Fixed Ops Roundtable: The Communication Panel ft. Jake Davis

Welcome back to the FixOps Roundtable. I'm Sarah Vantine here with Ted Ings. Today we have the communication panel. And Ted, lots of excitement about communication here at Paragon Honda.

That's right. Jake Davis from Volley is with us. Jake, welcome to Queens, New York.

Oh, love to be here. Thanks for having me.

That's right. And we got some of the greats up here with us as well. Jake, first question, if I may come to you. How can dealerships automate communication without losing the human touch?

Well, there's— when you talk about AI and automation, you know, there's a— it's not just replacing a human with a robot answering the phone. So there's a lot of different ways to automate these processes. And the key thing that I come back to, Brian Benstock earlier in the day was talking about how there are, you know, a handful of new car sales competitors in the area, but there are tens of thousands of locations where a consumer can go and get their car serviced. It is more important than ever that we are reaching these people. And so how would I automate? You know, I would remove all of the grunt work that needs to be done in between phone calls and researching people and teeing up this information so that the people in the store, like you said, the human touch, can go ahead and, reach out to these people and schedule the appointments. The people feel like the phones are, you know, kind of dead. But the truth is, and, you know, we have tens of millions of phone calls every single month through Volley, text messages, emails, and the data does show that consumers still schedule the appointments on the phone. And every single outbound appointment that you schedule is someone who wasn't going to come in or they're coming in earlier than they would have.

And Steve, same question for you. There is a balancing act between the human touch and the automating?

Yeah, yeah, I think that, um, if I was a dealer, I'd be looking at trying to solve both of these things simultaneously, right? Knowing that 47% of my cost structure is human labor. And I gotta give my, my, my humans tools to make them more effective, to drive productivity gains by probably offloading the, the monotonous repetitive tasks they don't want to do anyway. And let AI do that for them. But at the same time, we have to be centered to the AC, consumer and make sure that the consumer experience is actually increasing. Give the humans, uh, free them up to have more touch points with the consumers, but also, like, you're going to get into, I'm sure, Jake, with your product, is augment their intelligence, right?

Make them smarter.

So the quality of those interactions, those consumer interactions, is actually higher than it was before. And if you can, you can solve that simultaneously, drive productivity growth, while at the same time increasing customer satisfaction, that, that's really what I think dealers should be trying to solve for.

Oh, no doubt. There's no doubt that the best, you know, if you're spending 47% of your costs on the people, those people should be in front of customers as much as possible.

And give them the right tools to succeed, right? So I think that's where AI fills the gap. It's going to enhance their performance and it's going to take those mundane jobs away from them, but it's going to allow them and empower them to actually take the step forward and making sure that customer experience is really above and beyond, right? For us, we We, number one job was not to stop missing calls. We went from missing 2,000 calls a month to now missing no calls. You know how many transactions were missed in that gap and having people sitting on the, on the, on the bench just kind of watching all this take place. I mean, if someone calls and says, I want to schedule an appointment tomorrow at 6 PM, we don't need to have highly productive individuals taking phone calls like that. It's a waste of their time and it's a waste of their intelligence and things of that nature. Or give them the ability, give them the know-how, give them the tools to elevate that experience for the customer. And if they reach out and say, I'd like to speak to one, right off the bat they could get transferred over to them and have a live agent on the other line and said, hey, I heard everything that you wanted to do. How can I assist and move forward? And I think that's where AI can really fill the gaps and that's where it can allow people to really grow. I mean, you can't get excited as an individual having a list of 1,000 people put in front of you and you got to call every single one of them about the same single thing. You know, after call number 30, you're drained. You're no longer enthused to keep making those phone calls, but giving them the ability to turn somebody's day around because they were involved, that's empowering. And people like that will go up and above for anyone. So, and we've noticed that firsthand really start to turn with us. A, we were able to move on, move people into right roles that they fit in, but we couldn't, we didn't see it at first.

Jake, I want to go back talking about customer perception when it comes to AI-driven communication. You know what? What are you seeing that actually makes those types of conversations feel authentic instead of robotic?

Well, it is very key, as Murat said, that the handoff between the robot and the human is seamless. You know, the two things. One, you do not want, we've all been there, representative, great, you know, just so I know how to get you to the right person, please give me a little more information. Representative, just so I know how to, you know, we've all been caught in that circle. Yeah, 100%. Or hang up and I'm going to Jiffy Lube, right? 100%. So making sure that when the customer does want to get to a person, transfer them right away. And then taking that and making it a good transition where it's not just a, you know, a cold transfer to the person. Hello, this is Jake, you know, what can I help you with? But having that transcript, having all that information integrated into their dialing system so they can pick up the phone and go right from where the AI left off is very key.

And Steve, you know, from what you're seeing, dealerships have more choices than ever regarding AI. So what strategies would you say to a dealership that's looking to have a more authentic feeling communication?

Yeah, I think it's a good question because we are seeing more and more AI solutions. If I'm a dealer, I'm probably getting inundated with all kinds of edges right now. I think, you know, this balance that we're talking about, like you're going to have humans, you want the human touch, you want to express your brand, be a human connection. But at the same time, as Murat said, it's like, you know, after hours when there's no one here, you got to have AI answering the calls. So you need to balance these things and then making sure that that handoff is seamless. So I think that dealers need to work with their partners, their vendors to really be able to satisfy both of these things, right? You want engaged employees by freeing them up. You want to not lose the humanity the human touch with your customers. But at the same time, you want to automate as much as possible without alienating the customers.

Gentlemen, one more question. Customer trust starts before anyone answers the phone. How important is caller reputation in today's dealership environment?

Jake, for you first. Oh, 100%. You know, I first met the Paragon team, Rachel here in 2022. And at the time, uh, when, when we started working with them, uh, 30% of all of the dealership's phone numbers would have at least one of the carriers labeling that call the spam or fraud. And nowadays, just 4 years later, that number has risen to 43.2%. 43.2% of all the dealership's numbers are showing up as spam. And we know that customers are 38% more likely to answer the phone a cold call if it doesn't say spam, right? I'm surprised it's not higher. That is what the data shows. It is, uh, 30%.

I got 100%.

100%. So, uh, but no, that they're— so making sure that our calls are coming up clean, uh, not showing negatively is— we said earlier how the human connection, getting people on the phone is very important. Well, if they're not going to answer, then you just wasted that, that agent's time anyway.

And Steve, that caller reputation is now a it seems to have risen to the forefront.

Yeah, I mean, that would be number one priority for me if I was a dealer, is making sure that my, like, phone, outbound phone calls are whitelisted or whatever you're calling it. I mean, I know I'm the same way. I mean, I do not call, answer anything that says spam. I got a magic— that's going to be the way that we move in the future. So if you can solve that for dealers, it's a huge break.

Oh, there's a war on communication for sure. So making sure that you can communicate with your customers is very important.

Then you also factor in state regulations. Right? Two-party state, single-party state, who can you call, who can you not call, who you can text, who you're not can text.

How often can you call them?

Exactly. So it is choppy waters to navigate, and you guys do a tremendous job with it. So kudos to you guys. Keep rocking out, man.

Oh, you guys are great partners.

Exciting opportunities, Ted, and communication is just going to be more and more important in the entire retention strategy.

It is. I'm Ted Ings with Sarah Van Tine. We're here in Queens, New York at Paragon. Honda, and we will be right back.

Ciao.