BDC (Business Development Center)
The dealership department that owns customer communication: inbound calls, internet leads, texts, chats and outbound follow-up for Sales and Service, measured on appointments set, shown and sold.
A Business Development Center centralizes every customer contact that would otherwise land on a salesperson's or advisor's phone. It answers, qualifies, books, confirms and follows up, and it logs all of it in the CRM and scheduler so the store can see it.
BDCs run in-house, outsourced to a BDC company, or as AI plus live agents. Alpha Drive AI is the third model, operated by Dealer's Greatest Assets, which has run the second since 1993.
In practice
A BDC's day is a queue: the phone rings, a lead lands, a text arrives, and the agent's job is to turn each one into a booked appointment in the scheduler with a note in the CRM. Peaks come at lunch, after school pickup and the first hour after the store closes, which is why abandon rate is the first metric a new BDC manager attacks. Sales and Service BDCs are usually reported separately because the work, the systems and the conversion rates differ.
Common mistake
Measuring the BDC on calls made and emails sent. Those are inputs. The department exists to produce shown appointments and the revenue behind them, and a scorecard that does not lead with set, show and sold will reward the wrong behavior.
Also called: business development center, bdc department.
Read the chapter: What is a BDC? →
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