0:00
/
0:00
The Service Goldmine Dealers Are Ignoring – How To Deploy The 24/7 Revenue Engine | Pre-NADA AI #4 Shaun Sorensen, CEO and Co-Founder of Kenect
The Service Goldmine Dealers Are Ignoring – How To Deploy The 24/7 Revenue Engine | Pre-NADA AI #4 Shaun Sorensen, CEO and Co-Founder of Kenect
0:00
0:00
0:00
0:00
About this episode
Shaun Sorensen, CEO of Kenect, shares insights on how dealerships can unlock hidden revenue through AI-driven service solutions. He discusses the challenges of overwhelmed service departments and the importance of utilizing AI for both outbound and inbound customer interactions. Sorensen highlights a recent success story where a Subaru dealership generated $120,000 in its first month by leveraging AI to manage service opportunities. The conversation also covers the evolving landscape of AI in the automotive industry, emphasizing the need for dealers to adopt these technologies to enhance efficiency and customer experience.
In part 4 of our Pre NADA AI Spotlight series, I’m joined by Shaun Sorensen, CEO and Co-Founder of Kenect. We dig into why the biggest untapped profit pool in dealerships isn’t sales—it’s service—and how AI agents are moving from “assistive tools” to full-on employees.
Shaun breaks down inbound vs. outbound AI, the real risks dealers fear, and how data-driven personalization is already driving nine-figure service revenue results.
This episode is brought to you by:
1. Merchant Advocate - Merchant Advocate saves businesses money on credit card fees WITHOUT switching processors. Find out how they can help your dealership with a FREE analysis. Click on @ http://merchantadvocate.com/cdg for more.
2. Ikon Technologies - Ikon Technologies delivers a connected vehicle program for dealers that maximizes Customer Lifetime Value by driving sales efficiency and securing non-cancellable PVR on your front end while delivering an average of 50 additional customer-pay ROs every single month for your service bays. At NADA 2026 in Las Vegas, visit Stand 1763 West to see the benefits for yourself and take your chance to roll the dice to win a Rolls Royce (terms and conditions apply; no purchase necessary). Plus, as an exclusive offer for listeners, mention “Car Dealership Guy” when you sign up at NADA to have your entire initial installation fee waived—book your demo today @ http://ikontechnologies.com/CDG
3. Kenect - The platform auto dealers are using to gather reviews, generate leads, and improve their online reputation, all powered by AI. – http://www.kenect.ai
Check out Car Dealership Guy’s stuff:
For dealers:
CDG Circles ➤ https://cdgcircles.com/
Industry job board ➤ http://jobs.dealershipguy.com
Dealership recruiting ➤ http://www.cdgrecruiting.com
Fix your dealership’s social media ➤ http://www.trynomad.co
Request to be a podcast guest ➤ http://www.cdgguest.com
For industry vendors:
Advertise with Car Dealership Guy ➤ http://www.cdgpartner.com
Industry job board ➤ http://jobs.dealershipguy.com
Request to be a podcast guest ➤ http://www.cdgguest.com
Topics:
01:06 Why did Shaun shift from dealer to innovator?
02:10 What is the biggest AI challenge in dealerships?
03:24 How is service AI revolutionizing dealerships?
04:57 What has been AI's biggest impact so far?
08:00 What was the hardest part of AI adoption?
12:55 What are the broader AI trends to watch?
13:15 What is a key question from the group?
20:00 How can dealers start with AI today?
26:43 What are Shaun’s final thoughts and personal insights?
Car Dealership Guy Socials:
X ➤ x.com/GuyDealership
Instagram ➤ instagram.com/cardealershipguy/
TikTok ➤ tiktok.com/@guydealership
LinkedIn ➤ linkedin.com/company/cardealershipguy
Threads ➤ threads.net/@cardealershipguy
Facebook ➤ facebook.com/profile.php?id=100077402857683
Everything else ➤ dealershipguy.com
Filter:
|
Technical
Too Afraid to Ask
Term
used car auction
"...if I'm a dealer and I'm going to an auction, a used car auction, I wanna know who are the major leasing companies and wholesalers..."
A used car auction is where people sell cars that they no longer want, and buyers can bid on them to buy at the best price. It's like an event where cars go to find new owners.
A used car auction is a marketplace where pre-owned vehicles are sold to the highest bidder. Dealers and wholesalers often participate to acquire inventory for resale.
Term
leasing companies
"...I wanna know who are the major leasing companies and wholesalers who are bringing vehicles to the auction..."
Leasing companies let people use cars for a few years without buying them. You pay a monthly fee, and at the end of the lease, you return the car.
Leasing companies provide vehicles to customers for a set period, typically through a lease agreement. This allows customers to drive a new car without purchasing it outright.
Why did Shaun shift from dealer to innovator?
What is the biggest AI challenge in dealerships?
How is service AI revolutionizing dealerships?
What has been AI's biggest impact so far?
What was the hardest part of AI adoption?
What are the broader AI trends to watch?
What is a key question from the group?
How can dealers start with AI today?
What are Shaun’s final thoughts and personal insights?
Select text to request an explanation
We had a Subaru dealership launched last month,
generated $120,000 in revenue in their first month,
just by going outbound,
harvesting all those latent opportunities.
But I think what the dealership talks more about is voice.
Because why?
Because the phone's not ringing off the hook
and I can actually do my job.
I can upsell, I can take care of the customer,
I can talk to who's in front of me,
instead of having to handle all these phone calls.
In part four of our pre-NADA,
AI Spotlight series,
I'm joined by Sean Sorenson,
CEO and co-founder of Connect.
Dealerships are overwhelmed by ringing phones,
missed appointments and service opportunities
slipping through the cracks,
while most tech still chases sales leads.
Sean breaks down why agents,
not just tools are becoming full employees,
how dealers can unlock massive latent demand in their DMS
and why waiting on AI is the real risk.
This conversation explains what's working now,
what's overhyped and how dealers can adopt AI
without blowing up their operations.
A big thank you to our sponsors
for making this episode possible, Merchant Advocate.
Icon Technologies and of course Connect.
And now let's get into the show.
Sean Sorenson on the CDG podcast, Sean, welcome.
Thanks, good to be here.
Good to have you on.
Defending pickleball champion on the podcast.
Bet you didn't think I would start with that.
No, I didn't.
I tried to keep that under wraps there.
You're a man of many talents.
I didn't even, we haven't even,
this is just getting started.
We haven't even mentioned that.
Former dealer principal, pickleball champion.
And now in the AI realm, changing the way people buy,
sell and service cars.
Welcome to the podcast, Sean.
Thank you, appreciate it.
I love to see it.
Sean, in all seriousness, before we get into the conversation,
I've had a conversation with your team before at Connect.
You serve a massive part of our industry
in auto retail over 10,000 dealerships.
So I think it'll be very interesting to talk about
the overall state of AI where it's headed beyond
just the current solutions in the market, right?
Some education from your perspective
to the dealer community as you are,
I'm sure thinking many years ahead here.
But I also know that you are a former dealer principal.
And I wanted to start off there.
Like how does a, tell us about your journey.
Like how does a former, has a dealer principal
going to become the CEO of a major,
major auto tech company in our space?
How does that happen?
You get tired of the month in and month out
selling the new units, if you know what I mean.
I like recurring revenues.
So maybe that's where it all started from.
But I actually was in software
before I came as a dealer principal
and did that for about five years
with a group of four dealerships.
Absolutely loved it, super fun.
But wanted to get back into software.
It's kind of my true love.
And I think we've found a lot of opportunity in software
to fix problems that we found as dealers.
So we understand the dealer, we were dealers.
We know the language that they speak.
We know the problems that they face.
We've worked the service counter.
We've worked in FNI, we've worked in sales.
We know the whole business.
And that's probably one of the most unique things
about our platform is that we speak that language fluently.
How does that actually manifest in the day to day?
Like as a dealer today,
one of the biggest challenges
is the amount of daily solicitations you receive
from the market, from new upstart vendors,
just so many tools and so much software being thrown at you.
So how do you give it what you just said?
Like how does that actually play into your product,
your service, just the day to day of how you're working
with dealers on integrating AI within your dealerships?
Well, I'd start with our focus as service AI.
I mean, we really focus in the auto dealerships on service
because we know how important that is to the business.
So instead of rotating and going with every MarTech company
on planet Earth and trying to solve the lead problem
or the problems in sales
that we've been trying to solve forever with software,
we said, how do we help the service department,
the fixed ops director?
How do we help that service manager be more efficient,
save time, generate revenue
and stop having the most crazy existence?
I mean, when we're in a dealership,
the phones ringing off the hook,
you're talking to somebody on the other line
and somebody walks in or two people walk into
that service desk and that's chaos
and it's painful and it's hard and burnout is high.
We wanted to solve that.
And I believe that we're solving that problem
for dealers all across North America.
Well, what have you found has been the quickest path
to ROI with dealers and the current AI tools in the market?
Is it service or is it something else?
For us, it's been service.
We feel like there's huge latent demands
sitting in their data.
We have millions of data points of first-party data,
but we also use third-party data,
the DMS data, the CRM data,
and there's just millions of dollars sitting
in their missed appointments, no shows, warranty, recall.
All of that is sitting there waiting to be harvested
and we can harvest that through AI
and then we can outbound these customers
and bring them into the service department
and generate incremental revenue
that they don't currently have
without a human lifting a finger.
That's what they love the most
is they don't have to be involved.
We can run in the background
and generate revenue for them while they sleep.
By the way, I fall into that camp, right?
If right now someone called my cell phone and said,
hey, I'll get you in or I'll pick up your car,
like the car needs service.
So that makes sense.
I definitely see that.
Now, okay, so walk me through that.
Now, lots of the buzz and just questions
that I've received in general have been about inbound calls.
You're referencing your outbound calls.
What's the mix you're seeing amongst dealers right now?
Like where is there more interest?
Is it on outbound, like you mentioned,
harvesting that late in demand,
or is it on inbound, just service departments
are understaffed or staffed at the wrong times?
Where are you seeing more demand right now?
Yeah, so across 10,000 dealerships in North America,
we have this service AI platform
that's comprised of two components,
Engage, which is text outbound,
and Voice, which is inbound.
And I would say Voice is a very hot topic right now
in the auto industry,
but Engage is also what we're selling all day long.
So we sell it as one platform and you can use both.
What I like about Engage,
the tech side is we can instantly generate revenue.
Like we had a Subaru dealership launched last month,
generated $120,000 in revenue in their first month.
Just by going outbound,
harvesting all those latent opportunities.
But I think what the dealership talks more about is Voice.
Because why?
Because the phone's not ringing off the hook
and I can actually do my job.
I can upsell, I can take care of the customer,
I can talk to who's in front of me
instead of having to handle all these phone calls.
So we take all of the phone calls, we triage them,
and then we route them to the service advisor
if they wanna talk to a service advisor,
or if they wanna schedule appointment or answer questions,
we can do that right there on the fly live
using generative AI.
And are you seeing a large percentage of dealers
with the capacity to be able to absorb
all this added business?
Absolutely.
I mean, it depends on the type of service you want,
but we can target whatever they want.
So if they just want more diagnostic,
they want oil changes, they want tire rotations,
we'll go reach out, schedule maintenance.
Some of them don't want recall, some of them want recall.
We'll run campaigns based on what they want.
And we can start small.
We can start with one area of their business.
Maybe it's retention campaigns, maybe it's birthdays,
whatever it is, we can start there and then grow from there
and they can kind of crawl, walk, run, if you will.
Yeah.
You know, I do wonder what the second order effects are here.
As I think about harvesting that latent demand
and the fact that technicians are extremely tough to hire
and of course, if you train, it takes time.
Do we see an environment where there's some upwards
pricing pressure in service given where affordability
is that for new cars or purchasing a car
and all this increasing demand that's being brought
to the dealership?
You just mentioned 10,000 rooftops
and I'm sure they're all working with different products,
but I just have to imagine if you just look at that
and you assume all of them getting some lift
in their service department,
what's the industry impact?
You may already have the answer to that,
but what do you see as the broader industry impact
with these type of tools in the market today?
I mean, it's significant just to give you a stat
that I just looked at yesterday,
but the last six months of 2025,
we generated over $182 million in service revenue
for our dealerships just on the one engaged product alone.
So it is a massive lift for the individual dealership,
but it's also a massive time savings.
I think that's what they talk more about
because it makes their quality of life better,
their job better and their customer experience
improves as well.
It's also interesting to me how AI is taking over
automotive right now and some dealers still don't believe.
Like we had a just last week,
I had a sales rep tell me that he had one
of his service advisors who was very excited
about enrolling in Connect,
go to his general manager for the sign off
and the general manager said,
no, I don't believe in AI.
It is not the future.
And the service manager had gotten a little bit
of a spat with him and they had words
and he said, if you don't adopt AI, I'm out.
I'm going to a dealership that uses AI.
Well, guess what?
That service manager resigned last week
and is now gonna work for another dealership
that uses AI because AI is the future.
But it's really interesting to see
across the different dealerships, the adoption curve,
who's the fast mover, who's adopting,
who's early and who's gonna be late to the party.
What's your pulse on current adoption?
I feel like we, like car dealership guy,
we're sort of in an echo chamber in a way
because we naturally attract all the most forward
thinking dealers, right?
If you are looking for the best and the latest
and the greatest and like you're just gonna pay more
attention to us because you're gonna be exposed to it.
So I am curious from your perspective,
like what is the current state of dealership AI adoption?
Great question.
And I think you're right.
I think it is a little bit of a different group here,
forward thinkers.
I think about a third of the industry
is actually honestly and earnestly thinking about AI,
adopting AI, and most importantly,
putting budget towards AI.
So there's still a huge massive upside in the industry,
but it's all about education, about results,
about getting it and trying it.
What we tell dealers, like with voice AI,
if you don't wanna turn it on 24 seven, great.
Start with just after hours.
See how it does when you're not even there.
It can set appointments for you,
you make money while you sleep.
But then once you gain trust in that
and you find out your customers actually prefer the AI,
that AI doesn't get into bad moods,
it doesn't have a bad day, it's never sick,
it's happy every time.
That AI is better than humans in a lot of these scenarios,
not every scenario, but most of these scenarios.
And once you get a taste of that,
you're gonna turn it on for your whole dealership.
We have very few dealerships
that only turn it on after hours,
almost exclusively turn it on 24 seven.
This episode is brought to you by Merchant Advocate.
You negotiate to give buyers the best deals,
now it's time to let someone negotiate
to ensure you pay the lowest credit card processing fees.
Merchant Advocate is not a processor
and can help your dealership save all without switching.
They only get paid if you do
with no upfront costs or heavy lifting.
Sign up for a free consultation at merchantadvocate.com
slash CDG or click the link in the show notes below.
So you just made me think of something.
At my last company, we had a core value
that I sort of stole from DoorDash.
And I don't remember exactly how it went,
but it was almost like you have to focus on the basis points
or like averages are dangerous
because the problem with averages is that
if 99% had a phenomenal experience
in DoorDash's case, received their order
in under 30 or 45 minutes,
that one person is pissed off, right?
Cause they received it in three hours, their food.
And so I think lots of fear amongst dealers
that I've heard has been,
am I essentially the, you know,
the vendors outsourced R&D, right?
Am I their guinea pig where I am,
and I'm not talking about connect by any means here,
I'm just saying in general in our industry,
I might pay for a half big product
that is going to be great 80% of the time,
but 20% of the time it's gonna be terrible
and I may lose thousands of dollars
because it did not do what it needed to do.
So how do you respond to a dealer that says that?
And again, I say that with no reflection of your product,
but I'm just in general,
if a dealer tells you that type of rebuttal,
how do you respond to that?
Listen, I think it's a super valid concern.
I do think two years ago,
you had the age of hallucinations
and we were building, you know,
agentic AI solutions in the beginning,
but now agents are becoming employees.
And I would just say, don't be afraid.
What do you have to lose?
Your employees are not doing it right 10, 15% of the time.
So the AI is actually just as accurate as your employees
and in the coming years
it's gonna be more accurate than your employees.
I'd also say you can walk before you run.
Like don't overthink it here.
A lot of dealers say like,
well, I don't wanna trick my customers.
I don't want them to know that it's AI.
And we say great, then announce,
hi, I'm your digital service advisor.
How can I help you?
And guess what?
The customers prefer it
because there's not a lot of extra chatter.
They can get in and get out.
They can schedule their appointment and be done.
And it's now on the DMS calendar
and nobody had to lift a finger to do it.
It's just a better experience overall.
And it is the future.
We're not using you as a lab rat or a test dummy,
but the AI is getting better and better.
There's more data going in.
We have our first party and third party data going into it.
And then LLMs and things are improving
on an exponential basis every single day.
And so I would just say,
get on the train before it leaves the station
and trust a little bit.
You'll see the results if you trust.
So let's, I want to shift gears
to the broader AI conversation.
I think one of the parts,
one thing that I found interesting
prior to this conversation,
and when we were just, you know, having a talk
was you mentioning, just you educating me
on the state of AI as a broad-term in our industry
and where it's headed.
So I want to talk about that.
Before we do that,
I want to do a quick question from our CDG circles group
where dealers, I said, I'm speaking with you
and I all said, hey, if anyone has any questions,
shoot over a question.
So I did get here a question that I wouldn't bring up.
So someone asked, it's pretty tactical,
but you probably haven't answered this.
Someone said, will they have an AI chat bot soon
to go with their Sophie voice system?
Great question.
Yeah, currently in development, everybody asks for that.
But I will say, and I'll repeat,
our focus on service has been our secret to success.
We're dealer guys.
We know the dealership industry
and we know the need in service for efficiency,
for time savings, for revenue, for marketing.
Service has so many latent opportunities
and everyone's focused on sales.
Let us help you with service
and the sales chat bots are coming.
I think you'll really like what we're putting together there.
Got it.
So this is referring to a sales chat bot understood.
Correct.
All right, so.
You could use that in the service department as well,
but I think that's what they're asking it for
is how do you handle my other conversations?
Amazing.
Okay, so we'll get back to more questions before we do that.
Talk to me about just the broader state of AI.
You were starting to talk about this before we were recording
and I wanted to make sure we catch this on air.
Where are we at?
Where are we going?
Yeah, for me, you look at AI over the last three years
and it's evolved significantly.
Nothing's ever evolved this fast.
Even the internet itself,
I don't think evolved as fast as AI is evolving and changing.
And I think what we see is,
historically it was prompt engineering.
Use a prompt, prompt the AI, get a result.
Everybody's using the same LLMs
and that becomes kind of a vanilla product for everybody.
But where it's going is agents as employees.
It's not just agent assisted.
It's no longer good enough to say,
AI is gonna help me be a little more efficient.
Where AI is going is going to replace the entire employee
and that shouldn't scare anybody.
That's gonna make everybody more efficient.
But instead of hiring another $90,000 service advisor,
you could hire an AI advisor for half the cost
and do the job 24 hours a day without ever getting sick
and without ever being interrupted.
Like they don't take bathroom breaks,
they don't have moods, that's the beauty of AI.
And so we see a huge evolution.
We also see an evolution in the data
and the infrastructure behind the AI.
Before it would just plug me into open AI,
we're all using the same generative AI,
but now we're able to plug in full customer data platforms
and use first party data, third party data
to generate a very personalized, very segmented approach
at the perfect time for that individual customer.
Right now you're getting a mailer in the mail saying,
hey, recall notice or scheduled maintenance for 30,000 miles,
but I'm already at 42,000 miles.
It's just not very personalized.
And how about delivering a text message
immediately in the perfect moment
and then saying, while you're in here,
why don't we trade in your vehicle
and then running an entire campaign on that?
There's so much you can do with the data that we have
and I think that's where the evolution is going.
It's the data that's gonna make the difference in the long run.
Okay, so not a perfect analogy,
but based on what you just said,
if I'm a dealer or from a customer, right,
I might ask, who are the lenders you offer for me to buy with
or are you warranty provider, JMNA, CNA,
or again, not a perfect analogy,
or maybe if I'm a dealer and I'm going to an auction,
a used car auction, I wanna know
who are the major leasing companies and wholesalers
who are bringing vehicles to the auction.
So I know kind of my supply that's gonna be available.
In this case, now bringing it to you, as a dealer,
am I at a point where if I'm meeting a potential AI company
that I wanna integrate into my dealership,
does it help for me to ask,
what rails are you operating on?
Like, are you on open AI?
Are you on GROC?
Does that matter for me as a dealer today?
Does that gonna impact my customer experience
if you're on Gemini or Claude,
or is that like it's all the same behind the scenes
it's gonna, customer experience will be the same?
How do you think about that?
Yeah, it's a really good question.
And I think the rails do matter,
but I think what matters more
is what's built on top of the rails.
So the rails are, you know, everybody's releasing,
you know, chat GPT 5.2 or whatever it is,
the next latest and greatest Claude, Gemini, et cetera.
And those are gonna continue to get better and better,
but there's a whole lot more to the equation.
Like for example, for voice,
we're using all sorts of generative AI voice platforms
and then building on top of those.
So I think it actually has more to do
with that company is doing how versed they are in AI
and how much investment they're putting
into the specific use case that you are doing.
That's why, again, I feel like
as a dealer specific platform,
we know and understand the situation
and the nuances that you're getting into.
We have AI utilizing AI and voice
to help you find the exact right op code,
not just punching in the five or 10 op codes
that you use the most often,
you could have unlimited op codes.
We wanna make sure that you're having
the most customized experience possible.
And I think be careful not to go with a platform
that's too horizontal,
that's in multiple different specialties
and verticals and industries.
They're not gonna understand the nuance
that you're trying to get to
in your specific use case in your scenario.
That's what we can do for you.
So if you right now integrate a dealership
and you have 10,000 plus customers,
you're clearly know how to retain customers
and deliver value.
What are like two to three KPIs
that you are showing that dealer
after 30, 60, 90 days
to show that you've delivered value?
What are you focusing on?
Great question.
I think first and foremost for us is appointments booked.
So we're there to help you generate
incremental appointments for your dealership,
for your service department.
The second is revenue.
We can track revenue down to the RO.
We know how much revenue we've generated
for your specific dealership.
And that matters.
And then the third is time saved.
We can tell you to the second how much time you saved
by service advisor, by us taking your calls
and generating these revenue opportunities
on outbound text message campaigns.
And guess what?
Think of all the opportunities now that you have
with all that time saved in your service department.
What can you do with that time?
You can provide a better customer experience.
You can upsell more.
You can handle tough scenarios.
You can enjoy your quality of life
a little bit better, enjoy your job.
So we can help you reduce burnout,
drive significant revenue and time savings
for your dealership.
But it's really those three for us.
Appointments booked, revenue generated and time saved.
Okay, and now the follow up to that is
you're a very hands on CEO, as you mentioned earlier.
So when you look at, I have to imagine
you get some report daily basis
or something where it shows you,
customers that maybe did not accept
or did it on board for whatever reason, if that happens.
So my question there is,
what are the biggest obstacles to adoption
from your perspective now?
Like is it integrations?
Is it costs?
Like what is, when you see that report,
what is the biggest obstacle that you're working to solve
and make a dealer's life easier
when it comes to trying something out?
You mean once they purchased or kind of pre-purchase?
Pre-purchase.
I think pre-purchase, it's getting comfortable with AI still.
We're still in that era of education.
AI can help you, how can it help me?
And trusting that it actually can do
what your humans can do.
And I think just trying it out,
you can really understand the power of it
and see the revenue opportunity very, very quickly.
Like I said, we had a Toyota dealer
just in the last month,
turn it on, 600 appointments set
via voice AI in the first month.
That's massive.
Think of all the time saved right there
on 600 appointments scheduled
and now they're put right into your DMS
or into your scheduler.
That's big.
And so I think just education
and getting a mental adoption.
Just like I mentioned that GM who is afraid of AI
and says, this is not the future.
It is the future.
Let us help you see that
and realize the revenue opportunity right now.
I gotta ask you a question on that.
You just mentioned 600 appointments.
The potential ROI of that is gigantic.
How are AI companies at large,
how are they charging and pricing
for these tools right now?
You're obviously one sample here,
but like in general,
what is the pricing structure for dealers
that are maybe exploring right now or considering?
So the vast majority of us are charging
on a SaaS subscription.
So it's just a monthly fee,
but there is some interesting experimentation going on
with kind of this pay for lead,
fee for service type of a thing
where it's based on success.
Now remember on a voice side of things,
I'm taking inbound calls.
Those are already coming to your dealership.
Those are not incremental opportunities.
So we're not trying to claim that revenue
and saying that we generated that for you.
You generated that through your other marketing efforts.
We're just saving you time
and doing it very efficiently 24 hours a day for you.
That's what we're doing on voice,
but on the engage side, on the text campaign side,
that is 100% incremental revenue.
You would have to give a list to your service advisor
and ask them to call the warranty, recall,
and schedule maintenance opportunities,
which they don't wanna do and don't have time to do.
We can do that for you automatically 24 hours a day
and generate incremental revenue.
That's where it really matters.
That's where it hits the pocketbook.
I understood, okay.
Another note that I received here in circles
as I'm reading is someone mentioned your acquisition
of a company called Autolabs.
Is that right?
Yeah.
Can you tell us about that?
Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, fantastic company, great founders.
And what we wanted is more AI technology.
AI is changing so fast.
The technology is changing so fast
that we wanted to add to our AI base and get ahead.
And there's a lot of players out there.
There's a lot of noise out there.
And we feel like we have the best technology out there.
And we wanted to bolster our position
by getting even more AI talent
and more AI products in front of our customers.
So you'll see more of those coming
into a theater near you here.
More positions.
Yeah, no, more products being released
because of those acquisitions.
Ah, acquisitions are an opportunity on the table.
But we're always looking to get ahead
and be on the cutting edge of AI and the technology.
And AI engineers from two years ago
who were prompt engineering are not the same AI engineers
who are replacing employees
and using sophisticated generative AI algorithms
to do what we do today.
This episode is brought to you by Icon Technologies.
Icon Technologies delivers a connected vehicle program
for dealers that maximizes customer lifetime value,
driving sales efficiency and PVR on your front end
while delivering an average of 50 additional ROs
every single month for your service base.
At NADA in Las Vegas,
get a demo at Stan 1763 West
for your chance to roll the dice and win a Rolls Royce.
Terms and conditions apply.
Plus, mention car dealership guy at NADA when you sign up
and Icon will waive your entire initial installation fee.
Go to Icon Technologies.com slash CDG
to see the benefits for yourself and book your NADA demo
or click the link in the show notes below.
So what does that second part of that sense mean?
When you say the prompt engineers from a year or two ago
are not the same ones as today,
what are you really saying by that?
Well, think of it like this, historical applications
and there's some companies out there
that still do this with voice, for example,
voice call comes in and you press two for service
and now you're having a voice conversation
and they're just listening for cues,
things that are like more decision tree base.
Hey, if you say this, then I say this
and they insert that there.
That was two years ago or three years ago.
Where it is now is fully generative,
meaning on the fly, the AI is smart enough
to understand what you're saying in any language,
interpret it and go back and forth with you
and schedule that appointment
and you can throw whatever curve ball you want at that thing
and it can handle almost anything.
And by the way, if it can't,
it'll transfer it live to a service advisor.
We're not trying to trap them in the call.
We're trying to provide the best world class experience
for the customer.
We want to deliver the best customer experience
we possibly can.
Now, do you have plans specifically for auto labs?
Are you, should they expect something?
This is another question.
Should they expect that to change to be improved
or are you gonna mostly focus the efforts
on the connect side?
How's that gonna work?
So auto labs is already integrated into Kinect.
So we're already benefiting from the tools
and the technology that auto labs had
and that's already been extracted
and integrated into Kinect.
So you're already benefiting
from that sophisticated AI technology.
And again, we're using multiple AI technologies,
very customized technology,
as well as first party and third party data
to deliver the most personalized experience possible
to the customer.
Not just using the generic open AI,
whatever everyone else is using.
We want it to be very specific and nuanced
for that customer situation.
And again, we speak that language.
What do they put in the water in Utah?
Oh, everyone there from Utah,
buzz all these crazy tech companies.
Yeah, you guys are a sharp man.
Oh, thanks.
Thank you.
Utah is a great tech ecosystem,
some amazing companies out here.
And there's a lot going on right now
in the world of AI in Utah.
Yeah, I've met some incredible companies from Utah.
Sean, plans for NADA?
I assume you'll be there.
We are gonna be there with bells on.
We're really excited about NADA this year.
I think there's a lot to get excited about.
There's a lot of buzz going into the conferences.
We're at booth 6819 in the North Hall.
I think for me, NADA is one of the most exciting weeks
of the year because you get to see everybody.
You feel the energy of the industry
and you learn where the industry is going.
And man, this industry is going places.
It's exciting to be on the cutting edge of AI
in an industry that's robust,
that has tons of investment
and a lot of people like us
that are pushing the envelope
when it comes to AI development.
I know I already mentioned your pickleball
just accomplishments,
but what else can you tell us?
What's something that people don't know about you?
Something fun?
I'm a father of three.
Love the outdoors, love boating,
love mountain biking and love pickleball.
You find me somewhere there.
Skeen is also a big hobby,
but if you're familiar with what's going on
in Utah this year, there is no snow out here.
Sorry, if you had your trip planned in here,
but it is mud hill right now
and nothing going on,
so we're praying for snow out here.
Let's go.
Have you ever watched outdoor boys on YouTube?
Yes.
You know that channel?
Yeah, that's a great channel.
Yeah.
So my oldest daughter is addicted to it.
And they don't really have much screen time,
but when they do, I put it on.
It's super interesting.
Talk about the outdoors.
I mean, dude, these guys,
I mean, this guy really,
but he's just incredible.
Just goes places, tries amazing things.
So what's up?
Utah too, is that it's so accessible.
Like our office right now, looking out the window,
you can be on the ski slope in 20 minutes from right here.
And that's very rare in all the world.
And so within two, three hours,
you can be on the Red Rock,
you can be in the mountains.
It's fun, the variety can be on the lake.
So we love the outdoors out here
and that's what attracts a lot of people to Utah.
Amazing.
Sean Sorenson, any closing thoughts?
Anything else you want to share?
Anything I didn't ask you that I should have?
I think two things.
One, one that was in here that I thought was really valuable
is a lot of people ask, you know,
what if I have a call review system or car wars
or something like that that set up?
Are you doing what they're doing?
Are you competing with them?
And the answer is no.
We really are not a VOIP system.
We don't want to be your phone system.
We integrate with your phone system.
We take the calls once they press two for service.
That's when we take over.
And that's where we deliver value.
You can keep your VOIP system, your analytics system,
your call tracking, all of that.
We want to help you take calls away
from those service advisors and schedule appointments
and drive revenue for your business.
That's what we want to do.
The other thing I would say is,
I think there's a lot of common misconceptions about AI.
And one of the things we see a lot is they turn it on
and if it doesn't work perfectly to their expectations
exactly how they would have made that call,
then they give up on it early.
But I would just say AI is evolving exponentially right now.
And in my opinion, it's already better
than most human service advisors
and it's only gonna get better and better.
So get on the bandwagon, AI is the future
and we can help you get there.
If you want to start small, we can help you start small.
But there's so much you can do with it
and so much our system allows for.
If you want to start with text campaigns, start there.
If you want to start with voice, start there.
Or you can do them both.
We also have a full reputation AI suite
where we can manage your online reputation.
That's what we've done for years in the,
even before AI existed.
So there's so much we can do for you on one single platform.
But what I would recommend,
whether it's us or somebody else,
is just get in the AI game.
It's where it's going and it's gonna be
such a good thing for your dealership.
Amazing work, Sean, Sorenson, Connect,
Sean keep it up, you're doing great stuff.
So thanks for all you do for the industry.
Thank you.
Come out and play pickleball with us sometime.
Let's do it.
I gotta learn.
I'll get there.
My man, thanks Sean.
Thank you.
All right, hope you enjoyed that episode.
Please give the podcast a rating,
consider subscribing to the show
and check the show notes for links to what we talked about.
Thanks for tuning in.
I'll see you guys next time.
Request an explanation for:
Request an Explanation
Heard something you'd like explained? We'll add it to this episode.
Sign in to request explanations for terms you heard.
Want to learn more?
Browse our glossary for plain-English explanations of automotive terms, jargon, and concepts.
Help improve this episode
See something that's not quite right? Our annotations are AI-generated and can sometimes miss the mark. Click the flag icon on any annotation to suggest a correction.
Report incorrect info
Suggest better explanations
Flag missing cars
More from Car Dealership Guy Podcast
Fixed Ops Friday w/ Rogers, Kaminski, Coyle, and Skinner | Daily Dealer Live
Jun 5, 2026
"One Deal Is Enough!" The Blind Spot That's Costing Dealers 10–20 Sales a Month (and Their Best Customers) | Industry Spotlight
Jun 4, 2026
Johnson on Tech Shortage, DeMont on Defection, Wood on Buy Centers | Daily Dealer Live
Jun 3, 2026
"Your Presence Is a Lie!" The 60-Second Car Deal: One Dealer's Bet on the Future of Retail (& The Numbers Behind It) | Jon Alcorn, Operating Partner at Dogwood Automotive Group
Jun 2, 2026