BDC stands for Business Development Centre. At a car dealership it is the team — sometimes one person, sometimes a department — responsible for answering inbound internet and phone enquiries, qualifying them, and booking appointments for the sales or service floor. It exists so salespeople stay with customers who are physically in the store.
The BDC is the first human contact most car buyers have with a dealership. It takes third-party and website leads, replies quickly, works out what the customer wants and when, and puts an appointment on the calendar. It also handles follow-up on enquiries that did not book the first time, and in many stores the service side too.
Car shoppers submit enquiries to several dealers at once, and most of that activity happens in the evening. The store that answers first usually gets the appointment, which is why response time is watched more closely than any other BDC metric — and why after-hours coverage is where most BDCs lose deals.
Business Development Centre — the dealership team handling inbound lead response and appointment setting.
It is narrower. A BDC's job is converting enquiries into set appointments for a specific store, not general call handling.
The first-response, qualification and after-hours parts, yes — see the AI BDC for car dealerships page.
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