The industry is in flux. It’s always in flux. We, the automotive sector—at least the retail part—have become more adept at pushing for ‘things.’ Sometimes, these ‘things’ assist us. Sometimes, they hurt us. Overall, they become part of the sea of confusion aimed at making selling cars easier (place a big opinion asterisk at the end of easier).
What we are staring at right now, related to new car sales (in the near term based on tariffs), is a massive challenge on several fronts for both the industry and consumers. While many aspects of digital marketing and, specifically, inventory software (acquisition, marketing, pricing, etc.) have proven to remove the bullshit excuses for not acquiring vehicles properly (yes, it’s only a large part of the total solution), the opposite can be said about automated solutions for lead responses (and oh yes, this is going to piss lots of people off because of how they feel).
While these solutions have been available for over 10 years (yes, they’ve been around for over a decade), and many scream that there results are better with these ‘plug-and-play’ tech solutions, the industry hasn’t sold MORE vehicles with them. Before you conjugate a vile response, pump the brakes and read: now with ‘price increases’ (although some OEMs have committed to short- to long-term price locks, which is incredible – as they should take some of the massive profits and share with the dealer pain, especially when you look at a profit-per-unit perspective), these solutions (‘AI’ – whether AI or not, ‘chatbots,’ ‘automated attendants’ and other tech stack solutions removing otherwise-capable humans at scale (had they been coached/trained properly – something ‘training’ companies have proven inept at for more than the last 20 years) are not and will not be prepared for the onslaught of questions related to hand-raisers need for answers related to tariff ‘things’ (like pricing, payment, how each model might be affected, etc.), especially in the coming months before things really vet out.
In the desire to get an IV bag of ‘better than people’ solutions—and this is speaking to sales only and not the service benefit of automated responses to ‘What’s the status of my vehicle being fixed?’ or phone agents that can schedule an oil change better than a human—we’ve created a monster of a trainwreck that’s about to unfold in front of our eyes.
Well, at least those who are educated enough to go beyond the vanity metrics that reporting dashboards will show dealers, GMs, and Internet/BDC/sales departments will see the drop in cognizant responses that lead to appointments and shows (contact rates alone don’t matter!! Just like appointments that don’t show at Increasing rates!! Most AI responders raise one metric, not all!!!!!). We will see otherwise ‘capable’ systems that attempt to show meaningful results that are struggling badly. Yes, many will attempt to actually build learning into their systems (or be acquired by larger companies who’ve scaled somewhat better) that can possibly handle the significant increase in need-a-knowledgeable-human-to-respond-to-a-lead scenarios.
This is not a simple one-point statement that all is going to fail around non-human systems starting tomorrow; however, if you believe that these $599-$4,999/month ‘solutions’ are about to tackle one of the largest challenges (and opportunities) for the industry in recent times (and we’ve had quite a few since 2000) then you’re about to be beat by the dealer down the street that has properly-coached people with a great management team that focuses on human capital.
Yes you are.
