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#405 - Ai Collectors that Actually Work: Blytzpay's Beta Results and What's Coming Next

#405 - Ai Collectors that Actually Work: Blytzpay's Beta Results and What's Coming Next

The Independent Dealer Podcast Nov 13, 2025 47 min
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About this episode

Exploring the transformative impact of AI in the automotive collection process, this episode features Robin Berkinshaw, CEO of BlitzPay, and guests Caleb Bryant and Kyle from Auto Cave. They discuss the launch of BlitzCollect, an AI-driven outbound collector that automates payment reminders and collections, enhancing efficiency and reducing the burden on human collectors. The conversation delves into the benefits of AI in streamlining operations, improving customer interactions, and ultimately driving revenue for dealerships. Insights on the future of AI integration in the industry and its implications for both dealers and consumers are also highlighted.

Topics: ai in collections blitzcollect automation benefits customer engagement efficiency improvements payment processing data security dealer partnerships subprime market future of ai
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Collectors call in sick. AI does not. Collectors have bad days. They fight with their spouse,
they stub their toe, they have flat tires. All that stuff happens. AI does not.
AI does not have those problems. It's consistent. AI paired with automation is the way it's the
best. Hello and welcome to the independent dealer podcast brought to you by not Lou just Jeff this
time because he seems to be the only one really trying here. Hey buddy. We have a couple of amazing
guests. This is what I think it's brought. I think this was brought to us by Blitz Bay.
Yeah. It's brought to us. We brought to them and we're bringing them to you actually. So
all the above. We've got a bunch of good looking people on the podcast today.
I don't even know where to start. Let's start with Robin. Robin, you've been on the podcast
before. Most listeners are familiar with you, but real quick, tell us who you are, what you do,
and how you are going to absolutely blow our minds today. So Blitz Bay is the independent
dealer podcast number one fan. My name is Robin Berkinshaw. I'm the CEO of Blitz Bay.
Yeah. Nice. And Blitz Bay, of course, Blitz Bay is a great paper processor, a great friend of the
show and a great friend of the industry. You may have heard, hey, real quick, let's interrupt
the podcast real quick to make sure you guys know about Blitz Bay. I got to jump in there though.
Let's pay us more than a processor. We are a fintech.
And there's someone's going for a series funding.
So they're sass and she just gave you some sass. Do you like that?
Is it Blitz Bay.ai?
I mean, that's everything. It's whatever is.ai or your attention to what's happening in the
world. We're going to buy this. We're going to buy this on GoDaddy real quick. Just one second.
I just got to make sure. Just one second. I've got it. I've got it. It's kind of a B.
Let's collect.com. Let's go. All right. So we also have, we also have another friend of the podcast
and of Blitz Bay. Caleb Bryant is with us from the Auto Cave and he's got Kyle with him. Yeah,
this is my work friend. Yeah. Yeah, I've got my right hand here. Kyle, he's been with us for
years, countless years and he's aging well with the business. He is the reason why our
business runs well. He's also in charge of heading on the Blitz Bay project with everything we're
doing with AI. He oversees sales, underwriting collections. So he gets to live with his mistakes
in collections and hopefully Blitz Bay has been able to relieve him of some of those mistakes.
And it sounds like the new things we're about to talk about rolling out,
maybe even relieve him of his job. You just never know. You know what things like this
No, I'm just kidding, buddy. I'm just kidding. The means, not the end. We'll talk about that.
AI is the means, not the end. Everybody's scared that it's going to replace them. It's not going
to replace them. It's going to get rid of tasks that nobody wants to do. For sure. And that's,
I think, what we all have been saying and not having instant collectors. Just as close. We'll
get rid of the collectors and still have a manager. He can manage AI. But no, really. I mean,
that's what everybody's worried about. And the real truth is it just allows people to be better
at their job and perform better at their job and do more tasks. And so that's what we're really
talking about. So let's roll out the big surprise. I'm going to do it. I know what the big surprise
is. You don't know, Luke. That's what makes this so exciting is I know something you don't know
and I'm going to just sit on it for a minute longer. Robin, those of us that are in the know,
special folks, we're going to impart upon Luke some of our wisdom of what's going on here.
We all know that that's the big buzzword and everyone's trying to put it in their software.
And I talk about this all the time. As dealers, we can't fully integrate AI into our practices
because it has to be done at the foundational software level. I can't just plug AI into my
DMS or plug AI into my CRM. They don't talk to each other. It's not allowed. So I need vendors
like y'all to go out there and structurally build it into the program. Right? Yes. And AI is changing
pretty rapidly. So conference a couple of weeks ago, this particular breakout session was around
security and the comment was the bleeding edge of AI is about three weeks. We have never
on this earth seen technology that is moving at the pace and speed of AI. So
what is new today will be obsolete within the next three weeks and you don't know which pieces and
parts will be obsolete. So today we take, we eat the elephant one bite at a time. And so we partner
with people who understand AI. I think there's ways that dealerships can automate things on their
own. But when it comes to your processing, when it comes to your engagements, when it comes to your
sales and your marketing and your leads and those different things, choose a partner that is well
versed and knows the importance of AI in the world that you're living in specifically around a
dealership and can integrate that technology and make you more efficient. The best AI, in my opinion,
is AI that's invisible. It's AI that you and your customers do not know is there. It just does something
for you. Yeah. And I think Jeff was talking about, which I think a lot of it is, we have these
traditional products that we are using that aren't on that bleeding edge as you're talking about.
And they're not giving us as dealers the API capability to do it. Luckily BlitzPay
has taken that and run with it. Luckily, because if not, we can't do it alone.
Our goal is to grab our dealers and pull them into the future. Sometimes it's kicking and screaming,
but we're getting you efficient, whether you want to be or not. And it's good for everybody.
Yeah, absolutely. And we talk about it all the time. This is integrating AI into your business
is going to make your employees more efficient. It's going to make the whole operation more
efficient. And I think that's what we look at when we look at the CRM integrations that
dealers are using. And that was the first phase. Well, I would say that's not the first phase.
The first phase of AI in our business was us making silly memes and Facebook posts.
That was the first one. The second one was me getting my BDC to be an AI agent and setting
appointments and getting them in the door. Now, third phase, which is a lot more technical.
I don't even know why I call it third phase, whatever. This phase that you're talking about,
because you're dealing with a lot of private information. To put AI into BlitzPay,
we've got customers data. We've got their bank account numbers. We've got everything that could
go off the rails if it's not done right. So you guys have gone out, you've done the homework,
you've invested the money, time, and brainpower into this. What are we getting from BlitzPay
that's going to make my life easier and allow me to fire everyone I have under my roof that I don't
want here anymore? You're not going to fire everyone, Jeff. You like that much. But how are
you going to make my life easier? Okay. So first, I want to talk about the ways that we keep information
and data secure. We're tokenizing our data. And when groups are training their LLMs,
they're basically engines that are going to run AI. There's privacy policies and there's
privacy models around that. BlitzPay, as of the beginning of October, no, beginning of November,
we will be launching the outbound AI collector. So it's called BlitzCollect. I mentioned this
earlier, BlitzCollect.com. And the first piece is an outbound AI collector. There's two voices
today. There's Allison, who's a little more gentle, and there's Alan, who's a little more aggressive.
And the possibilities are endless. The ways that you can control what they say, how they say it,
it's wild. Explain this to me, Robin. When you say an outbound collector, is this collector
dialing the phone number and getting the customer on the phone and having a conversation with them,
just like my normal collector that's sitting in a cubicle is doing? It's wild. So in BlitzPay,
you will have the ability to create a campaign. I want to dial one to 10 days late. So I'll get
my one to 10 days late. In my one to 10 days late, I'll plug in Allison and then Allison will dial
those consumers and can either take a payment. Hey, Luke, your payments do. Okay, I need to
make a payment. Would you like to make a payment ending in one with your card ending in one, two,
three, four? Yes, absolutely. Process done. It has all sorts of tools and it continues to,
it continues to grow. Part two that we will release is the TextCollect. That's an outbound
and an inbound collector. We've already got the automations for outbound text messages to go out,
but this will be AI. I can have a conversation. And you said that's part two. I figured that the
text portion would be the easiest and be part one. Why is that backwards? Good question. We
have the text. So today we've got text automation. We felt that it was important to add an arrow to
our quiver that we didn't have in our quiver today, in our arsenal today. And that was the outbound
dialer. Okay. And Robin, I always hate to ask the cost because what was funny is two years ago
in Caleb, I think you were the forefront on this when it came to using Neo and using that AI they
had. And I remember we were at a conference and they were talking about it was 10 cents. Every
time there was a response from this. Robin, is there extra cost to this? I know these tokens,
the tokens have come down every time these language models have gotten better. What's the cost?
So it's going to depend on the volume that you're doing, kind of how we price, let's pay today. It's
not a one size fits all. We really want to be able to customize it specific to the dealer's needs.
I don't want to give you a bunch of stuff and have you pay for a bunch of stuff that you're not
going to need. I want you to have what you need and the tools and the efficiency and the tech
and all the stuff that's going to make your business better. So it's kind of a one off.
And yeah, I understand that. And are we looking to to make the to keep our current collection
staff and just add this own? Or are we looking to move some people out of our business?
Every dealer is a little different. The goal, in my opinion, of the AI collector is to make
your collectors more efficient. Today, you know, industry statistics are going to say that 30% of
your collector's time is spent cashiering. So I'm going to call Luke and I'm going to say,
hey, Luke, I've got a payment due today of $300. But I've got it on three different cards. The
today we have those tools to make it easy for those for the consumers who are late to try and
make a payment. And we're giving your collectors that time back. Our goal, my goal, my whole mission
is to collect a payment from your customer, right? It's to give you tools to make it easy for you
to collect a payment full stop, like cat videos and fun conversations and like memes and whatever,
all that's great. But in your business, what you care about is keeping your cars that you sold
on the road and AI has been designed to do that. The best AI, in my opinion, is AI you don't know
is there and neither do your consumers. Yeah. So let's talk about that. You got some guinea pigs
here on the call with us today. Not me, which is so weird because you could have walked down the
street and set me up on this and I would have been grateful to do it, but shows these characters
all the way across the street. Caleb and Kyle, you guys have been kind of a test pilot or some
of the test pilots. Talk to us about how you've been using it in your dealership. What has it
been doing for you? What results? Those types of things. Yeah, I'll go first and then I'll lead
into Kyle. I'll go first and then I'll lead into Kyle. When I first heard about the project,
integrating AI, like Luke had mentioned earlier, Neo bringing AI, a lot of this is trying to buy
back time. And for my sales force as an example, I want AI to process and do the task that don't
really drive revenue and their monotonous. And so in sales, I want them to process applications,
I want them to read our steps and I want them to underwrite according to the guidelines that
we've given our AI machine. I want them to machine learn what's required to get an approval here at
the Auto Cave and get all that work done so my sales team can focus on selling, driving revenue.
And so when I first heard of the tool in collections, I thought to myself, okay,
everyone knows the industry is facing crazy headwinds, right? We need to get our costs down.
And so if we can either get our SG&A down and or drive more revenue through AI, like that's what
I'm interested in. So when I first heard of the project, I was like, okay, how can we apply this
in collections? What's it really going to do? And they introduced the project as almost being an
auto dialer at first. And that was really nice because Kyle had set up queues where Allison,
the agent could call specific delinquent queues. And that now bought back time for my collectors
to be able to focus on taking payments or chasing some more delinquent customers.
So that agent would focus on a specific queue on a Saturday and would buy back some of our
collector's time so they could focus on maybe high priority tasks. And so the question became like
with Kyle and I is like down the road, where are we headed with this? And that's a good question
for Kyle. The answer is like, how does he see this as effective? Because he's actually watching
this project. He's hands on with the project. And he's been doing this for over a decade.
So I'll let him just kind of take the mic and explain what he sees over the next few months
and how AI today with what Robin has produced, what's effective, what's not.
Right. So it's like so far since we started this, it's been, I, at first I was kind of
standoffish about it because I've been through all the old dialers from the old school stuff.
But this one is completely different. Like it helps us tremendously all of our collectors
because a lot of our payers, a lot of our customers are due on Fridays because that's when
they get paid. Well, if you have 600 people that are due on Friday, your collectors are
answering phone calls all day and they cannot call out anybody. So then all of a sudden you
wake up on a Saturday and you get to work and now your delinquency has increased by 400 accounts
because you weren't able to get to all those or whatever the case may be. But on a Saturday,
whenever you come in and you have all these delinquent accounts, what we were doing is on
Saturdays, Robin's team would literally call all of those for us. And that was, it took so much
work off of the collectors having to call all day or whatever the case may be. So it was just,
and they were calling right back and making the payment because just like Robin said,
they just forget sometimes that they have a car payment due where they just didn't have a right
then and they're, you know, it wasn't interbanking out, but it's there on Saturday. So then they
were just calling in and making the payment or they had even said a promise to pay and they
didn't even have to bug one of my collectors to set up a promise. It's like the agent would
automatically do that for us. So that was really cool to see. Like, I'm really excited about that.
But then this morning, whenever I was on a call and they were talking about the
let's collect thing that I can actually, because that's the piece that I wanted real bad, was
take the payment and move on please and I'll send it to me. I don't care if they're just making a
payment. And so that's the one that I'm really excited about because then I don't have to have
my collectors be cashier so they can actually sit there and actually do what I hired them to do,
which is collect, collect, not just sit there and just pay payments because anybody can do that.
I want to make this clear real quick for the viewers is that, you know, being a beta tester,
obviously we didn't get all the full tools, the full set of tools day one, because we're working
with Blitzpay and building that. And as a beta tester, we initially don't have the access to
transact a payment. So we can get a hold of a customer, but we can't transact a payment. And so
what they're about to roll out, which is extremely exciting, and especially as a beta tester, we're
like, roll this out, roll this out. We've been really pressing their team to do this is get them
to actually transact a payment. So when a customer says, yes, I'm ready to transact. Well, in the
background, I can transact the payment. And now one of our collectors doesn't have to transact it.
So now we're saving all the money. And in Blitzpay, there's notifications that build up. Well,
those are texts, some of them are text messages. And some customers have agreed,
like collectors are sending out a text message that says, are you ready to, you know,
are you ready to make your payment? And if the customer says, yes, I approve. Well, who's doing
it? Yeah, right. That damn card, the money is the money is about to run out the window, run the
card. So that's something we're really excited about to automate is the transaction piece. And so,
I mean, that's going to be huge. It's going to be pioneering, you know, the next step in the
industry, we need it, we're ready. We've been very excited to see this. I agree. When I go over
collectors cues and try to train my collectors, and the thing you see all the time is them
responding to the collector and Blitzpay going, yes, run my card, and it never gets run. And
you're like, did you miss this? Like what happened? Right? Yes. Wouldn't it be great if it just ran?
Right. Just run it. Yeah. So to give some, to give a little bit of color to that, we had to get,
I mean, this is, this is complex. And when you start to engage a subprime community,
the voice is different. The cadence is different. It's not, this is, this is a different, this is
a different borrower. And we believe in what we call respected, connected and valued. It's important
for us to get the tone and the voice right and then the compliance around it. So part one, let's
make the thing talk and sound like a human with the accent with, I mean, it's wild,
the things that you can do with this. Next is, can I take a payment? Yes, I can take a payment.
Would you like to make a payment with the card ending one, two, three, four? Yes, I would. Okay,
processed. Can I send you a link? No, I can't make it right now, but I can make it later today.
Okay, let me send you a link. All sorts of different engagement. And then the next piece that we're
rolling out is text. And then the third piece that we're rolling out, we're talking about automated
intelligence and automated intelligence will grab both pieces of AI, existing blitz automation,
and it'll roll it into one and give you analytics and information and abilities to be able to
communicate and talk to your borrowers and take payments and do the things that are important
in your business in an automated frictionless fashion. Again, the best AI is AI that you don't
know is there. That's very impressive. Robin, even with all those analytics that this
AI is grabbing, this LLM is grabbing, is it possible at some points to show each dealership
how they can collect better or how they can underwrite better using or if someone's about to
skip. Are we moving toward really having that data that will help each individual dealership?
It's crazy. And there's different look. So much information comes into businesses,
and I'm going to make a gross generalization. And then you take dealerships. There are so
many tools, and there's so much information that comes at dealers. Just because you've got the
information coming into you doesn't mean that you consume it and then transfer it to a point
where it's actionable. I have to wrap my arms around what is coming in, decide the things that
are important for me to actually wrap my arms around, because it's like squirrels everywhere
all the time, and you don't know what's meaningful and important to your business.
So take the pieces that are meaningful and important, wrap your arms around them with
tools that can make that data consumable, consume that data, and then figure out ways to make it
actionable. And that's what Blitz Collect is all about. It's not just AI. It's not just automated
intelligence. It's functionality around all the data points that come in. GPS is a good example
of that. Interesting. How so, Robin? How so? Guys, do you know how much information comes in from
your GPS providers? More than we could possibly digest ourselves. That's legit. And how much do
you do with it? Nobody does anything with it. There's very few dealers out there to analyze
mileage driven, where they're located compared to where you think they're located. There's a few
really good dealers that use that data, but it's too much data. Too much data? It doesn't matter
if you've got it, if you can't do anything with it. If I can't make sense of it, if I can't grab it
and then do something with it, make it actionable, it doesn't matter. But there's so much information
that's coming in. Hey, just to jump in real quick and make sure you guys know about Buckeye
Risk Services. Still a great sponsor of the podcast and a great partner to have at any
dealership. Yeah, sure. Retail, buy here, pay here, no matter what. Tax planning is so important
and using a reinsurance company not only helps you with your tax plan, it also helps with
generating wealth. And when you get toward the end of your dealership, you need something else
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Yeah, yeah, forced savings account. So if you are a dealer, buy here, pay here, retail, and you're
doing 20 to 30 cars a month. All the guys at Buckeye, you will not regret getting a reinsurance
company set up. You can sell your service contracts, you can sell your ancillary products,
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to build wealth, and forced savings for rainy days. Good, give the guys a Buckeye call.
I'll tell you one of the things that I'm really excited about from an automated intelligence
perspective. You guys, we have so much data that comes in from collections when a payment is declined.
Oh, just the car brand data that we get will tell you exactly what's, you know,
by and large, there's some duty, but we'll tell you a lot about what's going on.
Will it tell you addresses so we can go find them?
No. That's GPS. Yeah. There's data in the transaction
decline that you don't do anything with. You put it in a bucket called declines,
and then you dump it on your collectors and you have them go figure out what to do with it.
Yeah. And with Dialing for Dollars, we need to get prescriptive about approaching that data,
looking at the customer from the very beginning of the loan, what has happened from the very
beginning of the loan, taking that data, wrapping our arms around it, and then spitting it back to
our collectors in a way that they can actually do something with it. This borrower has made
their payment five days late for the last six months, suggest a payment change. It's just,
it's simple stuff. And guys, again, the best AI is invisible AI. Take that data,
make it actionable, and then put the accounts that we've got problems with that need a human
engagement, a human interaction in front of people that can actually pay attention to it,
because all of the other noise has been silenced.
Yeah. I definitely like the idea of the AI being able to dissect the things that,
me as a one collector operation, right? I'm a small buy here, pay here. So my collector can't
really dig too deep into stuff because she's trying to get through so many accounts, right?
So she needs to help her. Now, I don't want to hire a second collector that'll be sitting around
half the time. I want to make my collector more efficient with stuff like that. Like, hey,
if AI can just diagnose half these things for her upfront, and specifically as you talk about
turn downs, she can specifically say, hey, these are all turn downs. And here's the plain English
reason as these got turned down. You can communicate with that customer on that level.
Hey, you ran out of money or hey, your card's locked or, and if it hooks to GPS and all of a
sudden, you know, my customer pays at five o'clock every Friday, but they don't pay until they get
home. So I'm not going to call them at five o'clock when they leave work. I'm going to call
them at five 25 when I know they're parked at their house sitting on their couch and have their
phone in front of them. So connecting those dots seems like it would make a lot of sense just from
your habits, right? People's habits. I know that I do certain things certain time of the day. If
you text me at this time of the day, you're not going to get a response until 7pm. That's just
the way it works. I'm busy. But nobody is going to dig in to every communication to see what time
somebody texts you back. Yeah. Grab that data. See what the trends and the patterns and the
habits are and then be able to, and then be able to spit that back in a way that's useful.
And both Kyle and Caleb can scream that from the rafters. And just the amount of effort,
because as we think about it, like speaking back to the payday, right, let's talk about just payday.
My customers, let's say they get paid at, you know, midnight on the 5th and the 20th.
I've got to send out 150 collection calls at that very moment when their paycheck hits.
My collector can't literally do that within a 24 hour period, right? Or if she gets 50 people to
text her back to say, run my card before 5pm, because after that rent's going to be pulled out,
or I'm going to end up at the casino, like she can't literally run 50 payments before 5pm,
right? Like within that time period. But AI can, right? I mean, AI can literally run
50 payments right now, can't they? AI, married to automation. So, again, I'll turn this back
to Caleb and to Kyle, because they've done these tests. We have dealers that will
fire off collection calls. And then behind those collection calls is a text message.
Mmm, yes. It draws attention from the consumer, oh, I need to do X, Y, Z. And how do you think
they pay? They get on their text message, they're not going to pick up the phone and
have a conversation unless they need you. And if they need you, you've got to be available, right?
Collectors call and sick. AI does not. Collectors have bad days. They fight with their spouse.
They stub their toe. They have flat tires. All that stuff happens. AI does not.
Right. AI does not have those problems. It's consistent. AI paired with automation
is the way, it's the future. It's the way that this world is going.
Robin, when we talk about these collector calls, I just want to,
things go off the rails with our collectors, right? And with our customers, I should say,
that you get these curve balls. How good is AI to taking those curve balls? Like,
well, my, my grandmother's sister died and I had to pay for part of the funeral.
What's going to happen there? It depends on how many times your father has passed away in the last
year. Okay. So, so it knows, okay, well, I'm sorry, Mrs. Whatever, your father died three times in
the last two years. We're not going to, we're not going to allow you to skip this. And I mean,
is that, is that how good AI is? Or does it go, or does it go sideways and say,
we just didn't even make you pay? What's the, what's the logic and how good is the logic of it?
It's improving. It's not there today, but again,
when that goes off, does it alert a collector to get on the phone? Like, how does that happen?
Absolutely. So we call it, what we, what we talk about internally is the end of the internet.
I have reached a point where I can't make a decision. Somebody needs to get in and engage,
and it'll transfer the call back to a collector. So the if then, the if then is done. Yep. Okay.
Yep. It's a customer willing to, to be patient enough to get that collector on the phone.
And sometimes is it about getting the collector on the phone or is it,
you know, somebody that just doesn't have the ability to pay and you'd rather have them abuse
the AI than a collector. And, and so if that, another, another question I have here, I'm just
kind of spitballing out, but I have all these questions that come up. That, that call is recorded
just like any other call. Does it note the account for what is said from that verbatim verbatim verbatim
That's impressive. Wild. Yes. Well, Caleb's like ours doesn't. Yeah, it will.
I was asking, does it do it? I was like, and I was thinking, I don't see it in my notes. Yeah,
you will. Okay. Okay. I'll record the conversation. So, so when, when, when phase two comes out and,
and now you're pairing a phone call with text messaging, because to me, text messaging is
still how my customers communicate. Obviously, it's the foundation of Blitzpay. It's a text
platform. It's a self-help payment platform. That seems crucial to me because my customers
don't pick up the phone, whether it's me calling AI calling or the president calling, like picking
up their phone, right? I'm not picking up my phone. So I don't communicate that way. I don't
like talking to people. Don't call me. It's rude. Text me. He doesn't even like talking to me. He
doesn't answer my phone calls. Nothing. I don't even know why they have a phone. Like, why is
there a phone feature on a phone? Ask yourself, is this textable to be the beam and everybody
do not call people. Just kidding. But seriously, the texting thing just to me is like, dude,
I am chomping at the bit. Like, let me be a beta tester on that one because I want to be able to
have AI just let loose on my past two accounts because really there's only five conversations
to have with the past two customer. Like the training model is very tiny, in my opinion,
because anything outside of those five basic things, which is 90% of what my collector does,
is unique. And that can go off to the collector. I get it. That's like level two customer service
stuff. It's the basic like, will you pay now? No, will you pay tomorrow? Will you pay the next day?
When will you pay? Okay, cool. Like, anything outside of that, like, I get it. My lady can
handle it. But so much of their time is taken up with just run my car tomorrow, run it at five
o'clock. Let me update my card number. Like, right? Push the AI back to the automation that is Blitz
Pay and let your consumer be able to self serve. Exactly. And you guys in financial technology,
SaaS products for the last five years, consumers want control of their money,
whether they need control of their money because they're managing paycheck to paycheck,
and they don't have the ability to be able to set it and forget it in an auto pay.
I've got cash coming in here. I've got cash in my pocket. I've got some money on my car.
Whatever that looks like, you don't care. It doesn't make any difference to you. You care
that the payment is made, but to the consumer, there's dignity that is lost every time they
have to have a conversation with the collector. Shut up and take my money. Here's the ability.
We're going to think outside the box. You want to pay with three cards? You want to pay with five
cards? Great. You want to pay in cash? You want to pay some in cash? Nobody cares. Make your payment.
Right. And I would say even on the far other extreme of that, is AI can be the eternally
patient, empathetic advocate with the customer. If things are tough and if they are struggling
and if they do want to just be heard, like the AI can have a three hour conversation text back
and forth with this customer. It's okay. It's not burning hours out of my collector's time,
for them to just have AI empathize with this customer over the fact that they got laid off
or their mom died for the fifth time or whatever it might be. You could technically train the
model to do that, right? Look at it a little differently. It wouldn't be Allen. It would be
Allison. Yeah, it would not be Allen. Allen would be like, give me my money. I don't care.
And it's not that bad, but it's really interesting. The reality is we're in the human
business. We're in the people business. Whether, like it or not, buy here, pay here, consumers
sometimes need a little bit of handholding. What I want to provide dealers is technology
for the people who don't need handholding. And then the time that your borrowers,
your consumers need handholding, let them be handheld. Let them express empathy because
their parent passed away or stuff happens. This world is hard and it's getting harder.
Take away the mundane and allow the human interaction, the human engagement
to be personalized because you've got the time to do it. That's a good point. Yeah. I can see my
collector having more free time if she's not just responding to basic text messages. Now she can
take more time with that customer that needs it, right? And she's not rushed. There's lots of
advantages to this, you guys. This is the tip of the tip of the iceberg. It will be wild to see
what happens at this time next year and to revisit this podcast. But right now, it's fun to watch
and it's fun to be a part of. And I encourage everyone who's watching this to figure out how
to use AI in your dealership and engage people and then get out of their way.
Yeah. Could you make an AI version that's like a Luke version that just is like
eternally just obnoxious and just runs people around in circles with
circular arguments and conversations? And then I would just like sick that one on like
the customer that I just really want to repo, but I want to tie up all their time before I
so I can get to the car. Yeah, please. Thank you. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you, Jeff. I would
have my collector Luke send them to the Luke bucket and then go to the Luke collector bucket and
they would just take over the coals. Come on, man. It's been a day. I think it's great. Robin,
so you're going to let me be on beta when you get to the text thingy. When is everyone else
getting access to this stuff? So right now we're looking at the beginning of November
to roll it to roll it out. And we've got a list. So be patient with us. We've got a list of
customers that are already trying to get on and get going. Sounds like I'm sure this.
I'm sure this takes time to to prepare for each dealership, right? It does.
That's a good question. I want to ask that. And I want to ask about part two as well,
when you get into the text messaging part, because we're just talking about the voice
agent right now, right? That'll be November. Is it very, is the onboarding process,
is there a lot to it? Like it's got to be trained on my data, my customers, my whatever,
or is it just kind of plug and play because a collection is a collection?
It's plug and play and the models that we're using are training specific to subprime.
Yeah, okay. We have models that are training. It's a different look, this is a different consumer.
And we want to be focused and we want the LLMs to be to cater to this particular consumer in
this particular market. We know Caleb's is very unique because we went to his dealership and we
saw his inventory. So the basically the first question out of the AI's math is like, is your
engine blown? Like of course your engines blown because you have a Kia. So
if you guys saw that episode, it aired, it actually airs tomorrow as of this recording,
but I think there's no, that was our Caleb episode.
We saw Caleb's dealership, but it's so great. And they just have stacks of the theta two engines
back there. So I can imagine Caleb, you'll have that built into your collections process.
Yeah, your engine, right? Yeah, the AI agents are, it's going to be a breeze for all the other
dealerships for those AI agents to collect after collecting on the Dallas customer with
driving with Arteas. You are right. That's something. But seriously, in closing, what
did dealers need to know? Are we going to see this at like conventions coming up? Like when are
we going to be able to demo this and like see it in real life? Are we going to see it national or
buy her, pay her dealer summit or any of these other ones? Well, this is our launch. So you'll
see, you'll, you know, you've heard a little bit about it here and we're rolling out a podcast
specific to what's happening with BlitzPay in conjunction with some of our other partners.
We've got, we've got a deep partnership with AMS. We've got a deep partnership with Iteron.
You'll see to buy her, pay her United. There's places that you can see it, but
you might even see it at a consulting collections workshop in Dallas on December 10th.
Mine. You know what? That's where we should really dig in. That's a, that's a,
all right. There you go. There's your debut. Because we can't sign up number test.
I want to see it in action. Like I want to put my phone number into Kyle's database there and
have Kyle's collector Allison give me a call and try to collect money from me because like
I really want to have that conversation. Like, is it that, is it like,
I don't believe that it's going to be that smooth and seamless. Like I don't believe
that I'm going to get a call from Kyle and his sidekick Allison there at the auto cave and that
I'm really going to like fully believe that I'm talking to a human that's telling me to make a
payment. Like I just don't hurt some of your calls. You'll get halfway through a call and the
customer will go, Oh my gosh, this is a robot. I'm talking to a robot. It's, it's wild. Okay.
Well, I'm excited for that. And now I want to ask how that question when a customer
realizes that they've been talking to a bot and to a,
do some of them get offended? I mean, our customers can get offended really quickly.
I mean, are they offended? Are they, do they like it? What is the customer's
customer been like on this side? Nobody is going to answer the phone.
Nobody's going to answer the phone. And the ones that do, Kyle can tell you about.
Yeah, it's only when we first started it, the customers would just call us straight away because
they were just there. Like, could you please just have this stop calling me? Only because they were
annoyed, but I liked that because at least it got you to call me. So I'm having a conversation.
I love that. Well, like, I don't care if you bug my customer and do it all day,
but cause it got you to call me. So that was always interesting. But now it's,
we don't get calls like that anymore. Cause I think it got better with the actual full
conversation and it's setting up promises and things like that. So we don't get many of those
causing workers, not annoying to the customer anymore. So they're just, they like it and it's
helped out our delinquencies that we're good. And so Robin, it, it has the conversation enough
and it's linked enough into, to everything that it sets the promise back. And that's incredible.
Yeah. Business rules, if it's within, you know, X amount of days delinquent before the next payments
do, I can make a payment of $100 today. Okay. When are you going to make your next payment?
We're going to verify it with the Blitz engagement. It's, it's pretty wild. The majority of customers
are not going to answer the phone. They're going to call, they're going to pay by text. They're
going to see the call, the action somewhere, somewhere away. But, but the more this gets the
talk to customer, the better it's going to be. Yep. It does. It continues to learn. And we've
baited in different, in different segments, in different market with different consumer
bases. And it's wild to see how different the conversations and the communication is.
Very interesting. Robin, so great. Thank you so much for your time. We're looking forward to
seeing it in action. And I think this is a great, what's the word, example, a shining example that
I would love all of our other vendors to look to because it's not easy and it's hard. And you guys
put money and time into making your software, the cutting edge or this, this new world of AI
that we're going to live in. And you guys have to do it again, because we can't, we can't integrate
that level. So if you and all my other software, I think Caleb could speak to this, right? You'd
love it if your GPS had a strong AI integration. If your CRM did your BDC, your, your freaking parts
management software, your shop management software, like they all got to start integrating this.
Yeah, with guys that have been in the industry, friends of mine that have been like the godfathers
of buying your pay here for 20 plus years, like I hear this common statement lately is like the
business is not how it used to be. And times are changing. Well, of course they're changing, every
business changes, technology changes. And as you stated, like vendors have got to embrace AI,
dealers need to embrace AI. And as we make these changes, and if our margins are shrinking,
or if delinquency is going up, or if charge ops are going up, or if inflation is up, or
doesn't matter what the hard time is, if AI can come in here and our vendors can help us and we
can partner together to reduce our cost of servicing our customer base, then we could have a win-win
here. We could have a win-win for our vendors, we could have a win-win for our dealers. And we
could see this other great side of buy-or-pay here that we're headed towards. I don't know what
that's going to look like, but we need to embrace technology everyone does. And dealers are not
going to create it. It's going to take the vendors too. Jeff, you know, I love to talk about consulting
and the tax max consulting groups are underway. And you got to get on this because this is the
way to really fine tune your whole dealership in using tax max. Yeah. And it's a great opportunity
right now. If you're signed up and you get everything implemented with tax max, you start
learning the program, you can do some promotions right now, like a Black Friday sale and you can
use tax max to get a second down payment. So you're getting the down payment today, which is, hey,
we've got a great Black Friday sale going on. We're doing, you know, whatever, buy a car, get a
turkey or something for free. But then you're getting the down payment today, but then you're
also setting them up for a deferred down, which you are scheduling that right into the contract.
That's the number one thing. You don't want to do it. And I said the word deferred down.
What you want to schedule is an irregular payment inside the contract so that it's legal and you're
collecting interest on that money down now and money coming in February or March when they get
that tax refund. Nothing could be better selling the car now and getting that money later because
you're going to have more cars to sell during tax time too. So Black Friday sales,
a great idea, Jeff. We used to do it, offer all kinds of deals and people always came in.
We had a big sale. So plan it early and use tax max to help you get it done.
Yep. And the code is VIP. If you haven't heard our previous episodes of promotion,
use the code VIP. Make sure you tell them the podcast guys sent you, you're going to get 35%
off the VIP package. Honestly, we can't afford to create it. Some really big people can.
But we have to have great vendors like Blitzpay to help us to get us over the bar. So Robin,
we appreciate you. There were one way we appreciate you coming on and number two,
we appreciate what you do for dealers and getting us over that hump.
So in closing, we appreciate Luke and Jeff and the independent dealer podcast. We're super excited
to participate with them and really, you know, our goal is to make the industry better. So
big news as of today, Blitz collect is live. Check us out. Blitz, Blitz collect.com and or
Blitzpay.com give TJ and Andrew, give the boys a call. They're happy to walk you through the product
and show you how to eliminate bad collections and make it a merry Blitz mess for all.
Thanks, Robin. Thanks you guys.

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