Video calls become daily life check-in at Calif. store

Business development center employees at Stevens Creek Nissan already were accustomed to regular in-person check-ins before the virus outbreak.

So when the Santa Clara, Calif., store was placed under a local shelter-at-home order in the middle of March that closed physical sales departments in the Bay Area, General Manager Brian Bakhtiari and his team needed to find a way to keep those conversations going.

Enter Zoom, the video-conferencing app that has hosted virtual staff meetings across the country since organizations began working from home last month to counter the spread of COVID-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus.

Bakhtiari, who also is vice president of Bakhtiari Auto Group — which has six dealerships in California — extended a Zoom meeting link to the center's staff, as well as any other sales employee who wanted to join.

What started as a routine call about that day's business has turned into an opportunity to check in on a human level and make sure everyone is doing OK.

After talking shop, the group turns to life in general. "How's everyone's family? How are their parents? How are their loved ones doing, and how's everyone doing?" Bakhtiari said. "It brings everybody up because people are at home, they're helping their children do homework, they're stressed out, they really don't have any answers.

"I don't have any more answers than they do," he added. "Just hearing from me: 'Hey, guys, I'm in the same boat, I don't have answers' ... a lot of times that just kind of helps them, as well as it helps me just power through the day until we can get to the end of this."

Bakhtiari aims to hold the call daily. So far, it's held only for the Stevens Creek Nissan dealership, though Bakhtiari said general managers at other stores in the group could adopt the idea if they like it.

"It'll probably be about 10 to 15 minutes of business talk and then we'll just kind of catch up," he said.

The conversations run "the full gamut of human emotions," Bakhtiari said. Witnessing customers fighting over a shopping cart at the grocery store. Joking around with colleagues they haven't seen in person for a while.

For employees home with their children, it's a chance to converse with other adults.

Even birthdays are recognized. Normally, employees' birthdays are celebrated with cake, Bakhtiari said. That's not an option right now, so when a staffer mentioned on the call that he was spending his birthday at home, "we sang them 'Happy Birthday,' " he said.

The three employees in Stevens Creek Nissan's business development center essentially are the only sales staffers still working while showrooms are closed, other than the finance managers, Bakhtiari said. They're working from home and responding to incoming leads, but it has been difficult to reach customers to talk about a vehicle purchase.

Customers they do talk to have relayed their own uncertain financial circumstances, he said. Sales have been slow. "They're not prospecting right now," Bakhtiari said.

He said he wanted to share details of the daily check-in calls to possibly inspire other dealership managers to try the idea.

They are important, he said, because a business is only as successful as its employees.

"If a staff is motivated, they're going to do well," Bakhtiari said. "If a staff is demotivated or not mentally prepared for what it takes to be successful, they're not going to do as well. And my investment in the staff is — it's everything.

"If I don't have people that are willing to work for me and willing to work with me, then I'm not going to be successful."