Has Dealership Tech Support Gone The Way of the Dodo? A Quick History of Dealership IT – ADP and CDK Support

If you haven’t been in the business for a while, the average person would not know that the top dealership software for many years was ADP (Automatic Data Processing). 

 

Their customer support and service was outstanding and an entity of its own so they spun this service off and renamed it CDK. 

 

Some of us of a certain vintage will remember when they used to put servers inside your store. Each dealership had to take care of their own hardware to support all the different functions. 

 

Since counting service parts was held regionally, this meant there were large depots of systems. 

 

For a dealership with multiple rooftops, each store was linked to the main 8500 system – but that meant that one problem affected everyone. 

 

Regular calls to ADP support meant knowing that you would get to know the same person who taught you the Dealer Management System (DMS) and it felt a lot more personal.

 

Most dealership tech is now in the cloud, and getting network support can be challenging. 

With today’s DMS tech support (or most generic tech support services), you log onto a portal that then determines what level your issue is before even trying to tackle said issue. 

 

Raise your hand if you’ve been here: You open a ticket, go into a queue, and someone calls you back and they help you work through the issue. That’s the best case scenario… oftentimes it takes days or even weeks of back and forth to get it fixed. 

We have all experienced waiting for a reply from a company for an issue but then getting a survey asking “how did we do?” because the ticket was closed. Yet… your issue still isn’t resolved.

 

Unfortunately, good dealership tech support isn’t very common. For example, one of our new customers told us that they had an issue porting telephone numbers out of CDK. And even though their support said it would be simple, it isn’t such a simple task. After months – yes, months – of waiting on tech support, they called us to help.

What we do at VTech Dealer IT is key because there is someone always on the other end. 

 

Personal service never goes out of style. People like to know who to call to get the job done, while getting good service that doesn’t make you want to yell in an empty service bay.

 

What would you rather choose: one-to-one support from a tech you know or wading through 15 emails about tickets with different reps every time?

 

Someone in your organization should be that support for every client you have, knowing how to make it happen on your side of the business. That personal touch is what keeps the customers happy and makes your business better.