The short answer
An automotive BDC (Business Development Center) is the team at, or working for, a car dealership that handles customer communication before the customer walks in. The BDC’s job is to turn inquiries into appointments that show up.
Leads arrive from many places: the dealership’s website, third-party listing sites, the manufacturer, trade-in tools like Kelley Blue Book Instant Cash Offer, phone calls and the store’s own customer database. Someone has to respond to all of them quickly and keep following up. That’s the BDC.
What a BDC does
- Lead follow-up: contacting internet, third-party, OEM and trade-in leads by phone, text and email.
- Inbound calls: answering sales and service calls, or handling overflow when the store is busy.
- Appointment setting: booking a specific time for the customer to visit, with notes for the salesperson or service advisor.
- Confirmations and no-shows: confirming before the appointment and following up with customers who miss.
- Database outreach: calling past customers about upgrades, lease-ends, service and recalls.
- CRM documentation: logging every interaction so managers can see what happened with every customer.
Sales BDC vs. service BDC
A sales BDC focuses on vehicle shoppers: leads, phone-ups, trade-ins and database campaigns. A service BDC focuses on the service drive: scheduling, reminders, declined-work follow-up and recalls. Many stores run both. See service BDC.
Why dealerships have BDCs
Salespeople are best at working with customers in person. When they also have to answer every lead and call, follow-up suffers, especially on busy days. A BDC separates the two jobs so every lead gets a fast, consistent response and the sales floor sees more appointments.
In-house vs. outsourced BDC
Some dealerships hire their own BDC agents and a BDC manager. Others outsource to a company like Call Contact Confirm, whose agents work inside the dealership’s CRM. Outsourcing removes the hiring, training and turnover problem; in-house gives the store direct control over the team. Read the full comparison: in-house vs. outsourced BDC.
What makes a BDC good
A good BDC is fast (it responds while the customer is still shopping), persistent (it follows up more than once or twice), organized (everything is in the CRM), and focused on shows, not just appointments booked. For many stores it also needs to be bilingual. For example, in our first 30 days on KBB Instant Cash Offer leads for a Central Florida Ford dealership, our team made 3,522 outreach attempts to book 38 appointments, and 83% of the appointments that came due showed up. That’s what persistence looks like in practice.
How Call Contact Confirm fits in
Call Contact Confirm is an outsourced, bilingual BDC for car dealerships, headquartered in Windermere, Florida, and serving dealers across the U.S. Learn more about our outsourced automotive BDC or contact us.