00:00
If you could pinpoint that one thing that's like definitely get rid of these word
00:04
tracks or these types of templates, what would that be for you?
00:07
My number one phrase that when I see it or read it from a salesperson or a BDR
00:12
makes me want to immediately stab myself in the shoulder is.
00:18
One of the things that I enjoy most about producing the dealer playbook is
00:21
hearing from you the messages that I get of people who are getting so much
00:25
value out of the podcast, applying it to their day-to-day workflows and finding
00:31
a thriving career right here in the retail auto industry.
00:33
It means the world to me.
00:34
And, you know, one of the ways that we make doing this possible is through
00:37
my agency, Flex Dealer.
00:39
And of course, in the spirit of providing value, I think this is a perfect
00:43
time to head over to www.flexdealer.com to show even further support for you.
00:49
My beloved DPB gang, right now, if you go to my website, flexdealer.com,
00:54
you can get a full free PDF of my number one bestselling book, Don't Wait Dominate.
01:00
And the reason I think it's so special is that a lot of the topics that are
01:04
discussed in this book are even more relevant today than ever with this
01:09
surge in popularized AI and people wondering, well, what can I do next?
01:13
How can I have a competitive advantage?
01:15
Well, that's all here in this book.
01:17
And so I'd love to be able to offer you a free copy of this.
01:20
If you go to flexdealer.com, it would mean the world to me because
01:23
that is how we continue to produce this show for you.
01:40
Shasta Haddock is the Chief Operations Officer at Epic BDC and host of the
01:45
I'm a Car Chick podcast.
01:47
With over a decade in automotive, she's built high performing BDC teams,
01:51
created the industry's first elite response team to convert social
01:55
traffic into sales appointments and train dealers nationwide on modern
01:59
customer engagement strategies that drive results.
02:03
I'm so excited to dig in today.
02:05
And I'm coming, I'm coming out of the gates hot Shasta.
02:09
I know there are dealers who we still hear this.
02:13
They brag about their like 30 minute response time.
02:17
In actuality, we get into the store.
02:18
We find out it's like closer to 60 minutes.
02:21
But we'll give them the 30 minutes and they're bragging that it's
02:23
lightning fast, but I've heard you suggest that that that might not
02:30
That's that's pretty slow still, especially in this digital age.
02:34
So I'm curious your take right out of the gates.
02:36
If you walked into that store, what would you do to start
02:40
shaving time off of that response time?
02:42
There's so many things.
02:45
First off, you got to see what the internal CRM process looks like.
02:48
Are the notifications set up properly for when the lead comes in?
02:51
Who is receiving those?
02:53
Is there a backup plan if that person or team isn't there?
02:57
And most of the time there's not.
02:59
I mean, we talked to a dealership probably less than two weeks ago
03:02
that they had leads that had sat for three to six days without being
03:06
touched or before they got touched for the first time.
03:09
And it's it's painful.
03:11
It's so painful because it's so easy to get them.
03:14
I mean, it comes down to training your your BDC, your BDC manager
03:18
to know how to go find those.
03:20
There's some CRMs that once you open the lead, it removes the notification
03:24
even if you don't make contact on it.
03:25
And so knowing how to find those and checking those periodically
03:29
so that that doesn't happen.
03:30
I mean, there's there's so many things.
03:32
But I would definitely start with the CRM processes
03:34
and get in touch with your CRM rep.
03:36
They're really amazing.
03:37
It's their job to to make your CRM work properly,
03:41
but get in there and make sure you've got those notifications set up
03:44
properly. You don't have any old users in there
03:46
that are receiving those that are now gone.
03:49
And really, just make that as efficient as possible
03:52
because you can do a lot with a good CRM process.
03:56
I mean, it's it's one of those things where it's like, OK,
04:00
you, you know, 10 years in the industry over a decade now in the industry.
04:04
And do you feel like sometimes I feel this way.
04:08
So I'm curious your thoughts. It's like it's 2025.
04:11
Are we still talking about CRM hygiene?
04:14
It's still and you probably see the same thing.
04:17
It's funny to me how talking to different
04:19
dealers in different parts of the country, how some are like so in the now
04:23
and some even in the future as to how they're doing things.
04:26
And then other parts of the countries
04:27
are still operating in the 80s and 90s.
04:29
And it's like, how are you even operating like that
04:32
with all of these broken things?
04:33
And there's so much good technology out there.
04:35
How are you still doing so bad at this?
04:37
Like and it's painful because you want to help them
04:39
and you want to you want to see like them operate efficiently.
04:42
And it's like they're they're holding themselves back
04:44
because they're just so laser focused on one thing.
04:49
It's like it's kind of this oxymoronic hyperloop
04:54
because it's like, what do I want to do?
04:56
Well, I want to sell more cars and I want to book more service.
04:58
I want to keep my service base full.
05:01
Well, what are you going to do to get there?
05:02
Well, I'm just going to focus on that.
05:04
You're like, but what if you paid closer attention
05:07
to your engagement rate and your open your proposal
05:11
or your appointment rate and your show rate
05:13
and your proposal rate and all these sorts of things
05:15
that actually wind up to that first.
05:18
It kind of brings me to the next thing
05:20
I want to talk to you about loosely related, right?
05:22
You look into the CRM, you're going through a hygiene exercise
05:26
and you're realizing that some of these response templates
05:29
that they're using look like they were pulled out of
05:32
an Amway catalog from 1954, right?
05:37
Dusty old outdated templates.
05:40
But I know you've got a knack for getting people
05:45
So when you are looking at these templates
05:47
and you're you're examining the CRM,
05:50
what are some of the things going through your mind
05:51
that you're like, guys, that that is outdated.
05:54
Like if you could pinpoint that one thing
05:57
that's like, definitely get rid of these word tracks
06:00
or these types of templates, what would that be for you?
06:03
My number one phrase that when I see it
06:06
or read it from a salesperson or a BDR
06:08
makes me want to immediately stab myself in the shoulder
06:11
is are you still in the market?
06:14
I hate that question.
06:15
It's so ineffective.
06:17
Anything that says that
06:18
and that's easy to take out of a template,
06:20
but more so just going through those templates
06:24
and cleaning them up, making them engaging.
06:26
If they're just something basic,
06:27
the stuff that the CRM puts in there automatically
06:29
whenever they set you up for the first time,
06:32
it's a placeholder.
06:33
It's not meant to be your forever solution.
06:35
And honestly, now that we are in the age of AI,
06:37
it's so easy to change those,
06:40
come up with something different
06:41
and make it more creative and engaging.
06:43
Like that's the beauty of things like chat GPT.
06:47
Even if you don't have an AI software of the dealership,
06:51
Like go in there if you know,
06:52
hey, this is a 13 day email
06:54
that's going out to an uncontacted lead.
06:57
Tell your chat GPT that have it
06:59
to help you build a response
07:00
if you're just not that creative of a person.
07:02
I mean, it's very simple, but at the end of the day,
07:06
you're not going to sell a car over email.
07:08
You're just looking for engagement.
07:09
You need to earn their trust
07:10
and you need to sound like something
07:12
other than every other dealership they've shopped with.
07:15
Two things that you said that I wanna touch on
07:18
and dig into a little bit more.
07:20
The first is chat GPT is free
07:23
and you're really saying,
07:25
but give it the context it needs
07:27
because I think most people right now
07:29
are using GPTs or other LLMs
07:31
like glorified Google search.
07:34
And they're like, meh, the response is stink.
07:36
And it's like, no, what Shasta said
07:37
is you actually have to qualify your prompt
07:40
in order to get a better result back.
07:43
And then the second thing is that,
07:47
that understanding that you are trying
07:50
to just get a response from them
07:51
to engage them and build trust.
07:52
So what is your ideal,
07:54
what do you find a lot of success with?
07:55
Are there certain phrases or word tracks
07:57
or subject lines that you're finding,
08:00
whether it's text or email or whatever
08:02
that just get that person to respond back?
08:06
I've had a lot of success talking about things
08:08
other than the vehicle they inquired on,
08:10
which is almost wacky
08:11
and seems opposite of what we're trying to do.
08:14
I will throw a wrench in there
08:16
asking about their trade,
08:18
what they love about their current vehicle
08:20
that they want in the next one.
08:22
Do you wanna sunroof in your next vehicle?
08:24
Are you looking for cloth or leather seats?
08:26
Like super random things,
08:27
obviously check and make sure
08:28
they didn't already send that over
08:30
with the lead information.
08:31
But just those random things
08:33
that they're not used to seeing
08:34
that kind of just make them double take a little bit
08:37
are where I have the most success.
08:38
And so the more out of the box,
08:43
the more not struggling for words right now,
08:47
not usual, unusual responses
08:49
are what can skew them up to be like,
08:51
oh, this might actually be a real person
08:53
because your customers know we're in the world of AI.
08:56
They know more than likely your follow-ups AI.
08:58
So anything that you can do
09:00
to stick out a little bit,
09:01
if you're doing a human response,
09:02
you don't wanna look like AI.
09:04
You want to look like a human being
09:05
and you wanna look like, hey,
09:06
this is me legitimately trying to help you
09:09
without also seeming desperate
09:10
because I've seen that too.
09:12
I love it because it's back to
09:16
the roots of hospitality.
09:18
Yes. Like observe, you know, like you said,
09:22
pay attention to what they submitted
09:24
in their initial request
09:26
and don't ask them dumb questions
09:28
that they might have already given you
09:29
all the information on.
09:30
This idea of hospitality starts with observing a need
09:34
or observing an opportunity
09:35
and then feeding into it more accurately.
09:38
This is gonna be a side note question
09:41
but loosely related to this
09:42
because I know your husband is a police officer, right?
09:49
I want him to know we thank him
09:50
for the work that he does
09:51
because that is not,
09:54
I can't even imagine.
09:55
I've got buddies that are police officers
09:58
and I'm like, well, I can't even,
10:02
and they're out there doing the thing.
10:04
But I know that whether we think of it this way or not,
10:09
he is like gotta be insane at customer service
10:13
because he is dealing with people day in and day out.
10:17
He's dealing with critique and feedback
10:20
and anger and all the emotions and all those things.
10:22
What if anything have you been inspired by
10:26
from your husband that you've brought into your BDC rituals,
10:33
I mean, I don't know that it's anything particular
10:36
but the awareness that has been brought to me
10:37
about the standards that are put on law enforcement
10:42
that every single move that they're doing is watched.
10:46
I mean, they have to have their body cams on it all time.
10:48
It's now federal law,
10:50
which is good, good for the community.
10:52
It's good for them for their protection
10:53
that they have that.
10:55
But also when you know you're being watched,
10:59
I think that you generally know to act a certain way
11:04
or to say things, stuff like that.
11:07
And so in the BDC space,
11:09
letting them know at any minute,
11:11
we could have to pull any of your calls,
11:13
we could have to pull any of your text conversations.
11:16
And so you wanna make sure that you're staying
11:19
above reproach on absolutely everything.
11:22
Like you never know when you're gonna get coached,
11:24
when someone's gonna complain to the dealership
11:26
and say you said something that you didn't
11:27
let them constantly stay above reproach.
11:29
And you have to, you can't lie.
11:31
If we find out anybody lies,
11:32
like that's immediately out the door.
11:35
You cannot lie to a customer, you cannot mislead them.
11:38
You have to be honest with them
11:39
and be the person that you would wanna be speaking to
11:44
And I think with law enforcement,
11:45
it's the same way like they're just a citizen like you.
11:50
I mean, that's really powerful though,
11:51
this idea of accountability
11:54
and increased accountability and follow-through, I think.
11:59
Like I think a lot of organizations,
12:01
and I know I've been guilty of it in the past as a leader,
12:03
it's like you set kind of these expectations,
12:06
but don't create the follow-up
12:08
or the accountability mechanism.
12:10
And what you're saying I think is so powerful
12:12
because from my observation,
12:15
and I wanna get this out of the way,
12:16
come on DPB gang, you know, I love you.
12:19
You know, I'm not here to hurt anyone's feelings,
12:21
but if your feelings are gonna get hurt,
12:23
I just, you know, it is what it is, you know.
12:30
Which is this, like, I don't think anybody's showing up
12:32
to work in our industry,
12:35
desiring to be a poor performer.
12:39
No, I say that all the time.
12:40
I think, sorry, say, what is it?
12:43
I say that all the time.
12:44
Nobody wants to come to work to do a bad job.
12:47
And, but what I do think happens is
12:50
we favor short-term wins so much
12:52
that there's a great amount of ethical fading.
12:54
Nobody knows why they start to go down this path
12:57
where they don't know why they wanna show up.
12:59
And then we're installing an accountability mechanism
13:02
in the wrong sequence,
13:03
which just creates more fade-in,
13:05
like ethical wondering on this employee's part.
13:09
And now all of a sudden
13:09
we have a dysfunctional operation from BDC
13:13
all the way to frontline,
13:14
all the way to back of the house and so on and so forth.
13:18
So I love what you're saying about,
13:20
hey, like, no, there needs to be accountability.
13:23
You will be observed.
13:25
We do want to make sure that you're finding fulfillment
13:29
in the work you do.
13:30
And the way that you find that is by providing an experience
13:33
right out of the gates to customer
13:35
that they're gonna be thrilled with.
13:37
Well, and it goes back to something you said earlier
13:39
with hospitality because we, in the BDC,
13:42
especially when a new BDR gets trained,
13:46
it can be very easy to get caught up in the tasks
13:49
and the minute work, the dial, the text, the email,
13:51
the video, whatever it is that they're doing,
13:54
it's so easy to just get caught up in that
13:55
and forget that it's not just phone numbers
13:58
on the other side or email addresses on the other side.
14:00
These are real human beings
14:01
who are about to make a very large purchase
14:04
and want to find the place that they can trust
14:07
with that investment.
14:08
And so it can't just be another dial, another text,
14:11
another task checked off.
14:13
It has to be, I'm here to be your assistant
14:17
in this process, tell me how I can help you.
14:19
Here are the things that I know that I've learned
14:22
that I'm passing on to you.
14:23
These are the ways that I know I can help you,
14:25
but you tell me what you need from me.
14:27
And it goes back to hospitality every time,
14:29
anticipating their need before they have it.
14:31
Ooh, one of my favorite words Shasta,
14:34
anticipation, use it in your language
14:38
and you will avoid, oh, so many arguments.
14:43
You may experience this, you may feel that.
14:46
That's, you know, I love anticipatory communication,
14:50
just trying to stay ahead of things.
14:53
Oh, that's so powerful.
14:54
It's so much in the BDC,
14:55
you get that from just reading the lead.
14:57
Like if there was a magic wand that I had
14:59
that I could just fix every one problem
15:02
for every dealership at the same time,
15:04
it would be that every first response,
15:06
text message, phone call, email, whatever it is
15:09
would know everything about the customer's journey
15:12
based on the information they put in the lead.
15:14
Like, that would be the thing.
15:16
That's the thing that most dealerships
15:17
around the country are just missing.
15:22
Hey, does your marketing agency suck?
15:25
Listen, before we hop back into this episode,
15:27
I know you know me as the host of the Dealer Playbook,
15:29
but did you also know that I'm the CEO of Flex Dealer?
15:32
An agency that's helping dealers capture better quality
15:35
leads from local SEO and hyper-targeted ads that convert.
15:39
So if you want to sell more cars
15:40
and finally have a partner that's in it with you
15:42
that doesn't suck, visit flexdealer.com.
15:45
Let's hop back into this episode.
15:51
That's powerful stuff.
15:53
Okay, switching gears a little bit
15:56
and related of course,
15:57
you've built this elite response team
16:01
that took Facebook likes and social metrics
16:04
and I'm gonna say the word somehow
16:07
because I think some people still wonder
16:10
You somehow were able to turn them into butts
16:14
How did that idea even come about
16:16
and what were some of the key steps
16:18
you found that made that work?
16:21
I think the same way that a lot of people's success
16:24
came in automotive by complete accident.
16:29
When we had freshly started off,
16:32
we were working with a few dealerships
16:33
but the company was built to help small businesses.
16:36
And so back in, I wanna say it was 2017 or 2018,
16:40
we had a local gym where you would go to work out
16:44
that kind of gym where we were running Facebook ads for them,
16:49
trying to just help them acquire new customers,
16:52
And one day I was placing ads for them
16:53
and came across a brand new type of ad
16:56
which were messenger ads.
16:57
And I was like, I don't know what these are.
16:59
It's kind of interesting.
17:00
So I was like, I told everybody, hey,
17:01
I'm gonna try this out.
17:02
I'm just gonna throw a couple hundred bucks
17:03
behind it, see what happens.
17:05
And it was pretty cool.
17:06
You could kind of give the customer
17:09
some responses that you wanted to have up front.
17:11
And then we played with those for about a week or so.
17:13
And all of a sudden I was like,
17:15
we should try this for a dealership
17:17
because that's time we were just doing
17:18
the regular lead formats
17:19
or driving traffic to their website, things like that.
17:22
And so I placed them for a dealership
17:25
whose ad budget was like really, really high
17:28
and was like, let's throw the whole budget behind it.
17:30
What's the worst thing that can happen
17:31
until you realize that's going to equal
17:34
hundreds and thousands of messages.
17:37
Somebody has to answer.
17:39
And otherwise you just have an inbox full of messages.
17:41
And we had a very, very light,
17:43
what we called notifications team at the time
17:45
that would monitor comments, shares, reviews
17:48
on Facebook pages, but nothing to that scale.
17:50
They weren't trained how to be a BDC by any means.
17:53
They were just handling notifications,
17:56
making sure that problems got responded to, whatever.
17:59
So out of nowhere with this very large ad budget
18:01
where we now have like 300 messages a day
18:03
coming into one inbox,
18:05
we're like, holy crap,
18:06
we've got to build something to solve this.
18:09
So I had a few years in the BDC at that point
18:13
and so I was like, we need a BDC essentially,
18:15
but they're not going to have headsets.
18:17
They're just going to be on Facebook.
18:19
And so we kind of started training these team members
18:22
on how to have these responses.
18:23
These leads are going to be much colder.
18:26
Well, the conversations are going to be much colder
18:28
because these people aren't in the market
18:29
for a vehicle per se.
18:31
They're just at the time we couldn't target on Facebook.
18:33
And so these are kind of just blanket.
18:35
And these are people who saw the ad
18:37
and they're either interested in a low down payment,
18:38
a low monthly payment, a low APR or something along those lines
18:42
and more likely they're going to be more
18:44
on the subprime side.
18:45
So we've got to have these warming trust building
18:47
conversations with them.
18:48
So we had to not just train people,
18:51
build out a schedule, build out software
18:53
so that we could get once we converted those into leads
18:55
and or appointments, get those to the dealership
18:58
to the BDC or whoever needed to have those.
19:01
And then before we knew it,
19:02
like it was actually going really well.
19:04
The ROI's were amazing.
19:05
The sold vehicles coming from it were amazing.
19:08
And we're like, what did we just do on accident?
19:10
And so it just kept growing and growing.
19:14
And then we even further turned it into sales events.
19:18
Doing that for dealerships who wanted to just do
19:22
like a little quick seven to 10 day thing.
19:24
And so, but what's awesome is that a lot of people think
19:27
that Facebook traffic has to be specifically targeted.
19:30
We've got to be looking for this specific audience.
19:32
And that's not necessarily the case
19:34
because you've got 98% of your market as non-intendors,
19:37
but will the right offer hook them in?
19:40
Yeah, I mean, well look, that tracks for me incredibly
19:43
because it's like, we talk about this in the industry
19:47
where people are not buying cars every day
19:51
and we are working in the space every day.
19:53
So there's already a disparity there
19:55
between what the customer is actually thinking about more
19:58
often and what we're thinking about more often.
20:01
And we talk to them as if they are buying a car
20:03
every single day, they're not.
20:05
They are more interested in so many other things
20:08
day after day after day that to your point,
20:12
and you brought this up a little bit earlier,
20:13
talking to them about those interests
20:16
or things that they're engaging with.
20:18
I want to say Robin, Robin Wilson.
20:22
Do you call her Robin at work?
20:24
Okay, yeah, I had the same thing.
20:26
I worked with my dad for years,
20:27
but at work he was Joe, you know, right?
20:31
So she talked about turning tattoos.
20:39
Okay, hold on, I'm digging back into the well here,
20:43
but she talked about turning tattoos
20:45
into like a sold car for a dealership there in Joplin.
20:49
Yeah, so that is funny.
20:51
I actually participated in that.
20:52
So she did it when we were in the works
20:55
of launching our new company, Social Grenade,
20:57
we were playing around with some different ideas.
20:59
And so we, because of how the Facebook algorithm works,
21:03
if you get people to engage with your post on day one,
21:06
then you will have that audience
21:09
for about 24 to 48 hours afterwards
21:11
that your next posts will also pop into their feed.
21:13
Now granted, they'll only say in that
21:15
if they continue to engage with you.
21:17
So if you want to find something to connect
21:22
with someone on tattoos are a big thing.
21:24
A lot of people have tattoos.
21:25
And so this one was show me your ink
21:29
and tag your tattoo artists if you have them on social.
21:32
And the comments blew up.
21:34
It was absolutely wild
21:34
because it's something that all of us, number one,
21:36
we get it because we want to show it off.
21:38
Like, I've got all tatted up.
21:41
And so absolutely, like everybody's jumping
21:44
in the comments, you have to respond
21:46
to all the comments to keep them engaged,
21:47
but then you keep them in that,
21:50
in your algorithm for the next 24 to 48 hours.
21:52
So now we've gotten a tribe.
21:54
Now we're going to post a vehicle.
21:55
Or I think in that specific instance,
21:58
she had that salesperson grab their freshest trade
22:02
or something like that, which was like,
22:03
I want to see it tomorrow and say,
22:07
what monthly payment could you afford on this?
22:09
And had several of the people who'd commented
22:11
on the tattoo post.
22:14
And it ended up selling that car that day
22:16
to one of the people who commented in it.
22:18
So it's all about just building your funnel
22:20
within your Facebook and using the algorithm
22:22
to your advantage instead of just complaining
22:24
that nobody sees my posts, okay, we'll make them.
22:27
I want to transition here slightly because,
22:30
and obviously related, because what we're talking about
22:36
right now, I don't think many are understanding
22:40
how massive the opportunity is
22:44
when you use social the right way.
22:49
Let's quantify or define the wrong way.
22:52
So come, they're holding up the white post more.
22:55
So glad you're here.
22:57
That was the wrong way.
22:59
Hey, I sold the car.
23:04
Right way, let's dissect what you're talking about.
23:07
Well, first of all, I mean, even think about
23:09
if I wanted to build relationships
23:11
and I was new in a community or new selling cars
23:13
or a new BDC rep, I mean, I would go
23:19
and see what Facebook groups existed around my community
23:22
that had, I don't know,
23:24
doesn't really matter, 500 plus members.
23:27
And I would see how active they are
23:28
and I would get involved and I would find out
23:30
what people are talking about regularly.
23:33
And then I would use that to stimulate conversation
23:36
and I would never tell anybody as my first thing.
23:40
Hey, by the way, I sell cars or I'm a,
23:43
no, I would just go and look what you're talking about.
23:45
I would just build relationships
23:47
on the thing that they're interested in.
23:49
I love that you have this very clear example
23:53
and I know you guys have more of how to turn
23:57
just relationship building into top of mind
24:01
when they're in that market
24:02
and how to leverage the algorithms to do that.
24:05
And I wanna, I guess, I guess I wanna transition
24:08
a little bit to AI and get your thoughts on it.
24:10
We touched on it briefly earlier
24:14
in this idea of where like, AI is a buzz right now.
24:18
I can only imagine, we're gonna get to a place
24:20
where it's like, we all use it, who cares?
24:22
Like the way Google was in the early,
24:24
you know, mid 90s or whatever.
24:26
Everybody's talking about it, became a verb
24:28
in all the things, yahoo, rose and disappeared
24:31
and all the things happened.
24:33
It's a bit of a buzz right now,
24:34
but I can't think of a better opportunity
24:36
when everyone is focused on over here,
24:38
like this AI thing to jump back in on social
24:42
and build relationships of trust with people
24:44
as a human being without AI getting in the way right now
24:48
cause like your competitors looking in the wrong,
24:51
not the wrong direction, but you know,
24:53
in this context, they're looking in the wrong direction.
24:56
Well, there are businesses that are so focused on,
25:00
on, you know, the speed to the lead
25:02
or making sure that at least something is handled,
25:05
it may not be the perfect way,
25:06
but at least something is handled you can trust
25:08
because AI is gonna be there.
25:10
It's not gonna call in sick.
25:11
It's not gonna get its nose ring stuck on a pillow
25:13
and not be able to make it end of work for the day.
25:15
Is this a real story?
25:18
But AI is always gonna be there,
25:21
but us as a human being forced,
25:25
we're starting to be able to tell,
25:27
I would say at least 80% of the time
25:29
when we're talking to AI versus when we're talking to a human.
25:32
And we all know from the experience
25:34
that we've all done it, you know,
25:35
you call into a business
25:37
and you know, use Walgreens for example,
25:39
you get stuck on there in their phone tree
25:42
and you can't get out of it
25:43
and then the AI is trying to help you.
25:44
Please tell me which department you'd like to talk to.
25:46
I'm sorry, I didn't get that.
25:47
Please tell me what department you'd like to talk to.
25:49
And so it's, you're just trying to get to a human being
25:51
or trying to get to a human being
25:52
because this is something that
25:54
this is a very specific need.
25:55
This is very important to me.
25:56
I just need to handle it quickly.
25:58
I don't wanna have to take the time to do this.
26:00
And AI is getting smarter.
26:01
We've got agentic AI now that is very interactive based
26:05
and learning very quickly
26:07
that I think we should probably be paying
26:09
a little bit of attention to on the dealership side.
26:12
No, but it's getting better.
26:15
Maybe someday it will be perfect.
26:16
I don't know, but it's one of those things that, yes,
26:20
if you are lacking efficiencies,
26:21
I mean, if anybody knows who Matt Raymond is,
26:23
Matt Raymond is the COO of Bowtie Solutions,
26:26
which is a service BDC outsourced.
26:29
And his number one thing that he always without fail
26:34
shocks the crap out of me with
26:36
is all of the missed calls at dealerships.
26:38
Like he does a lot of overflow service calls
26:41
and even dealerships where they're like,
26:43
we have absolutely no missed calls,
26:44
we're on top of it.
26:45
And then he's like, okay, great, try me out for three days.
26:48
Like you let your team have three rings,
26:50
let it go to a different department
26:52
and then I pick up everything after that.
26:53
And then numbers are astronomical
26:55
and not just the calls he's getting,
26:57
but the appointments they're getting from it,
26:59
So even on the dealerships who think
27:01
they have a thousand percent dialed in,
27:03
there's opportunity there.
27:05
And it's mind blowing how much we're missing,
27:07
but AI won't miss calls.
27:12
Yeah, it's not gonna miss the call,
27:14
but it may miss some nuance, right?
27:15
It's like a weird in between.
27:18
I wonder if my thesis here is that
27:20
we're eventually gonna get to the point
27:22
where it's so commonplace,
27:24
AI is doing so many different things.
27:27
And then our human nature is still gonna kick in
27:29
at some point and we're gonna be like,
27:30
but can I just like look another human being in the eye
27:34
and just get their feedback, just get there?
27:38
And so I think where I think about the BDC
27:41
and I could be totally wrong here
27:43
and I'm open to that is this idea of,
27:46
okay, but now imagine the value of you sitting in that room
27:52
getting to be the first human touchpoint
27:55
that the customer gets.
27:57
Like I think now let's up the ante.
28:00
This is gonna make what they do that much more valuable.
28:05
And I think we're in a period to your point
28:07
where with this little in between,
28:10
where sadly by nature of the beast
28:13
and in the name of progress and evolution,
28:16
these BDRs are just gonna have to be better equipped
28:20
at handling the complaints that come from
28:21
having to go through the AI phone tree for a minute.
28:25
Well, and it's humans need to focus
28:28
on what humans do best and what AI can't do,
28:31
which is being a human being,
28:33
having empathy, sympathy, excitedness,
28:36
like all of the emotions that we can have
28:38
that AI can try to have,
28:40
but it again is not a human being.
28:42
It cannot have emotions.
28:43
It can portray emotions, but that's where we come in.
28:46
And like I mentioned earlier,
28:47
we all know buying a car is a massive decision,
28:50
unless you're a business owner
28:51
just needing a tax write off.
28:53
For most of us, buying a car is a really big decision.
28:56
It's a multi-year investment.
28:57
It's something that we want to be absolutely sure about
29:01
and there's a percentage,
29:03
a very small percentage of customers
29:05
that can do it completely transactionally,
29:07
no emotion in it, no big deal.
29:09
But the masses, it is something
29:12
that they have put a lot of their time into researching,
29:15
a lot of money into,
29:18
maybe they bought the wrong car before
29:20
and realized that this has features that I don't want
29:23
or it doesn't have features that I do want.
29:25
And so it becomes very emotional for them to know
29:28
when they're getting what they want versus not
29:31
or when they're being heard versus when they're not.
29:34
I think about the process
29:37
and we talked about it off air for a minute
29:39
that the process that a customer has to go through
29:41
in their journey before they even make it to the dealership
29:44
and there's thousands of different ways.
29:46
Like, 1000 different places they could submit a lead
29:50
and most of the time we're handling the lead
29:52
the same way which is not how it should be.
29:54
Shouldn't be the same conversation every time.
29:56
You know, whether it's a lead from Facebook,
29:58
they were scrolling on Facebook
29:59
or if they were on AutoTrader or CarGurus
30:02
or cars.com, one of those other places versus
30:05
if they organically came to your website
30:08
because they drove past, saw this car
30:10
and said, I have to know more about it.
30:12
All of these different journeys
30:14
are different conversations.
30:16
And AI, yeah, I can probably nail that on the head
30:19
most of the time by scanning through the lead.
30:22
What the human part of that is,
30:23
is knowing how much time and effort
30:26
the customer put into that.
30:27
Acknowledging that, hey, you've been doing
30:29
a lot of research, this is awesome for you
30:31
and we need to make sure that we get this right
30:33
and that we get you exactly what you're looking for.
30:35
And it all comes down to the human level
30:37
of understanding that AI really cannot provide.
30:41
Yeah, which we're gonna crave the deeper we get
30:44
into this whole AI experiment.
30:47
Man, this is so much fun.
30:49
There's so many other questions that I wanna ask you.
30:53
So we're gonna have to get you back
30:54
because I wanna pick your brain.
30:56
In closing though, how can those listening
30:58
and watching connect with you?
31:00
I'm very easy to find.
31:01
I feel like the cool thing
31:03
about having a unique name,
31:04
Shasta Haddock on any social,
31:06
Facebook, LinkedIn, really don't use Instagram.
31:09
That's just me though.
31:10
The podcast, I'm a car chick podcast.
31:13
You can find it anywhere you listen to podcasts
31:15
or at the BDC on all the socials too.
31:17
But like I said, I'm very Google-able.
31:21
Thanks so much for joining me
31:21
on the Dealer Playbook podcast.
31:23
Thank you for having me.
31:24
Hey, thanks for listening
31:25
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31:27
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31:28
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31:31
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31:32
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31:35
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31:36
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31:38
Thanks so much for joining.