The AI Revolution in Fixed Ops: Unfair Advantage or Impending Doom?

Welcome to the big show. I'm Chris Collins. Adam is here. Hoagie is here. And today we are going to talk about AI and the impending doom of the future. Adam went to the TMC conference and had some, you know, cool takeaways from that that he's going to share with everybody and much, much more coming up right now on Service Drive Revolution. I've been looking at boats. Something we might touch on a little bit today is AI. But where, you know, where I need to buy a boat up in Washington, the boats that I would like, there's no dealer there. And so I have to like, you know, compromise on the brand of the boat. And I was emailing the deal— the dealership there about a boat asking like, how long does it take to order a boat and get it? And it's all AI answering me and you can't get a straight answer. So it just says, it says virtual assistant in the like signature, like it gives it a name. You guys know those little igloo coolers with wheels that drive around LA? Have you guys seen those? Mm-hmm.

Yep.

So for the rest of the country, if you haven't seen this, I don't know that it's in other places, certainly not in rural places, but there's these like coolers that will go to restaurants and pick up food and then deliver them for Instacart or Uber Eats. And they, they drive on the sidewalk, but they do this thing where they give them a name and they have a little screen with like eyeballs because, you know, the psychology of it is if if it has a name and it seems more human, you won't just push it off into the weeds and mess with it or whatever. You know, there's, there's all these studies about human behavior and robots and how you interact with robots. But if robots have, you know, human-like characteristics, you treat them different. And then there eventually will probably be people that fall in love with robots. I would guess if that hasn't happened already. I think maybe it has. But so what's interesting is this robot that I'm asking about a boat, which is just answering email, has a name, has like a signature, but their title underneath is virtual robot or virtual assistant. It's AI and it can't answer anything. Like, so it doesn't know how long it takes to order a boat. It doesn't know what they have in stock. It doesn't know anything. It basically is an autoresponder. It's super annoying.

Just getting your information? Does it at least do that?

No, it's like, uh, it's like, hello, Chris, I'm blah, blah, blah. I'm here to help you. I saw you inquired. And then I'm like, because the first time I hadn't read the C, I thought it was an actual person, right? Because it looks like an actual person's signature. I didn't read the title. And then I was like, how long does it take to order a boat and get it? And then it comes back and it's like, I'll look into that for you. I'm like, okay, here we go. And that's when I read the signature and I'm like, oh, this is a waste of my time. I got bit. I got sucked in thinking it was a real person and it's a lot of nothing. And then of course it's a sales department in a car or truck dealership probably doesn't answer emails until 11. Imagine a boat dealership. It'll be 1 o'clock before I hear from anybody, if even then. They might just reply to emails on Monday.

It's funny you say that with the AI and the responses because I actually called American Airlines to cancel my credit card and there was an AI person. They have that right. It was very simple, very easy, very personable. Thanked me for my time. And, uh, we, uh, we fired each other. We're done.

Boy, that's probably because you were talking to Citibank or something.

The one thing that American Airlines gets right is you can cancel.

Yep.

You canceled your credit card?

The credit card? Yeah, the whole thing, because that's what I was doing. And we're done.

Oh, that's funny.

It's all United, baby. All United.

You know, I, I read a thing on Apple News about, um, United and Delta, both their AI things, uh, they aren't, you know, they're not working as, as well as they want them to. People still want a live agent when it comes to like their travel being messed up or whatever, and they were trying to scale down on you know, like their, their call centers and stuff, and they haven't been able to do it. They've had to add to it. And like when they were investing in the AI stuff, the idea was that they'd be able to, uh, reduce that and they've had to increase it as, you know, air travel has increased and stuff like that. I thought that was really interesting. Like kind of like Chris is talking about, I think sometimes, um, especially if it is the difference between you getting home tonight and not. Like, um, yeah, sometimes the, the robot's not enough, right?

Like, yeah, well, I mean, Elon learned that too in manufacturing, right? Like, he's, he, he's even said recently, like, building the, the ro— the robots that he wants to build and all that, he's— I think he estimated they'll hire another 150,000 people to manufacture. I mean, I'm kind of seeing that here. So we We are starting to pilot AI with a couple dealerships because we, we believe with what we understand and how we're using AI that we can do some incredible things with marketing, driving traffic, profitability, you know, efficiencies. I think most of the people that are installing AI in dealerships don't really understand how the business works. They're installing AI to install AI. In a sense. And we've been through this, right? With inspection software. We've been through this with tablets where it doesn't actually make the customer experience better and it doesn't actually improve profitability in any way. We're just doing a thing because it's the shiny new toy. Because as humans, we're very attracted to novelty, to the new thing. And so our approach is going to be a lot of a lot different than others in that way. And I'm excited to do that. But I will tell you, the way we're starting to use AI here at the company, it's making people more efficient and it's broadening their, their capacity to intake knowledge and process knowledge. It would never replace anybody. Like, I get like, we've been building these machines that have AI and, you know, in the background, we're watching different things. It almost is going to require, especially if we start doing it for our clients, it's going to require us to add people. It isn't going to reduce. I mean, I would, if dealerships wanted to do what we, we would do for them or what we're planning to do for them, it would require a person at least, if not two. To do it. And there are some positions I think that can be eliminated with AI eventually, but I don't think it's advisors. I've said that forever. Like, when people say, oh, advisors are going to get replaced by kiosks, I mean, it's a good thing to have that in the back of your head if you're an advisor, right? Because if you, if you're terrible at your job, yeah, you could be replaced by a kiosk. But if you're really good there's nothing that can replace human connection.

Yeah.

In that way. But I mean, could a warranty administrator be replaced by AI? Yeah, for sure. So there's positions like that, that, that it could happen. And also it could be so much better in a way because you could, you know, you, you could cover liability in a different way, but also you could see what you're missing, maximizing potential. It would analyze things in a completely unbiased way. And it doesn't point fingers in that way too, right? Like how many times have, and I'm not picking on warranty administrators, I'm just saying like, how many times have you sat with a warranty administrator where the schedule's out of line and it's like, you don't know where to start because it's like, well, it's the techs, it's the this, it's the that. And AI just doesn't work that way. It's just black and white. Like, Yeah, it makes everything very, uh, very straightforward and linear.

I can— I think it would streamline the process though too, and connecting the, the different facets of the dealership from warranty, right? Because you're saying going back and forth trying to, uh, collect the entire story. What if there's— it just gives different prompts for a technician just to be able to do a couple clicks on what actually happened based on what the part was? and it's just running in the background to have a creative story to be able to file for warranty or customer pay.

Yeah. And I also just wonder too, in that, you know, same vein is how many times lately do you still hear about parts not being able to get parts? Like I just hear that constantly. And I don't understand from a logistics point of view, how manufacturers haven't figured that out. Like, I agree, it's such an efficiency killer on the, you know, on the dealership side or on the end user side, but also the parts department. It's just, I don't for the life of me understand how they haven't connected those dots. It's a parts inventory and supply and demand is like, that's like barely a snack for AI. It's not a, yeah, it's not a hard thing for it to do. It's a little more complicated for humans, but for AI, it's super simple. So I don't, I just don't understand how some of these manufacturers and the money that they spend on things, they haven't figured out the parts supply thing when it's, when it's so much money to them, like it's so much revenue that's lost and morale and inefficiencies and It's crazy.

Yeah. Yeah. Especially with how much emphasis there is on customer experience and, you know, and there should be an emphasis on customer experience, but, you know, the real impact that can be made with parts availability on customer experience is huge. Like, you know, I'm no stranger to open RO list and like, you know, some of these brands now, It's not—

they've cut back on the market team too, right? So you don't even have a human assistance. Yeah, before you would be like, hey, can you, can you get this? We got to have this part. And they'll pull it from the, from the assembly line if they have to. They've cut— the manufacturers have cut back so much on support that you don't even have anybody that can do that. And the people that are left in support roles for the manufacturers are just overwhelmed.

Mhm. Mhm.

Well, I also think that they, they're just, uh, from what I've heard in some of the OEMs, is that even those, those parts support people, they just got to sit there and wait. So can you imagine from a customer experience, uh, point, Hoagie, like you're saying, is that you just tell a dealer as the customer, like, well, you tell the client or your, your end user, uh, we don't know Or we're still waiting for tracking, or we're still waiting for an estimated ship date from the supplier. Okay, where's the supplier? Oh, maybe it is overseas, or maybe they got to manufacture it. Like, I remember there was times, um, man, not even that long ago that, like you said, Chris, you could just pull off the assembly line. Like, you had somebody you could actually call, and it wasn't the ideal situation, but sometimes you just got to get it going. And people would even stay off of, uh, I probably shouldn't say this, but they'd even pull it off of, uh, vehicles that were on the lot to get a vehicle going, knowing that you'd have to obviously get a new part when it comes in, take care of the customer, and take care of the dealer in that standpoint. But anything to get those things rolling.

Yeah, especially in states that have lemon laws, right? Because the You know, you just, the clock is ticking. So I always like, I always hated pulling a part off of another car, but yeah, sometimes you got to do that.

Yeah, there's, I won't say the brand, but I had to take a required parts course one time and the, they take us to, they wanted to show us a couple of different things like behind the scenes. So we did parts training. The first day was at one of the parts distribution centers. And that was kind of cool seeing the logistics and seeing what happens and just all that stuff. And then they took us to the call center, to the parts hotline call center. And we're meeting with those people. And every single one of their computer monitors had these be empathetic pep talk quotes all over their computer screen. These guys are just getting yelled at every day. But, uh, the whole thing, the whole class was built around, uh, to make us feel sorry for them because how hard it was on their side. It was this weird thing to create empathy for, for the mistakes. Yeah. Instead of like, how can we partner to get solutions and stuff like that? Like, it was all this thing like, you know, um, it's not going to get any better, so maybe if they just feel sorry for us. Like they'll be more understanding or something. It was an odd, odd thing to experience, but it kind of speaks to what Chris is saying. Like, the problems, they just kind of treat them like they are what they are and we're just letting them lay there instead of all this technology is laying around us. Now, the other thing that's funny about that though is like, you know, a lot of times there's a guided discovery we use with service advisors a lot to like tell them they are their customer. Right? Like, there's a funny thing where if you have an advisor list, like characteristics and expectations of their customers, they'll say they're needy, entitled, like all that stuff. And then I say, okay, now, yeah. And now let's go, let's pretend we're all parts people, go to the parts counter. Okay. And pretend you're a parts person. And now I'm going to ask you, What are the characteristics and expectations of a service advisor? And they'll start listing off the same stuff, right? They're needy, they're entitled, they want everything right now, like all of that stuff. And the reason I bring that analogy up is like we talk about the, you know, the thing with parts is real and embracing AI to solve some of those problems and resolve them and and then what are we doing ourselves to be self-aware, right? Like I feel like it's kind of the same thing. Cause that's a big thing you hear out there right now is, oh, we can't get parts, we can't get parts. And there's a lot of things we can be doing to improve our businesses, our shops, things like that. But we get stuck on, you know, these things that just kind of live rent-free in our head.

Have you seen—

interesting.

Have you seen that Bezos raised $1 billion for another company that he wants to do that is just logistics and manufacturing with AI in a sense? Because I don't know if you've heard, but I've talked to people who have been to a couple of Amazon warehouses that there are no— they're basically no people. Like, they run completely on robotics and AI. And just think about, because I've been to quite a few parts depots for manufacturers and, you know, the whole game there is like figuring out human error. Like there's still just a ton of mispicks in human error. And Amazon, I mean, if you just try to think about the last time you ordered something from Amazon that came wrong. It just never happens. And they're logistically doing something way harder than Ford is doing with parts or whatever. So it's interesting that there's probably two parts of the economy that are really, really inefficient. One is healthcare and how the billing and the communication and paperwork and all that happens and just logistics of nurses and doctors. But the other one is manufacturing. And we have firsthand experience with automotive or truck parts depots being super inefficient. And still, I mean, they still have the charts up of like, they're trying to be under a 2%, if they're under a 2% error rate, that's good. Like think about 2 out of 100 parts are pulled wrong and get to the end user wrong. And all the, you know, you're talking about like the way they do it and the amount of eyeballs on it and double checking that's in place. And still there's a high level of error rate with that. It's just nuts.

It's crazy though, Chris, when you bring that up, I keep thinking about, I was just talking to a truck dealer the other day and they're looking at investing into like those bending machines for their parts that has some sort of AI software that helps them. But it's— I still think of how much money it takes to invest in some of these like machines still, not even just the software with AI. But, uh, when those things go or break down, they still take some sort of maintenance. If the conveyor or whatever breaks down, uh, I asked, well, what's the failure rate on that and how long does it take to, to get back up? Well, it depends. They'd have to send somebody out. But their goal is 48 hours. Can you imagine waiting for parts to get off on like the opposite side or whatever and like a parts vending machine for 48 hours? Like, that's crazy.

Yeah.

Yeah, but it saves space.

Yeah, I don't know. It's a Band-Aid treat. It's treating the symptom, not the cause, really. I mean, this stuff is going to advance so fast. So fast. I mean, it's just, it's, it's insane what you can do. I don't want to really say the stuff that we're doing here with AI because it's a, it's a competitive advantage for us, the things we're doing. But it blows me away. Like, I know Adam, like, I've kind of been telling you some of the stuff and, you know, like, wait till next week when you guys are here. We'll go through some of it. But It's unlimited what it can do in the— in its ability to connect dots and see past, you know, human comprehension and be able to process, you know, different scenarios and see it as a grand strategy or as an ecosystem is, you know, something that you— it takes a army of humans to do, and they can do it pretty quick. So Adam just got back from TMC, which— Adam, just briefly explain what TMC is. What does it stand for?

So, um, TMC stands for Technical Maintenance Council. It's a subset of, um, ATA, which is American Trucking Association, which is similar to NADA for the automotive side, right? Yeah. So ATA and TMC is really probably more geared towards the fleet side of commercial trucks, but it really brings— there's two major meetings a year. We just got back from the annual meeting in Nashville. But I would say to summarize it is you get like-minded individuals from the fleet service providers and OEMs together to help create recommended practices for the industry in the commercial space. So it's I look at it as a way to network, interact, and improve the betterment of the industry for maintaining vehicles on the road, right? Cleansing the vehicles on the road, making them safer but efficient and maximize their full potential and giving back. That's why I like going every time. It's just giving back to what the industry's been able to give me.

Yeah, and our listeners on the car side maybe kind of understand that on the trucking side, a lot of trucking is B2B. So it's fleets and it's business to business. It's not consumer-based. So it's a different business model, which, you know, everybody should try to learn and understand different business models because on the, automotive side or the, you know, truck part of automotive, like heavy duty Ford, Chevy, that sort of thing. There's a lot of fleet that can be had, you know, dealing with cities, construction companies, different things. It's an untapped part of the industry that most Chevy or Ford dealers don't think about. But there's huge fleets out there. And the ones that get it are, you know, literally printing money. And so, you know, there's, there's, you should always try to understand and learn from both, both sides. So what were some of your, uh, big, big takeaways from the meeting?

Yeah, so, so I'd say like, I mean, um, it's a long, it's a long week, but it's very eventful. But I, I, two major takeaways kind of just in some of the discussions. So like I represent the, uh, there's a, there's all different various study groups, right? So you get these like-minded individuals for these study groups, whether it's very technical looking at wheel ends and vibrations and trying to handle that to where you get into how do you organize a shop. So just to kind of put that in some sort of a nutshell, um, so I typically go to more of like service provider and how do we have efficiency in shops? How do we organize them? We've done some stuff with the EV space, but the biggest takeaways that I got from this one is AI, like we just kind of prefaced a little bit ago, is really hitting the forefront when it talks about, you know, future of trucks or trucking, the different various modules, but not only from a technical side of the vehicle itself, but the AI and how fleets can run their, you know, their businesses more effectively and efficient with AI, you know, leveraging the telematics piece and leveraging the maintenance and all those different various programs in AI to make better decisions at the end of the day. And I think that's really what's really important in just business in general. What we were talking about with AI is making more effective decisions. So I thought that was a really big takeaway. Probably more like scratching the surface, trying to get examples from how other— some fleets have introduced that into their business versus others and just sharing of best practices. But I'd say like another thing that kind of really stuck out to me that like, I mean, even from when I first, you know, started as a technician and writing stories and filing for warranty without getting too much into the weeds, you know, when we file for warranty today, it's usually the 3 C's. We have what, complaint, cause, and correction, right?

Yeah.

And there was this, this open discussion, and I just kind of, I can't stop thinking about it, but like, I think there might be one or two companies that have best practices internally of actually like 5 Cs. So it'd be like complaint, cause, correction, coverage, and confirmation. So like coverage, if you think about it, if you're filing for warranty or just doing a a really good customer experience is like you're, you're outlining it within those, uh, in addition to the 3 C's, a coverage of like what's warrant— what's covered under warranty or what's not. Like really having that in a— let's just say like your invoice or your statement that you're submitting, you have what's actually covered and what was not. And for an independent shop, you could still do it because there's still, uh, parts warranties.

And yeah, can I just shop Can I just explain one thing to our audiences? The, in the trucking manufacturer side of things, they're, they have in some situations allowed independents to do warranty work on their behalf, which never happens in automotive, but in trucking, they're like Flying J can do certain warranty repairs up to an amount for certain manufacturers. So there are larger you know, really well-run independent businesses that have relationships with the manufacturers that also can administer warranty. And for a couple of reasons, one is the dealers are either backlogged or they're just not in that area. They don't have coverage in that area. And the goal is to keep those trucks up on the road and going. And so a little bit different than on the automotive side, the, the, you know, truck manufacturers are assisting in that, in that sense, right? Just so people have context. Yeah, there, because it— that doesn't exist on the car side for sure.

And I'd say like, in, and there are, uh, there was some discussions brought up just throughout some of the colleagues there was that, um, with it, even when you talk about with the independent shops, some of them have like vendor agreements with certain part suppliers if they're that somewhat large enough and not necessarily like an OEM franchise. So like that can even be with if they do some sort of parts, um, recuperation on the warranty side too, which is very interesting. So like that coverage piece, um, can kind of be widespread. But then the fifth one, which I feel like at least especially in my, uh, my experience with truck, is that, uh, it's in most places not, not, um, compensated from a service provider or a dealer is confirmation. So like the quality check, right? I think in most of the cases that I've came across, it's just about doing good business with a customer is that you just do a quality check, you do a test drive, you have somebody, you know, a lot of times in my experience with, with seeing, you'd hire somebody specifically to do test drives Somebody that was maybe an old tech or an old foreman that has retired, but you bring them in there and just test drive and just look at, check all the work, right? But it's also like intentionally writing that down on an invoice that, okay, we did a confirmation. So if you, I'm thinking about it from a customer standpoint, like, man, if I've got all those 5 C's or whatever, you really encompass the entirety of what was actually wrong. What you actually did, what was actually covered and what I'm responsible for, what you were able to take care of. And then the peace of mind of that you did a quality check. So if anything ever happens down the road, like somebody did verify and check that right now, I take it a step further that if that actually becomes like a widespread practice and customers are going to expect that more and more. I mean, just putting it plainly is I think that changes, uh, how warranty is filed in the future when it comes even to OEMs. I don't care if it's car or truck, because if the customer is demanding that, if other people are doing it, I don't know how you don't have that as part of your practice, you know. And that, that to me, it's just, it's kind of cool because that could that changes the industry, at least in my opinion. And then layering some AI in there, it's just increases the customer experience without a doubt. So I thought that was really interesting to me.

The coverage part would, would easily be, uh, covered by AI. The confirmation, you kind of need a human, right? But the coverage part would be Oh, for sure.

For sure. But when you do like, uh, like, uh, some sort of a, a health check or whatever with a scan tool, have somebody— yeah, the test drive piece of it. But it's just like keeping record and then seeing like, oh dude, that's just so— it's just cool. Like you were saying earlier, connecting the dots. I think in the end, connecting those dots, ensuring that the customer experience is really taken care of. So like, yeah, TMC is a really great great, great time in experiencing and sharing of that knowledge. But when you get in those healthy discussions of what, what the future could be, it's, it's, uh, it's quite amazing.

Yeah. I would love to do SDR from a TMC and have some people on and, you know, talk to them about the industry and what's going on. I think it would be really fun. I also think we should probably go to NADA and do, do it, even though they're so dumb, they don't know. How to host us, we could just do it in a hotel somewhere and have people just come to the hotel. Like, we literally asked NADA to try to be— try to do SDR, and they can't. Like, they don't understand that we are the largest in the industry as far as viewership goes, and they just can't figure it out. Like, it's so funny. The, the Yeah, the idea that we're new media is funny to me. Like, I don't know. Anyways, but I think we should do that coming up for next year. I think that would be a fun thing for us to do.

Agreed.

And I like— I spoke to TMC a couple of years ago, right? Yeah, it was so fun. So many great people there, so many smart people trying to figure it out and, you know, looking for solutions. It's such, such a great environment.

Well, not to reminisce too much, but you remember what time did we have that breakfast that you're speaking? You're like, oh, dude, I do not want to do morning. Crazy.

It was like 6:30. I'm the speaker or whatever. And yeah, didn't I go on at 6:45 in the morning? Yeah. And I mean, people were in there at 6:00 because I was probably there at 5:30. Because I'm early for everything. But, um, yeah, there were people in there at 6. And I actually, like, didn't I sit on a panel before I spoke? So that, like, there was a panel up there that I was sitting on and then I spoke. Yeah, yeah, it was crazy. They're morning people there. They're, they're ready to go.

Early risers.

Yeah, but every, you know, it's such a great mix too because there's techs, there's guys running things, you know, it's just a mix of of everybody in a lot of, yeah, a lot of really nice talented people looking for solutions and fun environment. Different, CAR doesn't really have that. It seems like NADA more is like vendor on vendor crime. It's just like people trying to sell you stuff, but a lot of the people speaking don't really have solutions. They're trying to sell you their thing more than anything. Well, that's been my experience. I don't agree. I haven't gone in the last couple years, so what do I know?

Well, we'll find out.

It's good. But yeah, super fun. I love the 5 C's and that. And, uh, just overall, like, AI is the topic, right? I don't think anybody quite understands the power of it, but they know that it's coming and they know it's something that you're gonna have to embrace. I'm surprised that the manufacturers aren't leading this though.

That's what I was going to say.

You know, actually, I was going to—

more on it.

I was going to pull a clip for this today, but I don't want to, I don't want to get in trouble for playing clips from other stuff. But, you know, the CEO of NVIDIA, I forget that guy's name, but he was on Lex Friedman lately. And there's a clip that's super fascinating. Where he's talking about what computers were and then what they're going to become. And just like you hear a lot of people say, and when he was talking about it, I kind of, in the experience I've had with what we're doing with AI lately, I think software is going to go away. Like if you think about when we put AI into a dealership and we're collecting all this data from all the different islands that they have. So you got accounting, you know, you have parts, you have appointment software, you know, you have all these different Internet sales, whatever it is, you have all these different islands. Once all that's connected, the AI can create its own accounting software. You don't need a DMS anymore. You don't need all these islands of things. They just, they just become solutions. So all of the, you know, all of the apps on your phone, all like, just think about what would you ever use Excel for anymore? What, what would you use an appointment software for? Because the appointment software would be so ingrained in the, the marketing, the revenue, the projections. Like it completely changes your ability to run a business at a, at a, you know, completely different level where you're connecting everything that currently is in software that is proprietary and held on its own. But it, you know, it loses the fact that that's the dealer's information or that's the manufacturer's information, but none of it works together or talks together. Even just on a marketing side, you know, or on a management side, like things, you know, that we want, we've wanted to do forever, like, We want to track retention by advisor. You can't do that, but we could do that like that. Mm-hmm. You know, you just don't need all the— this, this other stuff, accounting software and that, because it like QuickBooks will go away because you don't need it. Like you were saying, like throwing your taxes in to AI and say, hey, look at this and analyze it. And it does it in what, like 30 seconds? Comes up with all these ideas.

Yeah.

And so we're going away from software and, and it's, you know, it's really solutions in a way, which is, uh, which is a hard thing to get your head around. Like when you, when you think about, uh, you know, just think about Adam internally has wanted us to switch from Zoom to Microsoft Teams. What business is Microsoft in in 10 years?

AI.

Well, they don't have AI though. They're partnering with the company and they're, you know, they're, they're partnering with somebody who— that, that contract will expire. They don't have the AI.

Where will Zoom be in 10 years?

I don't think it'll exist. And already Zoom is annoying. Like, the— now these software companies are trying to offer more and more solutions, but I I just want to get on a Zoom call. I don't want to make all these decisions and I don't want it transcribed. Like, that's the other thing. Like all this AI stuff where people are transcribing all their conversations. When are you ever going to go back and read a Zoom meeting? Like, what world do you live in that you want to read back a Zoom meeting? I'm on the meeting so I don't have to do anything else. I want— I like— I don't get it. I just don't get it.

No.

I mean, I had this guy, I had this guy in here yesterday that was carrying one of those little AI things that listens to everything he does. And then I guess write some report about it. I don't want that.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, no, like the industry, not, uh, it does, it escapes me. There's not being more, more being led by the powers that be in the industry, but they continue to double down on the software. Like it's a running joke with advisors. we've talked about it on here before, but it's running slow.

Oh my God, the steps they have to go through to write an RO?

Yeah, like you go in and turn on your outdated computer.

Running Windows 95.

Once, once it boots up, it takes it another 20 minutes to open the 18 pieces of software you need to write one RO and none of them communicate. And then. If by some chance the advisor makes a policy mistake of some sort, because the 18 pieces of software don't talk to one another, they're like, oh, it's coming out of your paycheck. You know, like it's literally tax code. And yeah, Chris, that's why I was mentioning feeding my tax returns to Perplexity was just to see what it said and just see what it comes up with. The discussion I had with my CPA, see if it said the same thing. And if you think of like warranty policy and procedures manual, like you feed that to AI and feed it a few ROs, how quickly can it come up with the 5 C's? It might have the 19 C's. Like, I don't know. You know?

But we're very much in a Blockbuster Video scenario, right? Because like, just think about this for a second and let's use the CPA thing as an example is, The person who should be embracing AI is the CPA, but my CPA isn't coming to me going, hey, so I've got some new advanced things going on in AI and I think you should structure your estate this way and this way and this way, and then we can do this. No, it's me doing that and then going to him and then listening to him tell me, well, why we still need QuickBooks, why we still need all that old stuff. And, you know, just knowing that He's holding on to, you know, we're going to instead of streaming, what Blockbuster is going to do is it's going to be the movie theater for home. So we're going to sell popcorn and 2 liters of soda. That's how we're going to— meanwhile, nobody's coming in to rent the videos anymore. Like you're trying to increase sales on a thing that's already dead. And for the dealerships to be ahead of the curve in AI and not the manufacturers, It is. It's just my— it's my— it's mind loss in that way to me that there aren't— there aren't more solutions. And also, like, each manufacturer is going to do it in their own way. So, you know, that's a whole other conversation because frankly, you know, most of them aren't good at doing anything. They're, you know, they're barely good at making a car, a vehicle. Like, they're not great at marketing. I think that's the other side of this in the automotive industry. Like when we talk about helping clients drive traffic and marketing, I mean, you guys have seen it. I'm rarely on a Zoom call with a dealer where they're not talking about, you know, marketing for car sales in that way. And think about the inefficiencies and the billions of dollars that are lost in a business model that has completely changed, right? So you had, you had manufacturers that did marketing nationally. So like, let's just say Ford of North America will advertise on the Super Bowl. They will run ads nationally, maybe their brand ads. Then you're going to have the local advertising groups where for each car that's sold, they're putting, you know, $300 or $400 into this pool. And then the Southern California Ford dealers are all advertising and they're buying local cable TV in that region, right? So now there's another layer of advertising that doesn't have the same creative. They're, they're either borrowing national creative or they're making their own creative, but they have their own ad agency. So they're paying a percentage of that to, to ad agencies and creative, that sort of thing. And people are administering that. Then you have the local dealers that spend a ton of money on advertising. And they're, you know, most of the time the local dealers are doing more online stuff, but they're still doing marketing and spending. You have 3 layers of inefficient, ineffective marketing that is being spent. And, and, uh, at the, you know, same time, like, you ask them like, well, what, what's working? And they're like, I don't know, I, I feel like it isn't working. You know, it's just It's just crazy how they can't figure that out. And they control the local, you know, they control the dealer's website. So their dealerships are archaic. They're not even like, here's the thing too, is their dealers are talking about SEO and nobody is telling them the SEO has been dead for a year. No, SEO doesn't exist anymore. If you're spending money on SEO, you're, uh, you might as well just light that money on fire. Like, because people aren't searching on Google anymore. People are searching in AI, and the algorithm to get ranked in AI is completely different than the algorithm to get, to get ranked on, you know, Google. And I mean, mostly it was Google before that you're trying to maximize SEO. And so they're so far behind the curve. And then we're just talking about, well, Ford's running a Super Bowl commercial and it's like, You guys, you don't get it. Like you just don't get how you got to break this. This thing is already broken, but stop pouring money down the drain and start being more tactical because you, you know, you're spending way too much getting no results whatsoever. You could spend way less and be efficient, but you're missing, you know, you're missing the whole side of how to rank in. In the areas where the consumers actually are. And unfortunately, so here's the other, the other part of it that is, is the death blow for the dealers is the way that AI is ranking information. So if you type in anything about the services we do, we will come up number one in every category because we've known how to rank in AI for a while now, right? But, um, it's based on confirmation from social media. So if, if your social media is you just putting up customers' pictures with their new car or whatever, you're dead in the water because it has to be validated. There have to be conversations going on. There has to be a community behind it. If you don't understand all of that and you don't have some sort of channel, right? So I just go back to the manufacturers are doing marketing the traditional way, but you know, you have to have a YouTube channel, you have to have Facebook, you have to have Reddit, you have to have all of these things and you have to be active on there and you have to be putting up content that gets shared and that validates that people are interested in what you're doing. And nobody cares about buy 4 tires and get 1 free sort of thing. Like, or buy 3 tires, get 1 free, whatever it is. The game has changed and we're still like, Oh, well, Ford ran a Super Bowl commercial. It, it's just nuts to me that we're— they were that slow to react, and that the people in the, in the, you know, glass boxes just flying around on the private jet thinking that the problem is tariffs or whatever. And it's like, your problems are much bigger than, than that. You're so far behind the curve, so far behind the curve, and you're not giving the dealers the tools they need in order to succeed.

Yeah. Yeah. Elon, you know, whether you like Elon or not, like I know that's a—

I love Elon personally.

Yeah, I do too. Well, and I just think he's playing chess and everybody else is playing checkers. I think his insights and he keeps saying it more and more now and he's speaking to engineering and development. But his biggest frustration, he'll say over and over right now, is in engineering and development is, you know, their biggest problem is the optimization of things that shouldn't exist.

Yeah.

And it's just like, and you, wherever you look in business right now, you can see examples of that. And then, but you're either trying to figure AI out a lot of times when you bring up AI, people are like, well, yeah, nobody, the verdict's out on that. We don't know where, we don't know where that's at exactly yet. And when we get some more information, on that, we'll be moving in that direction. Like you're going to be dead.

Oh yeah. It's too late.

You're going to be a dinosaur. Like, so nobody, I don't think anybody has it completely figured out, but like it is interesting when you dabble in it enough, it's like you push and push and push and then just this big room opens up and, and, but everybody, like you mentioned, is just doubling down on more software or the old way of doing it. And yeah, there's good, I, you know, I feel there's going to be a sharp right turn somewhere, whether it's 6 weeks, 6 months, or whatever it is, but I definitely think it's coming.

Yeah, but it's not being led by the people that should be leading it. It's, it's coming from the bottom up, you know, 100%.

Yep.

But that's always the opportunity for us, right? Like, sure, in a sense, if the manufacturers knew what they were doing, we wouldn't exist.

Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, the idea that we, we need to fix service departments is kind of crazy. If you just think about it logically, like it doesn't make sense that the manufacturers don't train service managers, don't train advisors in a way that's engaging and that benefits the dealer. Like there's just this, there's always this inherent, the manufacturers almost have a disdain for the dealers being successful, which, which is a funny thing. It's just really funny because if you owned a franchise, the more successful your franchisees are, the more they can invest in building. Yeah. But it just doesn't work that way. They're like, when it gets down to the field and the actual interaction with the dealers, there's a disdain for the dealers success. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's crazy. And they'll say it isn't, it isn't that way, but all of their actions say something completely different.

Oh yeah, yeah, like you said, we're— it is crazy that, that our thing even exists, but especially when they have, you know, they have home field advantage to, you know, to fill that void. Um, but yeah, it's a, it's a crazy fault of the industry for a long, long time that, uh, you know, there isn't more success in fixed ops.

Yeah. So it's, it's interesting. We're really doubling down on AI and, uh, we've had a couple clients agree to let us put it in, but I'm excited about what that's going to do and how it's going to make us more effective and make businesses grow and, you know, become more, more of a force in the, in the marketplace. It's an unfair advantage if you're on this early.

Yeah.

Save a lot of money on marketing, I think.

Mm-hmm.

That's how, that's how I see it. So fun stuff. I'm excited to see you guys next week.

Yep.

Likewise.

We're going to do a couple SDRs from here. I had a topic idea from somebody I talked to, food for thought, and I already started a list in my notes is ways to motivate technicians. Like, and I think we should come up with like, not the traditional ways, but like other ways that we've noticed that work. Then I've probably got like 7 on my list already, something like that. But we'll talk about that and, uh, fun stuff. So thanks everybody for tuning in, and we'll see you next time on Service Drive Revolution. Thanks so much for watching this episode of Service Drive Revolution. We're uploading new stuff every day, so make sure you subscribe and click the bell icon so you don't miss out. If you have a question you'd like us to answer on the show, call 833-ASK-SDR and we'll answer your question on the show. That's 833-ASK-SDR. For special deals on our books and training, head over to offers.chriscollinsinc.com. Now that's offers.chriscollinsinc.com. I'm Chris Collins and I'll see you in the next video.