reminding them that there is service, I'm letting them know that I know what it is. It's specific to them. 

Jimmy: Nice, nice. That's beautiful, and clients are responding to this positively. There are they are they hating you for sending it? Do they love you for sending it? 

Mike A: Well, you know, I. I definitely don't think that anyone hates us for sending. I mean, most people who are going to opt out opt out right away. I mean, you saw some of the stops come through and when you guys were talking earlier. But you do get some other things that even if you send that out, they may say, hey, I got rid of that car or, hey, this isn't my number. Like, sometimes if you weren't diligent about your phone entry in the computer, then some husbands and wives don't like to be communicated about the other person's car. So this gives them the opportunity to say something like, I think I have one in here somewhere where he was like, hey, Mike, I don't I don't have this car anymore. Now, you know, the '07 truck was totaled in an accident. We sent the I haven't seen you for a while response. And then you can immediately click on the customer's information and then you can open up his active membership. It'll open up a different it opened up page the second time, but it'll open up specifically his customer tab. So I can make his I already had removed it, but down here where you list the vehicles, you have the ability to take it out of use. 

Jimmy: I love it now. No, you're not. No, you don't have to chase a car that's not available. It's not even there. 

Mike A: No, no, you're not wasting time sending a reminder. You know, the customer doesn't feel like you're spamming him because he's getting information about a car that he doesn't have, especially if they come in. customer comes in and says, hey, you don't have that car and you're doing 10 other things, maybe you don't take it out right away. You know, we've all made mistakes that way, too. So this just gives them the opportunity for you to say, hey, I'll take care of it than you do and then it's done. 

Jimmy: So, Mike, do you ever go in and send the messages or do you let DeFino do that? 

Mike A: Well, we send messages when, you know, we haven't been able to get a hold of somebody, but I don't send you well, except for when we decided to do these templates for the slow times. When we make the documents that when we generate that report from Mitchell that lets us communicate with them, then where we're doing all that communication, I'm filling in all the stuff I'm changing and all the stuff so you can open. 

Jimmy: Nice OK, Renee has a question for you. And the question is, after that car is sold, totaled, whatever the case is and you change it in KUKUI. Do you have to go back into Mitchell and change it and Mitchell as well? 

Mike A: You know, I typically choose to change it and Mitchell, because perfectly honest, I don't know the Refresh rate. Like, I don't know how often the database gets pinged, where they're going to purge those cars from KUKUI by seeing it out of Mitchell. But I usually just do that. I do them both at the same time. I mean, you have Mitchell open. You have to actually open at the same time. 

Jimmy: It's a best practice. I agree with you. I think it's a great idea. I think it's a great idea. All right. Very good. And they're loving that the logo is installed here as well. 

Mike A: Yeah that's something that might work with our representative to make sure that was on there. And you know, that logos everywhere is as we try to make it as upfront as we can when we're doing stuff. So it just it helps make everything seamless. 

Jimmy: And it's instant recognition as well. 

Mike A: Right right. And there's consistency across all the platforms. No matter how you're communicating with them, they see your logo. It doesn't it's not 10 versions of your logo from three different artists while you're using four different, you know, communication methods. 

Jimmy: Yeah Yeah. So true. So true. Awesome well, thank you, Mike. I appreciate you joining us. Go back to the Connect chat. Let's see if there's any more messages that have come back and forth as the messages were being sent. 

Mike A: No, it looks like just another couple of stops, which is the way that customer communicate the same thing. That said, hey, you know, we wanted to let you know. And they tell us it's all good. 

Jimmy: Nice. Yeah. Beautiful love it. All right, let's get DeFino back in here. All right, man, I appreciate it. Thank you, Mike. Appreciate it. You're awesome. What a rock star. Thank you very much, guys listening here. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, let's have those questions coming out now because we've got Mike here. We can ask Mike a lot of different questions and Bill, to your answer, you can definitely get with your client success coordinator and they can help you to load in the logo. But I'm also going to ask Mike DeFino to see if, mike, when you loaded the logo in, that's consistency. That's branding. That's how you just got a couple more messages. Can we look at it? Yes Ron, oh, thank you, Ronnie. You're not supposed to do that in the middle of all this. 

Mike D: Well, thank you. That was from Debbie swearinger. Oh, good. Yes, excellent. Excellent and this is your Ronnie brown. This is Ronnie. Yes thank you, Ronnie. We appreciate you, Ronnie. I appreciate you for sure. Walk me through all these activities every week. Every month. 

Jimmy: OK, Vicki's asking again, so where is it that you're going to get the customer information? Where are you looking to see and I think it's in the customer module that you could type in somebody's name to see their lifetime, spend their average spend, they will visit. Can you click on Customer so we can show that to Vicky here real quick? She was just asking just to make sure that she knows. 

Mike D: Over the side on the top left, fourth icon in customers. Yes and right where you are, you can also get the information there. Go ahead. That's where we get it from. Right on the site. 

Jimmy: Correct

Mike D: And then you can type their name in right here in the search spot. 

Jimmy: Yeah, Yeah. 

Mike D: So she's saying so if you look on the side, you look like this is a long term customer and look at his spend money. $58,000 over the 25 years that he's been a customer. You know, you might not want to tell him about that. So let's show also everything here. Lifetime revenue, 12 month revenue, you know, average spent per visit. $574 is a great customer, by the way. Average visits per year. They've got four cars. Yeah, you can see it. They've offered in under communications if they've opted in or not. And it's he's got text communications on. 

Jimmy: Yeah go back to the Connect Chat and show how you're getting the customer information there on the side that Vicki clarified a little bit further. She's wanting to see that. 

Mike D: Takes a couple seconds. OK, so what are we looking for now? 

Jimmy: Where do you how are you getting the customer information from this one? 

Mike D: So for Debbie, how do you what do you do over here to this icon here? And the customer information is here. 

Jimmy: Oh, you see that, Vicki

Mike D: the little eye inside of that little eye up on the right corner. OK, yeah, perfect. Perfect and you're getting more messages coming through. And if you click on her name, it will open up that same screen that we just had opened, which you'll have, you know, pretty much all the information that you need. It goes back to Life Time revenue, 12 months in revenue in the last 12 months, average per visit. It's all right there. 

Jimmy: Love it. Love it. Love it if you've got questions, type them in as Mike is going along, Mike, what are some of the other things that you like about your system, I mean, I agree you're working the crap out of this thing, right? And this is what your customers are really loving, this texting back and forth. What else do you love about this? 

Mike D: Well, I like to go into my leads and look at some of the landing pages if they come in on a website. So if you click on this organic SEO, that's where was sourced from. It was an organic search. I didn't pay for it. I always want to know what they landed on. OK, so this is the landing page I'm going to bring up. So obviously, if you have KUKUI do on your website, you get all these landing pages built and this is what they clicked on. Which is pretty cool, I mean. I don't - I don't I didn't go back into researching my Mitchell to see if this customer even came in, nor did I have a listen to the phone call. But obviously, he was having some type of power train drive, train issue

Jimmy: Certainly. 

Mike D: So if you go back, if you go, this is another organic search and. It came in off of my blog. So transmission fluid leak, well, once again, if I wanted to go source it, I could listen to the phone call and we can go ahead and see if they were a customer. 

Jimmy: Oh, that's wonderful. And from this phone call, it's a coaching opportunity as well. You can coach the service, advise your coach up front, make sure that make sure they're not missing out on opportunities. That's phenomenal. 

Mike D: Yeah, I'm very happy with this. And then the other thing is I use these tracking numbers on everything. So right now I think I'm using currently eight different tracking numbers. And it's really a great way to see how you're spending your money in marketing. And we'll go through the dashboard and look at that a little bit closer. But the phone calls here that are generated, if you see it's got money mailer that's because the tracking number was set up for one of my money mailers - money mailers and valpak are very similar. You get these little coupons in the mail, right? Same thing we got text communication, there was a separate number for that, so every time we send a text out, the number that they call back from is a tracking number. We get the recorder, we get to listen to it, Google adwords, you know, here we are. Every time I have to pay for it, you know, I want to make sure I get my money. You know, money's worth out of it. So you can see all the different types of advertisements and the different tracking numbers. But the key is getting these organic searches because they don't cost you anything. 

Jimmy: Yeah, that's great. And, you know, how is it that you're getting the organic? 

Mike D: Well, there's a couple of different methods. mean, obviously content. It helps if you're changing your content. I think my overall blogging helps. I have a blog writer that writes once a week for me and also the communication that you do back and forth with your customers on your reviews. Google sees all that, you know, and it's like, hey, you know, he's got he's getting averaging a review a day. And if you're responding back to them, that's all the things that Google looks at. And and it raises you in that search category. 

Jimmy: Right nice. 

Mike D: So I'm going to go over to the dashboard a little bit and kind of just now, these are live numbers as we're turning them. But I want to come down here to this section, and this is really cool. And you see revenue generated from your organic search. That's my number one. You know, generating revenue is from the organic search, which is awesome. Direct visits are going to be the phone number that's on the website. And then I do some in-house postcards. All this is through KUKUI. My Google AdWords and it's nice to see your Google AdWords falling. You know that you're getting the free ones, the direct visits to the site and the organic searches that cost you nothing. 

Jimmy: Right and I think everything is working. Right right. 

Mike D: And then, you know, down here, what does and what doesn't work. I mean, I haven't had a lot of I don't get a lot on Facebook. I mean, I do still market there. I don't get a lot of the print stuff is definitely much lower, you know, and between money mailer and valpak, you know, they're usually neck and neck. I mean, that's not a whole bunch. There are 81 leads to 59 leads, you know. 

Jimmy: Right 

Mike D: So it's good to see this. And then I like knowing if we didn't answer the phone call. Oh and what time of the day it was, and whether we were open or not. So and this also gives you an opportunity to make a phone call. You got a minute? It's dead. You know, call them back at least. And, you know, I mean, it happens. There's a total of four of us in the office. I've got two service advisors myself, and then I've got my receptionist, Connie, and sometimes one's in the bathroom, one's in the shop, or the tech one's outside of the customer. One's on the phone already. And you try to do your best to answer the phone. But occasionally it happens. You don't. So this is another opportunity to come back and make a phone call. 

Jimmy: So I love it. I love it. OK, I've got two questions that are coming through here, and I want to ask it as you're and stop right there. Scott is asking, what time period are you showing? And by default, it just gives you the last 30 days. Is that what we're looking at? Oh, sorry. The last three months that we're looking at 

Mike D: right now, it's from 11/25 to 2/25.

Jimmy: OK, so it's the last three months. That's your default. You could customize it to look at it different if you wanted to. That's OK. Second question and this is coming from Lisa. I think this is a really good question. Lisa, thank you for asking it. The question is, what is the best method in your mind? What is the best method of getting clients to opt in? You've got a lot you've got probably six times more than Lisa has. And let me tell you what they're doing so far so you can tell us your method. They have it in their email signatures. They have it on their website. They have sent out email campaigns trying to get people to opt in, but they're just not getting it. They're not it's not getting traction. You've you're the expert here. What are you doing, mike? 

Mike D: Go for the ask. Right at the counter, at the counter, go for the ask, hey, would you like $10 off this service just opt in. Simple 

Jimmy: so do you have them texting a number to the written right on my countertop, the number, that's all you have to do to opt in is text the text, that number you're in. And we ask as well. I mean, we will go up. Would you like to have 10 hours off the service? And if we are offering a special already, like, let's say a $29.95 conventional oil change with the five quarts. All right, go ahead. Give me 10 more bucks off it. But you know, what's the difference. You got the phone number now and approval to send it. 

Jimmy: Oh Yeah. That's the best. I mean that's where the gold is. You get that cell phone number, you get the email address. This is our digital communication with them. Right?

Mike D: Jimmy. Think of it this way. Like I mean, it costs you to advertise regardless. Well, it doesn't. You got to pay a little, I guess. You know what, $10 here to take it off the bill and opt in. So I paid for that number. 

Jimmy: Yeah now, that's perfect. Yeah, $10 to get a phone number, it's worth it all day. Every day. OK, you've got questions, we've got answers. If you've got more questions, go ahead and type them in. Mike, we've asked a lot of questions throughout the whole entire thing here, so I know. I appreciate you, I appreciate you answering these, I appreciate you showing us how easy this is to work. Can you go in and start can you click the Send button a few more times? 

Mike D: Oh, absolutely. It is it is very, very easy. And I think we did have a couple more that came in. I have to check my email to show you that we can go ahead and fire a few more off. 

Jimmy: So your process is that you as the shop owner, you come in to send the messages. And then Mike it the front counter, the front desk, Mike and Robert, they're there responding once the messages come. 

Mike D: Yes both Mike and Robert liked to use it for communications, sending pictures. You know, you're trying to, you know, get to this customer. But, you know, like Mike Accorsi had said earlier, hey, it's a strange number. You know, our main number is 8341200. But we have got six other lines after that have all sorts of crazy numbers to it. So people aren't picking those numbers up. 

Jimmy: That's right. That's right. So I love how easy that is. That's awesome. 

Mike D: It's very easy and I've got to stop. You're going to get them sometimes. I probably every round, I get at least one that will opt out. 

Jimmy: And that's OK. Yes this is not their preferred method of communication. But it certainly is yours. It's mix. It's Roberts. It's definitely a good way of getting it out there. 

Mike D: So we'll see when this is the one that I just am glad you texted. Do you know what kind, if any, warranty guarantee my battery has? This is this is the way we do it. I mean, it comes in. Right away. This is Debbie's thank you, 

Jimmy: Mike, Mike, bill is asking a question. Bill, I need a little bit more clarification. What's the hyperlinks next to the Connect Chat messages? The hyperlink I ask a little bit more there, Bill, so I can answer, do you use emails and postcards as well, mike? 

Mike D: Yes, I do, Yes. Those campaigns, Ronnie and I set up at least the email campaign we set up once a month. We actually set it up yesterday. Ronnie reaches out to my graphic designer. Now, there'll be a, I can actually probably show you you have three go. So this is the online art for the website. So we change the website every month. So this is what we're doing for. Were the leprechaun's. So that'll be the backdrop for the website. So the graphic artist gets that Ronnie make sure it makes it to the website and then we're going to do a coupon as well. That'll go up on the website. So we set that up. We also put a coupon in to the email. It's there all the everything's consistent, I keep the same if I don't change up too much, I may change an offer for a few months. But for the most part, I'm going to give the $29.95 deluxe oil lube and filter with a free tire rotation. And I always give a free break inspection. 

Jimmy: Love it. Love it. Can you go back to the chat. OK, so Bill's asking what's the hyperlink in the chat screen. And I think he's asking on the Connect Chat, yeah, that connection. Is it the connection or is it the text connect? Because I think the hyperlink on the technique allows you to edit the information. I wonder if he's talking about that hyperlink below. We might have to get with you and talk about that one. 

Mike D: Yeah, I'm not really sure. OK, stay right here because I want to bring Kayleigh in. I want Kelly to talk about our big announcement because there are some amazing big announcements that we want to talk about, because it's going to make everyone's life so much easier. Instead of having a Google Doc that we have to do things manually now, we've got quickly tell us what we've got going. I love this announcement. 

Kayleigh: OK, before I do the exciting announcement, I'm going to do a couple of boring announcements first. OK, so I want to answer a question that came in on the chat, which was asking about how integrations work and if something is updated. And quickly, do you need to update it in Mitchell to the answer is Yes. We pull from Mitchell, we don't push into Mitchell. So same goes with pretty much every point of sale system. The very rare exception, pretty much no exception. We just take information from your point of sale system. if you make changes that quickly, be sure to make them also in your point of sale system to also if you make them in your point of sale system, we'll update on our end, as well. So just wanted to make that clear. Another quick one. When we looked at the customer's tab and the toggle that you turn on to someone into text messages and there are two text message toggles, there's one that says text communications, and there's one that says text marketing. And they work a little bit differently. Text communications is basically on your end whether you want to talk to them. And if you turn that off, it's going to stop them from generating no matter what their status is. It's just saying, we don't want to communicate with these people anymore. So we're disabling text communications. Text marketing, on the other hand, is the toggle that you turn on when they are opting themselves in for text marketing so that you can send them those blasts so that they can go into that auto send queue. And in order to turn that one on, you need to have some express permission from them in some way. So maybe they've signed a form saying that they're willing to participate in your text message program. Maybe they signed it on your invoice, or maybe they've gone through one of our other methods by filling out a form on your website or a pop up or something like that. And in those cases, it'll automatically switch to on. You don't have to do it. So just wanted to make this a couple of things clear before I do my big announcement, which is that we added two new triggers that are based on what you all have been asking for. This is for a recommended services and declined services. So we got a little bit of foreshadowing from that. Mike talked about it a little bit when he was first giving his demo. So those two just released as of yesterday. You can have triggers that'll trigger based on if a customer and your point of sale system has a recommendation and it can send out if you assign due dates, you can send out on the due date that it was assigned to, or it can also send out maybe 45 days after you made the recommendation. If it's not made. So that's our big exciting new update. More to come in the future, but hopefully that's something that'll be helpful for you all and that your customers will find valuable as well. 

Jimmy: Nice, nice. So awesome, I love this recommended services, I love that's in there, you can customize the message. It's going to be amazing. That's going to be awesome. 

Mike D: Remember to make sure that I mean, the only way this can extract the information is if you put it into your system. So it's pulling from Recommendations if you don't follow through and put it in there, it doesn't know it's there, the recommendation, so it's real crucial that whoever's writing the ticket in Mitchell or a writer or whatever, they're taking and putting a note in recommendations, because when you actually see the recommendation that you sent to the customer, it's word for word what you typed in to Mitchell. 

Jimmy: That's right, that's right, it's word for word when you typed to your point of sale system. So be careful what you write. 

Kayleigh: Look, I do have one clarification also, which is so it doesn't include the recommendation text because of that, because they can be so long and oftentimes they don't fit in the text message. So our default is going to say that you have recommendations that were made and you haven't gotten them taken care of and give us a call or text us and we'll give you all the details and that'll avoid having that really clunky robotic looking text that gets pulled over. Because as we mentioned earlier, one of the things that works really well about this organic conversational feeling that your customers get when they get these text messages and having a big ugly all caps, just a bunch of numbers and letters put in there, kind of kills that. So so what we're doing is we're starting that conversation. We're letting them know that these recommendations are pending and we're getting them to engage with you. So that you can talk to them about it. 

Jimmy: Nice awesome. Love it, absolutely love it, so exciting and DeFino does customize some of his messages using that Google copy and paste and send, that's a very manual process, I think. Very quickly, very quickly, Mike, you're going to see that the message sent automatically is going to save a ton of time and probably get a very similar result because it's still customized right straight to that customer. It's got their name in it. 

Mike D: Correct 

Jimmy: Beautiful. Beautiful well, let's go ahead, we're going to stop sharing your screen, we'll come back over to my screen. And let's conclude what we're doing here, because it is an awesome day. I appreciate everyone that's been in this webinar. You've got some valuable information. You probably still have even quite a bit more questions that you want to ask. And we want to be able to answer those questions for you. So please let us get together. Let us sit down and have a conversation. Everyone that is on this webinar live, we're going to send to you a cup of coffee. Watch your email. This is where the coffee comes to you. It comes in an e gift card to your email. Watch for this information coming through. Get with your client success coordinator. Let us sit down. Let us talk about what we can do to help your shop use this powerful tool log in every day, hit send on those messages that need to go out and make sure your supervisor knows to respond as well. Go ahead, Mike. 

Mike D: It's simple. It's not hard. This is not hard. 

Jimmy: No, it's not hard, it is easy, and we're super excited that you were able to explain this to everybody because a lot of shop owners have questions. They have questions about it. Oh, my gosh, I don't want to I don't want to bombard everybody. I don't want to spam my clients. I don't want to spend my customers. And you won't you won't a great thank you for joining. Mike, thank you for the information. I really appreciate it. 

Mike D: As always. I appreciate you guys. You do an awesome job for me. And, you know, I hope everyone has a wonderful day. Stay healthy. 

Jimmy: Stay healthy. Thank you. And Bill, get with your client success coordinator. You definitely need to have some conversations. You've got great questions. Couldn't answer them all here. Get with your success coordinator. This is my email. This is my cell phone. You've got a question. Send me a text, ok? I can definitely help out. We can get you with the right people. Join us on Facebook on the KUKUI surf team. This is where shop owners are talking about their successes, their programs, what's working, what's not. We're changing, exchanging ideas and marketing ideas. And I want to write a book. I want to write a book about the 99 top marketing methods that shops are using today. Watch on Facebook for this. It's going to be a Google Doc. I would love to hear from you and your shop. What is it that you are doing? What are your top 99 things that you do at your shop that sees success as a consistent marketing method? Love to hear about it.