There are two kinds of car dealers: those that know they have a lost key problem and those that don’t have a clue how much this problem costs them every month.

Industry data shows that the average car dealership spends $2,000/month re-keying vehicles due to lost keys. And that’s just the out-of-pocket cost, not counting lost time and productivity or the cost of bad customer experience.

The good news is that a key tracking system can fix this problem and give dealers a competitive edge. And the key tracking solution actually pays for itself.

What? It’s just a key, right?

Here are our top 10 reasons key tracking matters:

1. 1. Dealers lose more than 4 billion dollars in lost keys (rekey costs, wasted productivity & lost sales) each year.  Replacing a key outright is not an inexpensive undertaking. Rekeying alone can cost the average dealer thousands each month. The struggle is real.

   2. Waiting is not good for sales. Walk offs are the same as lost sales and nothing encourages a buyer to go elsewhere like waiting an average of 30 minutes for the car (and the key) they wanted to see to be found.

   3. Existing systems lack location specifics. There are lots of key tracking solutions and something is surely better than nothing, but locker-based systems cannot tell you where a key is, only that it’s out there…somewhere.

   4. Human tracking is just that, human. People lose keys, keys don’t lose themselves. So, people-based tracking systems are like asking the fox to track the chickens. Human tracking may be better than nothing, but not by much.

   5. Charging staff for lost keys impacts sales. We hear this one a lot. “I don’t have a problem; I just charge the staff.” But how much time will sales staff spend looking versus selling if they think the lost key comes out of their pay?

   6. Passing the cost on to the buyer can upset the sale. At first blush some dealers think, I’ll just bury the loss in the deal. Two issues: 1) if caught, it can be hard to explain to a buyer, and; 2) why throw that margin away if you don’t have to?

   7. Frustration is not good for staff retention or efficacy. Maybe one of the most hidden costs to poor key tracking is staff stress. Retaining good people is hard to do and removing missing key frustration can retain good people AND put them in a cooler, more ready-to-sell mindset.

   8. Lost keys are the opposite of good service. As shown above, losing keys means possibly losing a buyer, but what about in the service bay? We all know service is a large margin business and keeping a service customer waiting, or worse, losing their keys, is a relationship and margin killer.

   9. Search time is not free, don’t waste it (sales or porters). Another common claim, my staff tracks keys. Again, humans lose keys, they don’t track them. When they are lost, they search for them at the expense of their real jobs – serving customers and selling cars. Particularly if penalized.

   10. Pinpoint solutions pay for themselves month over month. If not for all the reasons above, here’s the most compelling: Location-based key tracking pays for itself within the first 30-days of deployment. 95% of key loss cost can be eliminated at zero expense.

In a world of compressed margins, increasing competition, and critical customer service, forward-looking car dealers are embracing every opportunity to be more efficient and profitable.

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About TrueSpot:

Formerly known as MOLOCAR, TrueSpot was founded in 2017 by a collaboration of mobile technology insiders and auto dealership owners and operators to invent a better, more robust dealer asset management and on-lot selling solution. TrueSpot is the industry’s first solution for real-time inventory location data. TrueSpot partners with key technology and industry players such as Microsoft and CDK Global while also being easily compatible with many other dealer technology partners such as Dealertrack Technologies, vAuto, DealerSync, and others.