The Customer: Walser Toyota.
Founded in 1955, Walser Automotive Group comprises 31 rooftops across Kansas and Minnesota and was named one of the nation’s top dealer groups by Automotive News.
This recognition was in part due to the company’s dedication to improving the customer experience. Recognizing that the sales process in most dealerships was geared toward the dealer and not the customer, the company opted in 2001 to become a one-price dealer group.
In 2012 Walser Toyota—a leading dealership in the Walser Group ranked #1 for passenger car sales in the Midwest Region for 2022—began selling its vehicles through a beta version of the Fuse (Finance Under Secure Environment) platform. At this time the store also made the transition to single-point-of-contact, enabling one person to handle sales, financing, and delivery of the vehicle.
In the majority of cases, Walser Toyota’s customers would call or visit the store already knowing the exact vehicle they wanted to purchase. They only had one question: “What will my payment be?”
Unfortunately, without an automated way to communicate with several banks in real-time, figuring out payment scenarios was a long, manual process. Therefore, the business development center (BDC) was unable to offer customers a straightforward answer in a reasonable amount of time. Ready-to-buy customers were walking into the dealership only to get slowed down.
This was particularly challenging because the Toyota brand features 27 different models with multiple option and configuration possibilities.
In addition, like many dealerships, Walser Toyota could not get monthly compliant website specials published until one to three weeks into the month, resulting in substantial lost sales opportunities every month. The manual, disjointed specials process led to compliance issues and, as a result, strikes from manufacturers that negatively affected the dealership.
In January 2022, Walser Toyota fully implemented Fuse Transact and Fuse Dynamic Payments, and Consulting.
With Fuse, Walser has been able to automate the process of selling a car and add efficiency to its existing single-point-of-contact selling model. By eliminating the arduous, back-and-forth process, the store realized an immediate positive change for both dealers and customers.
Since implementation, Walser has cut its total transaction time to as little as 30 minutes and increased customer satisfaction ratings.
“Not only were they quick to respond, they were quick with the whole buying process and I didn't have to wait to speak to anyone about financials. He could do it all right there on his computer. It was nice having Bill there to help and explain and do everything in one spot so I was not bouncing around from person to person.”
Summer K., Walser Customer
Walser Toyota leverages:
Fuse Dynamic Payments to analyze its inventory, apply offers, identify the best available discounts, and get compliant specials with full disclaimers published faster. Instead of publishing compliant specials within one or two weeks of the month, Walser is now getting fully compliant deals published by the third day of every month. The store is beating all of its competitors to market with these offers.
In addition, Walser relies on Dynamic Payments to find combinable rebates and rebates previously unknown by the team. Dynamic Payments uncovers the same deals in seconds that once took hours to replicate manually.
Dynamic Payments feeds directly into the dealership's SEM (search engine marketing) strategy. Digital ads are payment specific on every make, model, and trim that Walser Toyota advertises. Going beyond regional or general model offers, Dynamic Payments generates deals based on Walser's actual inventory.
Fuse Transact as the point-of-sale for all Walser Toyota's new and used vehicle transactions. Because it integrates multiple dealership legacy software platforms into one application, Walser Toyota can present prices, payments, and credit applications and decisions all on one screen. Customers complete their entire purchase and financing process in Fuse and sign documents digitally in the platform.
Since its full implementation, Walser Toyota has shortened transaction time to as little as 30 minutes and has seen 1.95% growth in regional market share.
Fuse Transact, Dynamic Payments, and Consulting has empowered the Walser Toyota team to:
“There's nothing faster than this software. Walser's core model is now faster and negotiation-free. Fuse allows us to get a customer through the system with one person handling the whole time. And it's fair because it's consistent with every customer. Any customer who comes in will get the same offer no matter who they are.”
Walser Toyota
“Fuse has created a ton of efficiencies, so we then, in turn, focus on what our lead handling looks like and driving that growth.”
Walser Toyota
“If you're a traditional dealership with a BDC, this tool is helpful. I don't know how many times I had to put customers on hold and wait hours just to quote them a payment when I was working at a traditional dealership. Now I can do that within 30 seconds. The experience is so much smoother and high quality with a tool like Fuse.”
Walser Toyota
“I can't tell you how painful it was for us before Fuse.”
Walser Toyota