“Fixed Ops” means the service and parts department of a car dealership. Instead of selling cars once, it makes money when customers come back for repairs and maintenance.
“Video compliance” means the dealership is following its rule that certain service jobs must include a video inspection. They measure how often the process is done correctly.
“Customer pay gross” is the profit the shop makes from repairs customers pay for themselves. It’s one of the main numbers dealerships watch to judge service profitability.
Ford’s F-Series is one of the most important pickup truck lines in the U.S. Here they’re talking about how problems making parts (aluminum panels) can slow production and reduce what dealers have to sell.
Place
as we go new york aluminum plant
This is a specific aluminum factory in New York. When it shuts down, it can delay making the metal panels that truck production needs.
“PHEV” means a plug-in hybrid car. “PHEV battery fires” means there were safety problems involving the car’s battery that could lead to overheating or fire, so the manufacturer issues a recall to fix it.
Airbags are controlled by electronics. “Airbag software” means the computer code that decides when the airbags should deploy, and a recall can update that code for safety.
A “quality overhaul” means the company is making bigger changes to fix problems and improve how the vehicles are built. It’s usually done after issues show up repeatedly.
The Jeep Grand Cherokee is a popular Jeep SUV. The episode is talking about recalls—repairs the manufacturer requires—because they can bring in lots of cars at once and strain the service department.
MPI is a checklist-style inspection where a technician looks at a bunch of things on the car. “Video MPI” is when the shop records what they find and shows it to you, usually by sending a video link or file.
Reynolds is the software the dealership uses to create and send the inspection videos to customers. Think of it as the system that helps the shop deliver the “video MPI” experience.
CSI (Customer Satisfaction Index) is a service-industry metric used to gauge how satisfied customers are with their dealership experience. The speaker says their CSI improved after focusing on “world-class service.”
Open rate means how many people who received the message actually clicked or opened it. If more people open the video, more of them are likely to approve the recommended repairs.
Data cleanse means fixing bad or outdated customer contact info in the dealership database. If the phone number or email is wrong, the video won’t reach the customer, which hurts engagement.
A DMS provider is the software company that runs the dealership’s main computer system. If it’s integrated correctly with the video MPI tools, the dealership can send the video to the right customer at the right time.
Sutherland Automotive is the dealership’s previous owner. When ownership changes, the new owner may update systems and processes—like the tools used to send inspection videos.
Nick Saban is mentioned as the person who bought into the dealership/auto group. It’s part of the story about why the dealership’s situation changed recently.
“Write up” is what the service advisor does when they record what’s wrong with the car and start the official service paperwork. They’re asking whether the video changes how that discussion goes.
Here, “retention” means getting customers to return to the same dealership for future service. The hosts are saying their inspection/visual tools help make that happen.
UVI is a technology used in the service lane to capture vehicle condition and support appraisals—often via camera-based “tunnel” or automated imaging. The hosts discuss it as a tool that can improve service outcomes (like tire sales and retention) but also mention that it’s expensive, so ROI matters.
An appraisal is how the dealership figures out what a used car or trade-in is worth. They’re saying they use UVI to help document the car’s condition during that process.
“Experience” is a company sponsoring the show that provides marketing and data services for car dealerships. They’re saying it helps dealers find customers and increase service business.
Concept
used car trade
A “used car trade” is when you bring your current car to the dealership and it’s used as part of the payment for another car. They’re saying their tools help them evaluate and document trade-in cars better.
Park City, Utah is where the dealer event happened. The guest says they were there for a few days with lots of dealers and talks about AI and customer experience.
An AI agent is like a digital helper that can do tasks for you. Instead of just talking, it can search, compare, and reach out to dealers to help you buy a car.
OpenAI is the company behind popular AI tools. In this episode, they’re mentioned as helping shape the discussion about what AI-driven car shopping could look like.
ChatGPT is an AI that can answer questions and help with research. Here it’s used to explain how shoppers may ask AI to look up info and compare options for them.
Appointment set rate is how often people who contact a dealership actually end up booking a visit. If more leads come in automatically, some may not be as serious, so the rate can fall.
Margin compression means the dealership makes less money on each sale. If shoppers can compare offers more easily (like with AI), dealerships may have to price more aggressively.
Place
sock city Utah
They mention a Utah city (the transcript sounds like “sock city”) as an example of a Subaru dealer using AI. The key point is that a real dealership tried an AI agent, not just a theory.
CRM is the software dealerships use to manage leads and customer conversations. It helps sales teams follow up and keep track of who’s interested in buying.
Cox is a company that makes tools used by dealerships. In this discussion, they’re mentioned as buying another company to add more data and AI features.
A CDP is software that gathers customer information from different places into one place. That makes it easier to tailor messages and offers to the right people.
It’s a comparison to a time when a new technology changed how people used phones. The message is that AI will change how car shopping works, so dealerships need to adapt rather than just add a tool.
Conversion here means getting people to take the next step, like booking an appointment. They’re saying you should measure what actually leads to bookings, not just what sounds good in a demo.
Empathy means the AI responds like it cares and understands the customer. They’re saying it’s not enough to just schedule appointments—you also want the interaction to feel helpful and on-brand.
They’re talking about how hard it is to train lots of employees to act consistently. The idea is that AI can be trained once to follow the brand’s style and values reliably.
Term
AI
AI here means computer software that can learn patterns and help with tasks—like answering questions or organizing customer follow-ups. The idea is to take over the boring, repetitive stuff so people can focus on the important conversations.
A mindset shift means changing how people think and work, not just installing new technology. The point is that leaders need to rethink roles and routines so AI actually changes the dealership’s day-to-day approach.
This means using AI as an add-on to old computer systems and old processes. The concern is that it won’t work well if the foundation is outdated, because the AI can’t fix the underlying workflow problems.
Metrics are the numbers you track to see if something is working. In this case, the hosts are saying dealers should look at results like how many leads turn into appointments or sales.
A service director runs the dealership’s service department. They’re in charge of making sure the shop is organized and customers’ service work gets handled properly.
Voice AI is technology that can understand what someone says out loud and respond. In car dealerships, it can help handle calls or guide customers to the right place.
EOS is a business system for running a company with clear goals and regular check-ins. The “traction book” is the workbook/plan the team uses to stay organized and accountable.
The “four quadrants” is a simple way to split business priorities into four categories. It helps a team stay focused and know who’s responsible for what.
The Volkswagen Eos is a Volkswagen car with a roof that can open and close. That makes it feel like a convertible, but with a hard roof instead of a fabric one. It’s the kind of car dealerships talk about because it has a noticeable feature and a specific buyer appeal.
A “customer advocate” is a customer who really likes a dealership and tells other people about it. The dealership wants customers who come back and also recommend the shop to friends.
A “decline service recommendation” is when a service advisor presents recommended work (often from an inspection) and the customer says no at that time. Fixed-ops teams then focus on follow-up because those declined jobs can still become future work if the customer is re-engaged.
“AI follow-up” means using software to automatically reach out to customers after a service recommendation. Instead of waiting for a person to call, the system helps prompt the customer to revisit the recommendation.
“RO count” is shorthand for how many repair orders the service department actually creates. More repair orders generally means more work the dealer keeps instead of losing it to other shops.
An “independent repair facility” is a repair shop that isn’t the brand’s dealership. The dealership is worried about customers taking declined work recommendations to these other shops.
“Auto point inspections” are organized checklists the shop uses to look over a car and note what needs attention. The “points” are basically categories of items they check and recommend.
LIVE
We're doing better as a result of social media presence it doesn't do those three things then it's on the chopping block it's in return on investment discussion
Hey everybody welcome back to another episode of the Daily Dealer Live I'm your host Sam Dar coming to you live from CDG Studios in Boca Raton Florida
Thanks for choosing to be here this Friday June the 12th it's Fixed Ops Friday which we all know Fixed Ops it's the most profitable part of our dealerships
and for most stores it's still running on reactive firefight mode today we fixed that Joe Love joins the show who's he's a service director at Toyota of Montgomery
Yes I'm going to ask that question roll tide or not went Joe Love went all in on video MPIs and is rebuilding his drive around retention
Ryan Carl Stett is back of Willis Auto Group he's got nine brands 86% video compliance customer pay gross is up 16%
and they're breaking records every single month plus podiums Liam go lightly joins the show they just wrapped up an invite only summit in Park City
Dear Valley Super Elite for four of the five largest dealer groups in the country he's bringing the receipts on what AI is actually doing in service drives one store
30 days 56,000 bucks and found gross video retention AI accountability it's all Fixed Ops Friday today but first let's go to today's automotive industry headlines
kicking off today's show with an economic update inflation hit 4.2% in May that's the highest reading since April 2023 driven primarily by energy costs tied to the Iran conflict
gas prices rose 8.6% ouch in May and they're up 40.5% on an annual basis for anyone that's driven by a gas station lately though the national average has pulled back slightly from its peak at $4.52 to around 4.15
housing and food also posted modest gains Cox Automotive's Chief Economist said between the inflation reading and last week's jobs report 172,000 jobs added unemployment it's holding at 4.3% the case for rate cuts this summer is essentially well gone so if you're hoping for that don't hold your breath
and with new vehicle loan rates at 9.87% and prices approaching 50k inflation outpacing wage growth is the pressure point that dealers will feel most directly on the floor in other news today car gurus may intelligence report shows overall new vehicle demand it's up 6.2% from April and 5.7%
year over year it's the first time new demand has actually overtaken 2025 levels to it is leading the pack by a wide margin nearing 20% of total new market share 20% and the only brand with days on market under 50 GM was the only other brand above 15% share
the used market also accelerated in May with prices jumping to 30,200 bucks that's up 500 from April as inventory grows but the mix shifts towards higher priced listings vehicles.
11 years and older are actually seeing the strongest demand share driven by affordability conscious buyers working their way down the pricing ladder unsurprisingly hybrids are still the fastest movers on both new and use side with new retail hybrid sales up 33% year over year and used up 42%
up next today some good news for Ford truck dealers novellas restarted production at its as we go new york aluminum plant this week the facility that supplies the aluminum body panels for f series trucks had been offline for months following two fires the disruption already cost
Ford and estimated get this 2 billion bucks in impact and contributed to f series sales sales falling 16% in Q1 while Ram took over that posting a 20% gain over the same period with the plant back online Ford's ability to rebuild f series inventory and predict its most profitable vehicle
and owners you're being advised to park outside and away from structures until repairs are completed so take note if you fall into that category owner notification letters go out July 9.
This is the third major Jeep recall in recent months grand Cherokee airbag software in May PHEV battery fires in November and now this Stelaeus is in the middle of a quality overhaul and has hired 2000 engineers to address exactly these kinds of issues but the near term reality for Jeep dealers is that customer
communication and service line capacity well they're both going to be under pressure for more information on this recall and others get full details of the CDG recall tracker and that folks is a wrap on today's auto industry headlines welcome to fix
this is the best automotive podcast hands down love fix stops Friday and to you our loyal listening audience thanks for being here to make this show what it is every single Friday and three times a week and without further ado let's go to Montgomery
Alabama welcome Joel love service director toad of monkey up covering welcome to the show hey Sam how are you it's good to have you here Joel Joel we got to ask you man roll tide or no well who's your
no what the dogs George okay all right is that allowed being in Montgomery are you allowed to do that to go for a while I catch a pretty good bit of grief about it but this alright well I've heard a rumor who's the owner of your store oh yeah it is Coke saving
how could you do George anything by the way I've been to Athens George I've seen football games are what a great place to see it but you know I would think a contract or a term of your employment would be Alabama no no no thank God
okay all right so hey we're excited to meet you tell everybody who you are what you do and how's biz this June of 2026 at your Toyota store now this is going good with three consecutive record breaking months congrats and so we're moving in the right direction we are looking forward to breaking another record this month
so give us one tip our audience what's one thing that you've done that's helped to achieve three months of record sales these past three months video MPI
okay we've talked a lot about video MPI on the show what what what walk us through what you did where you implemented video MPI how long have you been doing it
well we've started it here in January where my previous I've been on since 2017 but here started in January and we are moving moving forward full board technicians have bought in I have one technician that he argued with me about doing them at first and then he saw many hours he produced after his first month and he's like hey I apologize I'm all in
yeah so did you recently become service director are you newer there at that store you said you're okay so so what caused you to say hey January we're going to implement video MPI what was the process before and what was the market pressure that made you say hey we're going to do this we're
getting everything so yeah what what platform do you use to deliver a video MPI
okay true video through Reynolds very good so a lot of service directors in your position they say retention is a priority but you're making at the center of your leadership focus right now we'll come back to video MPI in just a minute
what's driving that retention focus in June of 2026 is there something you're seeing in the numbers or is it more about where you think the market's headed
that's where we need to be and as a Toyota dealership we're currently at 80% 85% retention we want to be up 90%
yeah yeah we're focusing trying to we're giving our customers our our CSI has improved greatly in the last three or four months six months
and we're improving that by just have to give world-class service take care of our customers
yeah so in June of 26 we've seen video MPI's live or die by advisor and tech buy-in so coming back to the video MPI piece how did you get your team on board in January and what did the pushback look like from those who gave it initially
well am I going to get paid for this that's biggest thing from the technicians absolutely we'll make more money doing it
you know whenever you go to the doctor you want to talk to the doctor not the nurse the technicians are the doc and so that's what I've instilled into my technicians hey you're the doctor they want to hear from you
and so that's that's how what we're doing and and what percent deliver rate on RO's are you getting MPI's created and then what is the percent open rate look like from the customer
we're at 88.7% on deliver rate and we're 63% on open rates sick okay how do you explain that difference that's interesting that's a 30 point delta between send and open what why don't more customers open the video what do you think is the big stop
well I think the biggest office is making sure we have the correct information correct cell phone number that is going to the correct number yeah we're sending them we may not be sending them to the correct number
we're sending them has your auto group have you gone through a data cleanse CDP are you not yet have you done that okay who's your DMS provider Reynolds it's Reynolds yeah okay so all of them are integrated in there
have you thought about the data cleanse piece because that is an interesting point a 30 point delta on interaction and engagement if we have the wrong cell number on email address that's going to impact how they land absolutely
what's prevented the group from cleansing data what's what needs to happen for you to do it well we're they just acquired us so we're we're in the process of getting everything turned around
oh okay Nick Saban just bought your dealership got it okay who owned it prior it was Sutherland Automotive okay okay what did I know this requires you to guess but what did Nick Saban see in your store
that made him say hey I want to make this part of the auto group I think being a Toyota owner yeah yeah cuz he's got a lot of Benz stores right yeah yeah yeah
huh so when a customer watches their vehicle inspection on video how does that change the conversation at write up are you seeing a difference in approval rates on recommended work on the 60 some odd percent where the customer engages and opens it
absolutely absolutely we are we are at a 78% approval rate on video MPI versus what without without we are at a 32% approval rate wow so it's over double approval when the customer watches the video okay
and we we send out as soon as we write up the repair order there's a text message goes to the customer you'll be receiving a we prep them that they're going to be receiving a video yeah yeah
what message would you give to service directors watching this show right now who may not be requiring video MPIs maybe it's optional about you know you started it in January what do you wish you'd have done it 12 months ago and gone through the pain of implementing it
and what message would you give to anybody kicking the tires yes do it don't wait around do it right now yeah yeah yeah
um what what else are you doing to improve your retention you've got a great retention number it's increasing it's increasing north video MPIs is one of the prongs is there anything else you're doing our audience could learn from today
well well you know we're fortunate we have UVI on the service drive so okay that is a great tool for my service riders to if you can sell tires you can get retention and that is a great tool to sell tires
alright so actually I'm going to pressure test that I know it's a great it's it's it's a capable tool but Joel it's expensive the expense load to any service department is significant having UVI tell me what the ROI is on it
and where you've seen the most lift having a technology like that for the audience that doesn't know whether it's UVI or whether it's I know ACV has a new tool called I feel what their tool is called
what's it called viper I think there's some different tools where you can run a vehicle through a camera tunnel what is the UVI product do and then what's the ROI been given the expense
well we run all of our appraisals through it so the use car department service department use car department split split the cost okay so our ROI is great but our tire sales right now we're facing 500 and so tires this month
wow wow okay okay and do you use anything in processes use use vehicle acquisition or use car acquisition anything anywhere that way we have sales people on the drive
yeah yeah that that that do use vehicle acquisition do you use the UVI process or product for that as well or do you
can be there on the server side trying to trade the customer to trade or sale or whatever it's a win-win for us
well Joel as we wrap up today we absolutely appreciate you being on especially in this new Nick Saban store acquisition by the way an ask before I go into CDG circles with you
how do we get we got to get Nick Saban on the show so can you go to your boss say hey you know what daily deal alive Nick Saban come on and and we can have a little debate about Alabama versus
George's we head into the football season in the fall we can try I know I know he's busy he's got a good TV gig but you know what there's no better TV gig than daily deal alive so maybe he'd still still join up right so
hey you're in CDG circles give our audience and a sense of what do you get out of that what's the value of CDG circles for you Joel Love as a service director at a Toyota store making big changes in video MPIs and UVI and all the other things you're doing
for someone that's been in the business since 1987 CDG circles there's a lot of smart people these this younger generation this AI I learned so much just on CDG circles on the AI
man they're smart yeah Lauren Klein comes into the chest is are you using Toyota smart path in the service drive are you smart path at all okay very good and I'm looking down because I'm at a different studio
you'll see me do this dance he says Paul Salisman says tire sales equals client stickiness and then there's a bunch of conversation about Nick Saban so we got to have Saban back in to join you but Joel Love service
Toyota Montgomery will have you back at the end of the show's part of the roundtable thanks for being here with us today all right all right I got to figure that out how do you work for Saban and end up a Georgia fan go dogs but you know there's a little healthy dose of competition between
go dogs but all right let's do this today's episode is brought to you by experience let's talk experience smarter marketing data drive smarter growth and with experience automotive reach in market shoppers boost loyalty and service revenue and activate powerful automotive audiences across 30 plus platforms
props to experience for supporting today's content including that fascinating conversation on one of Saban's newest acquisitions a Toyota store there in Montgomery Alabama including video MPIs UVI and a little bit of conversation on used car trade
in processes eager K continues to be active in the chats today and we see Dan C saying Joe Agresti of dream motor group would be a great guest on the show we've loved that we we want all the best from automotive on so whether it's fixed
we want the best from automotive here for you every three times a week let's transition to our next guest Liam go lightly SVP dealer success podium Liam welcome to the show
it's great to see you so Liam I missed out on something this week and I'm so bummed tell us what you guys were doing up in Park City Utah yeah we've been here three days it's been nestled in the mountains it's been it's been amazing we've had 75 dealers both you know
dealers to some of the most innovative 2050 location dealerships so it's been fantastic yeah we've we had open AI speak the folks behind chat GPT so started with a lot of discussion around hey how is actually the experience of your customer going to change
you know you've talked about this on the podcast yeah what about that AI agent shopping but then we talked a lot about our new products as well as a lot of time we had about five and a half hours yesterday just on
so you call the event podium connect is this the first of many coming up or is it an annual event so annual event usually in somewhere gorgeous like Park City really the ideas we have a bunch of brilliant innovative customers bring them together to share best practices and of course we set up workshops and talk about our latest and greatest products
so yeah yeah give us a glimpse inside the room I think that's fascinating that you had someone from open AI there to kind of challenge automotive about what the future of automotive looks like in an AI infused world I think
I think we're all trying to figure out what does it mean look like and how do we run towards that future what were a couple of the takeaways from the open AI session that we might be able to learn from
yeah I mean I think one takeaway is is right now we're talking about AI talking to humans most customers are still pretty much shopping the same way now I'd argue that even your use of chat GPT has changed you know you started out
okay I'll do a bit of research I'll really act like it's Google now that journey is has expanded so it's really saying actually no I want my AI to go look at every site out there do the research for me and actually pull a lot of that information used to be on a dealership site into chat
GPT and then the next question was I see I showed an example of his shopping agent where instead of you know shopping at one or two dealers his agent shop to 50 dealers so I think a lot of that is okay that's interesting and it's not a matter of if it's when how
how do the dealers now react to that world there's a lot of conversations about well the volume is going to go up 10 times which means your your appointment set rate may go down because of that volume the price and the margin compression is possible so and and and a lot of discussion about
well how does that change my staffing my pricing everything we're doing so that it was really really interesting discussion from both the really big groups to the smaller groups.
So from open AI's perspective what are a couple things dealers can do today to prepare for that image a couple weeks ago we had on a dealer from a going back to sock city Utah it's a Subaru dealer that actually created an agent that would actually respond to agent inquiries and then the idea was the dealer had an agent customer
and they actually can transact a full deal start to finish I think it may have been the first of its kind. What what can dealers be doing today to prepare for that potential eventuality according to the open AI.
Yeah I think a lot of discussion in the room was hey we're in this state of massive change right now. There's things like you know we were talking about well how do I make sure I show up in chat GPT and all these questions.
I think the reality is that's that's all changing every month. So one of the biggest things you can do is make sure you're creating the vision for your dealership you're exploring your in circles you're talking about what the latest tools are.
I think that that was really one of the key takeaways is is whatever you're doing you need to be out there trying new things things explore.
Challenge challenge what you how you think business is versus what it's doing so consolidation and automotive is is real it's something dealers are really focused on and we're seeing more CRM companies were seeing them add AI into their tech stack a recent example was is Cox they acquired full path so now they've got the ability to
put a CDP and use some AI into some existing tools. What separates a platform that was actually built for AI from one that just has something bolted on Liam in your perspective.
Yeah I think there's a couple of things I think there's you know whether it's the CRM's or the thousand other AI tools. I think there's a couple things to think about the first is when it comes to some of the more traditional things I think it like about it like almost like the
BlackBerry iPhone moment. If you remember iPhone came out touch screen and BlackBerry responded and said OK we're going to add a screen to our BlackBerry and I don't know if I had a BlackBerry and I tell you what I don't have one anymore.
I loved it. That was the hardest thing to give up Liam. Now I couldn't go back. The reality was that was a transformational moment. I think AI is very similar in a similar way and I think like you really have to think about it like this revolutionary time.
And what I'll tell you is that the conversion and the quality of the AI is the most important thing. It's not like you're just going to go out there and you're going to plug plug chat GPT in and it's going to be great.
You need to be thinking about what really converts. And I think one of the things that I had a dealership principal who I'm pretty close with call me and said listen we love you guys. We like your AI.
But actually my CRM is giving it to me for free. And he said I've got to try it. And I said all right. That's fair. He called me four or five weeks later and said that wasn't free. That was actually extremely expensive because I've lost a bunch of sales.
I had my worst month. And I think that that is a mentality shift of like free software. This is not actually software. It's an employee. You wouldn't get your low converting your cheap employee in your dealership. You need the one that really really converts.
And that I think that that is hard as a dealer to think through.
So Liam, I've said one of the great greatest responsibility of GM's and dealer principles go forward is to learn the different types of AI learn how to implement it and then learn how to get buy in with your team. You said something interesting.
You said you need to seek. You need to go after the quality AI. What differentiates quality from non quality. Like how can a dealer in 2026 know if it's quality good AI that is something that you can implement into your tech stack.
Well, I think that that is one of the hardest things as a dealer because every AI company can come and give you a really cool demo.
I think the thing we think about is, is it the number one converting thing? And we have a whole team and we talked about the team came here. All they're doing is because we've got 18,000 AI agents out there, we are constantly running tests on what converts best.
If you say this versus that, which one makes a difference? I was actually talking to a bunch of dealers this morning out with the view of the mountains. And they were saying like, oh, we do this thing and we do that thing. And they were kind of opposite things.
And I think part of what our responsibility is, is to test really when you look, when you look at this across millions and millions of conversations, what actually leads to more appointments, not just what looks cool, what's demo call, what actually gets you more appointments.
I think that that is the, that at the end of the day, all of the AI, the only thing that matters is, is that. So that's good. What actually one other thing I'll say is we had a, I know it's fixed ups Friday.
So we had a big work with, there are 600 location service group. And they, they cared about the conversion, but they have also built this amazing brand. So they cared a lot about, and we've deployed our voice AI agent across all 600 now.
So they had this crazy benefit, but they also care about, does this represent their brand? Does the voice represent their brand? Does it have the empathy? So a lot of what we focused on was, yeah, let's get the appointments.
But also how is the quality of those calls? And they were on a panel yesterday and the CTO said that humans have a 98% CSAT and they've been measuring the voice AI, 96% CSAT.
This is a voice AI. They've outperform the humans. Just offer their humans. And it was, I think that to them was, it was an incredible thing too. Not only has, I think he said 500 incremental appointments, but it's also like this experience of their customer.
So I think you've got to balance both conversion and does it have the empathy? Does it represent your brand?
You know, and this is a different conversation, but Matt Bowers posted something to LinkedIn. We're going to try to get him on the show next week. He talked about how there is a deficit of training and automotive, like people being trained to really engage well with customers.
And I think you make an interesting point. I've been out in many retail situations and engaged with employees of other organizations and the experience is horrible in many cases.
The empathy, the ability to help support AI, it seems to me particularly coming out of this COVID era has the opportunity to not just buy a few percents, but just absolutely crush humans because humans are becoming worse at it without training.
Liam, do you see that where, where AI actually has a leg up because it doesn't have the bad habits that a lot of people do?
I think that's right. I think it's been especially interesting with some of these big groups. They're saying like, I didn't, they didn't think about this, but this idea of consistency and actually training my 10,000 people is quite difficult.
But training an AI to represent my brand, represent my values and be consistent is great. And one thing that actually was talking to a group we work with, a, you know, 100 plus location group, they've actually said, oh, well, actually going to start, we're actually seeing some GMs use this as like training.
So we hadn't built the AI for that. But because we've spent so much time honing it in, reflecting their values, they're actually saying, oh, yeah, great, we're going to actually show this for folks and they're using your conversations to model their process, which I just thought was fascinating.
Not a thing we intended, but it makes sense.
Yeah.
Let's go to a staff that you shared with us behind the scenes. You talked about one dealer's first 30 days, 23 book appointments, 56 grand and gross profit, all from customers the team never would have reached on their own. What was the before state at that particular store?
Yeah, he was actually on the panel. I was asking him a little bit and it was like, he's launched our sales product and our service voice products. So all of our, all of our AI products. And his reality was, we actually thought we were doing these things. We didn't realize we were missing this many calls.
We hadn't really measured that. We thought we were going and reaching out to service customers and outbounding about folks who hadn't come into an appointment yet, but they actually realized that they weren't doing as good of a job as they thought.
And that was his big takeaway was like, yeah, we were doing this stuff and we thought we were, but we hadn't even realized what we were leaving behind.
And I imagine that's more common, unfortunately, than many people.
I think that's right. Again, going, going back to the training piece, I think AI in a lot of cases is going to be able to deliver an experience that humans just have been not trained well lately, maybe the last five, 10 years to do to deliver. So
I think that's right. One of the interesting thing we heard from the panel was actually, and by do it, taking AI, taking a lot of that mundane stuff, they're actually able to focus more on retention, more on things like that, the higher value activities that they weren't before.
I think that was one of the fascinating takeaways for me. People were even talking about, maybe I should comp my salesperson on if that customers came in with the first service appointment.
Like that was some of the discussion and creativity in the room. I thought it was just absolutely fascinating.
What, so when you think about implementing AI, you talk about the different areas, podium, you have that available to dealers today. What's the biggest mindset shift from old age automotive to today that you see some dealers maybe even in the panel in Park City there are struggling with to kind of get past and are kind of holding them back in an old way of thinking, Liam.
I think the main thing that there were we had a whole session and there were probably 50 takeaways. There were a couple key ones I'll say, I'll say that the first thing was that buying is just incredibly important.
And it starts at the top. We actually had Emmett Smith as one of our talk speakers, and he was about the same thing he's like real transformation has to start with a leader.
And one thing we talked a lot about is if you think about, you know, I lead the dealership success team, we have folks in every region just going into dealers, and there's these different dealers mentality.
Some of them are like, all right, I'm a plug in the AI and I do the same thing I was doing out of the same cadences, the same process.
And reality is, is like, you haven't really this if this is the industrial revolution, you haven't really changed. Others are saying, No, this is a completely different model.
And the leaders are saying, you know, you think about the other case, the people are scared. Some This is I'm worried about my job.
But now you take the other type of leader, who's creating this vision of what this could be and the opportunity.
They're saying, Well, no, your role is going to morph. You're going to you're going to be able to do more of this proactive stuff, less of the mundane stuff.
And this type of leader is encouraging opportunity. They're encouraging exploration. They're making new roles. The thing we had 75 dealers in the room.
There were a bunch of new roles of AI roles. They're not just the big companies. We had not just the big dealer groups, even smaller ones.
There were like five AI roles in the room. And it was fascinating.
So yeah, yeah. So it's the difference between a mindset, a negative deficit mindset and one of opportunity and positive, right?
That's what it is.
That's exactly right.
I think, I think it's realizing that, Hey, this is a time of evolution. You have to, but with evolution becomes this amazing opportunity for you to flourish.
Yeah, yeah. That's fascinating. I appreciate you sharing. One of the biggest challenges is just being embracing that change, being positive about it.
So you were, you were pretty direct about what most vendors are getting wrong in June of 2026.
AI layered on top of legacy systems. It's not a real solution. What's the tell that a dealer is buying that story without knowing it?
Just the AI layered on top of legacy.
I think a lot of that is, you know, hey, how are you looking at your, how are their metrics? How are their, how is the actual conversion gone?
And really like the depth of thinking about that. I think, you know, some dealers are saying, Well, I'm using the same cadence I've used for the past 10 years.
Yeah. Well, hang on a second. Like, is that even the right way to think? Should you be just calling and texting three times a day for every customer?
Or should you be thinking about completely different way that AI is finding the most valuable thing for that customer?
And I think, I think when you start really getting into depth, that's when people really start to start to think differently.
Yeah.
Was there anybody in the room this week at Park City that walked in with one mindset and walked out completely thinking about automotive and AI a different way?
I think about the people you had open AI being an example, like the no better source for kind of challenging us to rethink.
And anybody kind of have a 180?
I think there were a couple 180s for a couple.
You should out who this was, Liam. Come on, tell us who it is.
I told everyone, no, no, I had, I think there were a couple of mindset shifts.
I think one was just on, yeah, I, the customer experience, the customer changes are going to force me to adopt AI.
Even if I don't, even I'm not ready, I'm going to have to.
The other one was, you know, one of the things we talked a lot about, we gave a sneak peek at and most of our agents have been, you know, customer facing.
We launched our agent this week or I gave a sneak peek that was actually helping the managers, the GM, the dealer principles.
It's an operational AI agent.
And the idea was, you know, I sat with a GM last week and I asked him for some of his data and he took him 10 minutes to pull the 10 different dashboards in his CRM.
Yeah.
Now this text, this text, the owner every morning or you can have a voice call about, you know, what are the opportunities you're missing?
Why does Liam need coaching?
And I think that they had a fundamental like, whoa, I, one of the, one of the big, big groups, so to be, this is new and different.
What's the tool?
What's the tool, Liam?
You'll have to get my, and my product team back to give you the full glimpse, but it really is this AI operator is what we're calling it.
And it is full.
If you can imagine never having to log into your tools again, everything coming to you proactive like a chief of staff telling you where are the customers you've left hanging.
What's your best opportunity tomorrow?
Who needs coaching on your team?
All of this stuff that if you think about the GM or the GSM or the service director, the busiest people in the world, I've sat with them and I don't know how they do it.
So this idea is to really help them, help them flourish and help them focus on the right things too.
And it's in, it's in ideation or creation or it's a product.
We gave a sneak preview to the folks at the event and yeah, we'll be sharing more soon, but I will tell you people's minds exploded would be the way.
Do you think, do you think there's a day this whole idea of a DMS and automotive and a CRM and automotive like a box where there's information and it's sort of contained that information.
Somebody owns it, you kind of pay access to have it.
Do you think that's an old notion that goes away in the next two to five years?
Yeah, I think there's going to be new categories and we're going to give a sneak peek at that today where where those tools seem a little bit like those the right way of even thinking about it.
I think we should have, we should have the team come back and share more, but I really do think that if you think about building all these tools before AI, they probably were built quite differently and building after AI it opens up a whole different different world.
Yeah, you're getting a lot of comments in the chat I'm looking down to see it got a little bit of a different screen today.
Igor Kay says, or Lauren Klein says, so many myths and pushbacks about AI while most have been using some form of it for years.
Igor Kay says, I love Liam's energy and Igor Kay goes on, Liam, we are old school and it's hard for us old people to get with the program.
I'm a dopp quicker with all this new tech, but it's awesome to see companies like yourselves being forward thinking and getting people into a room that kind of challenges the way we think about this.
Lauren Klein says, there are guys out there they're still using filing cards to keep their customers straight because they don't trust the CRM.
All right, which I think that's right.
One reason why eventually CRMs may go away.
So all right, as we wrap up today, appreciate your time here, Liam.
What's next in the podium world? You know, you've talked about some products you're ideating.
You've got the voice AI products, you know, service across the different platforms, different departments and automotive.
What's next for you? What are you working on next?
Yeah, I think really it's bringing everything together.
I think the example you shared with somebody who's using all of our AI products together, this idea that he was using a bunch of discreet solutions before and having that in the same place.
And then I think, listen, you know, we were open AI here, they've been partners.
We were doing AI before AI was cool, but I think a lot of what's next is just massively improving conversion and continuing to iterate on that.
And then I think this world where you truly think about how you operate your dealership in a completely different way.
I think that is what you'll see.
I think the idea of having to log into dashboards and figuring out what to do next is going to seem like a crazy notion the next few years.
Yeah, it'll be interesting to see as things change because the one thing that is certain, things are changing very quickly.
Did the open AI rep, I'm curious, talk about the new version of chat GPT that was just released and any feedback on that?
I know it takes a lot more data to perform tasks, but it seems a lot more capable today.
Yeah, I mean, whether it's the new open AI model or the new anthropic model, I would say like these models are every month changing the game.
And I think that's why at Podium, our responsibility is to be testing every single new model.
And we often test the open AI's model before they release and things like that.
So we told a little bit about it.
And I think a lot of that is going to be in some of the releases we're launching.
Awesome.
Liam Golightly, SVP dealer success at Podium from Park City, Utah live.
Thanks for being here with us, Liam.
Thanks, Sam.
Appreciate it.
All right.
Thank you.
Interesting conversation.
I love the debates of what changes in automotive with technology and what do the new roles look like in the future?
I think some of the best automotive groups are fully engaged in those conversations because it's not going to stay the way it is today.
It's just not going to do it.
Technology will evolve, AI will evolve, and our ability to deliver our best to customers will evolve alongside it.
Paul Salisman says, I've seen people at work some use notebooks referencing people that are still writing things down on paper and trying to find those things that they've written down.
Igor Kay says, I was very skeptical of myself at first about AI for a long time.
Lauren, very old school, but times do change and those who don't adapt die like dinosaurs.
Next up, Ryan Carlstadt, Executive Vice President of Fixed Operations Willis Auto Group.
Ryan, welcome to the show.
Hey, Sam.
How's it going?
How's it going?
I feel like Fixed Ops Friday has turned into Football Friday.
We got the Alabama store.
I know.
Roll tide, right?
You got Roll Tide.
You got Joel over there saying, go dogs.
What you got, Ryan?
Go Hawks.
Oh, there you go.
Big Ten.
It's been all SEC.
We had Liam and Emma Smith.
I think he went to Florida.
I'm a Big Ten guy, hot guys all the way.
That's fair.
That's fair.
You know what struck me, Ryan, though, as we talk about this?
We're talking football, almost like pencils and paper and pen and notepads in the world
of World Cup, because it's not football right now.
It's soccer, Ryan.
Do you have a team here?
Yeah, I'm not a big soccer guy.
I've got an almost eight-year-old son that started playing soccer.
That was my first delve into it.
And I know just today, one of our vendors brought me a jersey.
Oh, let's see.
What you got?
First little soccer jersey there.
They're celebrating the World Cup.
I can't wait to get home and show it to my son.
He's going to be so proud that dad has a soccer jersey now.
But I'm just an old-school football guy.
All right.
Well, football it is.
We'll get into more of that in the fall.
But for tonight, I do know Team USA plays.
So, Ryan, you and I, we need to figure out a way to get with it and watch World Cup
support Team USA as we go into it.
Yeah.
Lucas T. Genesis comes into the chat and says, go dogs.
And Lauren Klein says, hey, Ryan, there as well.
Igor Kay says, we are having so much fun here, guys and gals.
A lot of comments coming from Paul Salzman says, Seattle is all a buzz with the World Cup.
And I think much of the country and certainly the globe is.
So, Ryan, you were on Fix Ops Friday back in March.
And you were talking about turning guest care up to an 11, Spinal Tap style.
And I had to, it was embarrassing.
I had to admit Spinal Tap really.
How's the theme playing out across your nine stores over the last few months?
What does an 11 look like now in practice versus when you launched it?
It's going great.
You know, I mean, our customer service scores, the CSI scores are off the charts.
Our culture here is just, it can't be beat.
You go to our service drives, the advisors are having fun.
They work so well as a team.
And, you know, if you watch these shows every week, we always talk about videos, right?
We do, yes.
You know, videos is a thing here too.
But I still feel like that culture that your employees having fun enjoying coming to work, that translates to sales too.
Yeah.
And when we look at our customer pay growth year over year, it's videos, but it's culture too.
The culture drives it.
So you've said customer pay growth year over year.
What's one thing aside from videos that you would attribute to that growth?
Because there are some groups where customer pays flat in 26.
Yeah.
I mean, for us, again, it's constant training with our advisors.
It's the culture.
It's having fun.
Our team is great.
They're truly a team.
They help each other.
And I just, I can't get away from that.
I think that drives it more than anything else.
When you're having fun at work, your guests, your customers, they see that and it makes it less stressful.
You know, paying for, nobody wants to spend a bunch of money to repair their vehicle.
It's fun to come and buy a car, but you come back in and see us when it's broken.
And when they come in and the team's a team and they're in a happy mood and it just takes that weight off.
And when it's more of a friendly, it's not a transaction anymore.
It's friend-stalking.
And our team does a great job at doing that.
So you've talked a lot about the outputs, right?
So a happy team.
People are engaged.
It's a positive atmosphere.
People enjoy what they're doing.
Those are all the result of something.
And we have a lot of people come on the show.
They're like, culture, culture, culture.
And it drives me nuts because I think it's a buzzword and it's tough to point to what creates that.
So I'm going to challenge you, Ryan.
Give us a couple things in 2026 within your organization that you're doing specifically that creates that enjoyment at work,
creates that positive engagement with customers.
What are the outputs?
We scorecard everything and we reward top performers.
We celebrate top performers.
We celebrate the customer, the verbatims on the CSI surveys.
We celebrate those.
We look through our executive team here, me and the rest of the executive team.
We read those.
And when we go around, we talk to our people and we say, hey, I saw that one go through and great job.
Or did you see the comments that person put?
And even when I'm talking to our technicians about doing the videos,
we see that come through on the verbatims to where our guests are saying we love the video and it's rewarding that.
It's continually sharpening the saw.
In college, I had to read that book.
Seven habits of highly effective people, probably 20 times.
Who knows how many times.
But really one of the habits stuck with me and it's sharpening the saw.
It's constant ongoing training.
And my management team here, all the fixed operations managers,
we just started reading a book, doing a book report on inspiring accountability in the workplace.
And, you know, when you hold your people accountable, the top performers, just the cream rises to the top.
And it's a day to day thing.
It's constantly going around talking to your people.
And, you know, just like I started off talking about football,
I like to joke around and talk to my people more about what's going on away from work and work.
Let's just lighten it up if we're talking about race cars or shooting guns or the football game or whatever.
You know, when we go around and talk to our people, it's, let's make work fun.
Yeah, yeah.
Lauren Klein comes into the chat says, your people are your best product.
Tigger Kay agrees, 100% Lauren.
No dealership can survive without its staff.
But there is a difference between people who enjoy what they're doing.
Are there any, you talk about training.
You've also heard this conversation we just had with podium on AI.
Are there any AI tools that you're implementing into your organization as a way to kind of help alleviate some of the lift and some of the pressure that is on automotive service riders, technicians and other staff in 2026.
We haven't gotten anything new since last time I was on the show, but we are on the fixed stop side.
We use NUMA.
We love NUMA.
The little selling tools that help me sell the job piece.
You can really take a service advisor that's green or new to the business and give them the tools and their tool belt to help them sell and to learn more.
And I mean, we also have a service advisor that the process of service contracts.
I think Hendrik when he was on earlier, he was talking about service contracts.
Yes.
That process is a nightmare for our service advisors, calling in, waiting on hold, going through line by line.
We have a service advisor that used AI on his computer.
Just he copy and pasted a bunch of part numbers in there, copy and pasted complaints and corrections.
And it spit out a spreadsheet and now he just emails that spreadsheet over.
That's right.
Contract and took a one hour, one and a half hour process into 15 minutes.
And then his manager, one of my younger managers on my team, he said, you know, why don't we bring our service advisor team together.
All of them 630 in the morning and have them all bring the one thing that they do that they don't think anybody else does and share it.
You know, so now we can cascade those one little thing that's made my job easier, one thing that's made it more enjoyable.
And I can cascade it to our whole entire team of service advisors.
And you know, maybe you go in with one and leave with three, maybe you go in with one and leave with 20.
Yeah, you're going to come out with more than you came in with.
So hopefully how often are you doing that, Jim?
All right.
How often we do a monthly 630 training session and we just kind of vary up what it is.
And that's just one of our topics.
You know, we try to do them seasonally, whether it's get into winter, we'll talk about tires, more AC systems this time of year.
We always just try to make them relevant to whatever our monthly specialist, whatever's going on in the economy or whatever's going on weather wise.
So you last time you were on, you talked about your summer apprenticeship program.
It was the fifth year running yet roughly eight of 16 graduates still with you in March.
You mentioned a kid between his junior and senior year that you kept on part-time through DMACC.
How's Eli tracking now?
And what does that pipeline look like headed into this summer?
Oh, fantastic.
Eli's still locked in, still working for us part-time.
We brought in four new interns this summer.
They started in the last couple of weeks.
And I think this is our best crew yet.
We've got one that he really likes European cars.
He's locked in over our Land Rover store.
He's going to spend the whole 10 weeks there.
And we've got another young man that owns a Volvo and loves Volvo.
So he's going to spend the whole 10 weeks of Volvo.
We met a young woman that's from DMACC, Des Moines Area Community College.
She's going to school there.
She's already, she spent her first week at Lexus and told us, I love it at Lexus.
I like the culture.
I just want to stay at Lexus for the whole 10 weeks.
And she's going to stay on because she needs more for her credit hours.
So she's going to stay on past the 10 weeks that we do.
And then our last young man, he's from a local West Des Moines Valley High School.
I went over and talked to a few of the students there.
There was three of them that were really interested in automotive.
And I sat down with them in the library and just talked about it.
And you can tell right away that this kid, he gets it.
And I go meet him and I talk to him about, you know, the trade and the benefits of it.
But when it comes to the hiring process, I let my managers do that.
I let our recruiter do that.
I'll do the handoff, but we run them through the normal interview process.
I don't push them either way.
I don't let my bias push anyway.
And my team came out of the interview with him.
They said, this kid's a grand slam.
And they described him as an old soul.
I think his favorite car is like a 1972 Pontiac, something or other.
He likes to restore eight track players for his hobby.
We put him a Cadillac and, you know, hopefully he's not listening and get a big head or anything.
But after a few days, our Cadillac manager was up in my office saying, we got a unicorn here.
I mean, this kid, he's an old soul.
He loves General Motors cars.
We got slow the other day and he picked up a broom and started sweeping the floor without being asked to.
He took some glass cleaner and a microfiber and cleaned his, the technician he's working with.
He cleaned his toolbox up for him.
And then on day three, he was already welding unsupervised because he knows how to do it.
So, and he's a the summer, but before his senior year of high school.
So that's strong.
You found him a Willis guy for life.
You found something that excites him, lights him up.
He finds purpose in and then it just expands and flows into other things.
So last time you're on, you talked to the video MPI piece.
You've talked culture and a lot of the other things you've worked on to help grow the dealership set records, continue to break records.
What are you working on next as we wrap up, Ryan?
Then we'll go into our roundtable.
Again, it's just that sharpening the saw.
My management team, I got a big management team and I love them all.
I think it's the strongest team I've ever had.
And we're all better at one thing and not as good at another.
And, you know, we run our business on EOS traction book and one of them is EOS life, another book.
And, you know, it talks about the four quadrants, you know, like I like it.
I'm good at it.
I like it.
I'm not good at it.
I don't like it, but I'm good at it and I don't like it and I'm not good at it.
And really my focus with my team for the rest of the year is to figure out a way to focus on that.
I like it and I'm good at it box and find people on the, I don't like it and I'm not good at it.
Find people that are better at that box and just come together even more as a team to help each other and help on projects, help on management and really make work fun for all of us.
I love coming to work every day.
Most of my team does and we can only make it better.
Ryan Carlstaff, EVP fixed operations at Willis Auto Group.
Thanks for joining the show today.
We'll have you back on momentarily as part of our roundtable.
Thank you, Ryan.
Thanks, Sam.
Great conversations today across all different areas of automotive, but fixed ops in particular.
A lot of comments online between Eager K, Lauren Klein, Paul Salisman, Dan C in the rest of the group.
So too many to bring everybody up, but let's wrap out today.
Go back to Joel Love, service director at Toyota of Montgomery.
Ryan Carlstaff, EVP fixed ops of Willis Auto Group.
Gentlemen, welcome back to the show and to the daily deal of live fixed ops Friday roundtable.
Thanks for being here both.
Do we need to start on a football conversation?
I think loyalty is probably more to a brand in my book, you know, like I love Toyota.
I love Lexus, but the retention is sticking with your dealer, you know, sticking with the people that sold you the car and then you bring it back for service.
And, you know, you can love Lexus, but you could go to three different Lexus stores and I think retention is truly keeping people in your own circle of business.
So give me one thing each that you're doing in 2026 to keep retention or loyalty back to the dealership.
You want them back in your store.
We talked, we talked about the Cox facts a couple weeks ago about, you know, we are seeing defection to independent repair facilities.
Gross dollars are up, but our account is down and we're losing it to independent repair facilities.
What's one thing each of you is doing 2026 to retain that customer back to your stores.
We'll start out with Joel.
Well, our BDC is tearing up lists every day, outbound calls and they've done a great job on getting us winning customers back for us.
Yeah.
You heard podium talk about how in some cases 2026 AI can do a better job on that outbound.
Do you buy it or do you think your people are better, Joel?
I think AI is good for a lot of things.
We use fly.
Fly.
And it does a great job on backstaffing for us.
And MPL does a great job on our text messaging.
So yeah, it can, but people are, you know, people are people.
We're a people business.
Joel Dancy comes into the chastis.
How could Joel not brag about UGA baseball?
Oh yeah, baseball.
They look pretty good right now.
So coming back to our, our sports, our sports convo.
All right, Ryan, one thing, keep customers from defecting to independent repair facilities, June of 26.
Yeah, just like Joel said, you know, the BDC plays a big part in that.
Here at Willis Automotive, again, it goes back to EOS and our proven process.
And, you know, step five in the proven process for us is to create customer advocates.
And, you know, it's a, it's a Danny Meyer video that Lexus shows all the time.
And it's basically about being the favorite and how favorite inarguable.
And we teach that to our team from our new hire orientations on how our goal is to be their favorite.
And favorite comes from relationship.
Joel said it right at the very end.
He said, we're in the people business.
Our, our now chairman of the board retired DP.
He always used to say, we're in the people business.
We just happen to sell in service vehicles.
Yeah, that's embraced company-wide.
And it's that relationship that brings people back to the dealer.
I agree with that.
I agree with that at the relationship drives a lot.
Let's talk about decline service.
Last question up for our round table today on this fixed ops Friday.
Thank you both for being here.
Tell us what happens in your store to a decline service recommendation 30 days later?
Is there human follow-up?
Is there AI follow-up or does nothing happen at all?
Which decline service follow-up that's important to retention?
That's important to getting that RO count back from the independent repair facility starting with you, Ryan.
What happens?
You know, we've tried a lot of different things on that.
Our auto point inspections used to do a three pronged approach to declines.
Then we turned it over to our BDC.
That isn't the hands of AI now.
Just like Joel said, AI is better at some things than others.
I think decline services is one of AI strengths and it makes it really easy.
We just add an op code to the repair order that just says decline service.
It doesn't have to be specific.
The meeting that goes in, it looks for that op code and it triggers it and it markets to those people and it will come back in.
Joel?
Yeah, same way.
AI does a great job with that.
Impale is doing us a wonderful job with our decline services.
And then after 30 days, our BDC takes that over.
We hit it both ways.
Yeah.
Well, Joel Love, service director, Toyota Montgomery.
Go Dawgs or Roll Tide.
I'm not sure which.
Ryan Carlstadt, EVP, fixed stops from Des Moines, Iowa.
Go Iowa, I guess.
Hawkeyes.
Hawkeyes.
There you go.
EVP, fixed stops at Willis Auto Group.
Thank you both for being on the roundtable today on Daily Dealer Live.
Fixed stops Friday.
Thank you.
All right.
Everybody, thanks for watching.
Fixed stops Friday.
We're a little bit off-site today.
A ton of awesome comments in the chat.
Go back and check that out if you watch this on repeat, return, rerun.
And to you, our Daily Dealer Listening audience.
Thanks for watching Daily Dealer Live where we break down the biggest moves in the car business as they happen.
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About this episode
Fixed Ops Friday turns into a practical playbook for dealership retention: video MPIs, UVI appraisals, and tight service-lane communication are tied to measurable approval and engagement gains. The conversation then widens to AI in dealership workflows—voice AI quality measured by conversion and CSAT, operational agents that reduce dashboard busywork, and how to prepare for AI-driven lead volume. Along the way, they also cover real-world fixed-ops challenges like recalls, production disruptions, and customers defecting to independents.
Today's show features:
- Joel Love, Service Director at Toyota of Montgomery
- Liam Golightley, SVP Dealer Success at Podium
- Ryan Carlstedt, EVP Fixed Ops at Willis Auto Group
This episode is brought to you by:
Experian – Experian Automotive helps marketers identify and engage high-value auto shoppers, strengthen customer loyalty, grow service revenue, and activate 1,100+ automotive audiences across 30+ advertising platforms. Learn more here: https://carguymedia.com/3RTNi9H
Podium – Podium is the AI operating system built for dealerships — combining broken legacy systems into a single AI-first platform that helps GMs scale revenue, retain customers, and run fixed ops without adding headcount. Podium Connect was an invitation-only summit in Park City, Utah bringing together GMs, dealer principals, and C-suite leaders from some of the largest dealer groups in the country to share how they're actually implementing AI — what's working, what isn't, and where the industry is headed. Learn more at https://automotive.podium.com/
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