Walk into any dealership today and you’ll hear the same buzzword: AI.
Everyone’s talking about it. Vendors are selling it. OEMs are hinting at it.
In Service Drive Revolution #352, Chris Collins and the team dig into what AI actually means for dealerships—where it’s falling short, where it’s creating real opportunity, and why most businesses are approaching it the wrong way.
But here’s the truth—most service departments are approaching AI the same way they approached tablets, inspections, and every other “game-changing” tool:
They’re installing it… without improving anything.
And that’s a problem.
The AI Trap: Technology Without Strategy
Let’s start with a real-world scenario.
A customer sends a simple question: “How long will it take to get my vehicle?”
Instead of a clear answer, they get stuck in an endless loop with an AI autoresponder that sounds human—but can’t actually help.
Sound familiar?
This is where dealerships are heading if they’re not careful.
AI without strategy doesn’t create efficiency—it creates frustration.
And in Fixed Ops, frustration kills trust.u are recommended during the visit. Because of that, they should be priced to support profitability.
What AI Actually Does Well in Service Departments
Here’s where things get interesting.
AI can be incredibly powerful—but only when applied correctly.
Used the right way, it can:
- Analyze massive amounts of data instantly
- Identify missed revenue opportunities
- Improve parts inventory accuracy
- Streamline warranty processing
- Connect disconnected systems (DMS, parts, scheduling, marketing)
In fact, one of the biggest opportunities isn’t replacing people—it’s making your people more effective.
That’s a huge distinction.
SERVICE ADVISORS Are Not Going Anywhere
There’s a lot of fear out there:
“AI is going to replace SERVICE ADVISORS.”
No, it’s not.
Bad advisors? Maybe.
Great advisors? Not a chance.
Why?
Because human connection still wins.
Customers don’t just want answers—they want:
- Reassurance
- Clarity
- Trust
- Accountability
No kiosk or chatbot can replicate that.
If anything, AI will raise the bar—forcing advisors to become better communicators and relationship builders.
And if advisors are already struggling with fundamentals, AI will expose it even faster. (Case in point: many still mishandle basic objections—something covered in detail here: Service Advisor Sales: 5 Mistakes Advisors Make After a No.
The Real Opportunity: Better Decisions, Faster
Where AI does change the game is in decision-making.
Imagine this:
Instead of guessing why your shop is underperforming, AI tells you:
- Where you’re losing efficiency
- Which advisors are driving retention
- Where parts delays are killing productivity
- What customers are most likely to return
And it does it instantly.
No bias. No emotion. Just data.
That’s a massive advantage for any SERVICE MANAGER trying to run a profitable department.
The Parts Problem (And Why AI Can Fix It)
Let’s talk about one of the biggest pain points in Fixed Ops:
Parts availability.
Delays, backorders, mis-picks—it’s costing dealerships:
- Time
- Revenue
- Customer satisfaction
Here’s the crazy part:
For AI, this is an easy problem.
Inventory management, demand forecasting, logistics—these are exactly the types of problems AI excels at.
Yet most OEMs and dealerships are still struggling with it.
Why?
Because they’re focused on adding tools… instead of fixing systems.
The “Five C’s” That Could Transform Customer Experience
One of the most interesting ideas gaining traction is expanding the traditional 3 C’s (Complaint, Cause, Correction) into 5 C’s:
- Complaint
- Cause
- Correction
- Coverage
- Confirmation
That last piece—confirmation—is where dealerships can truly stand out.
It’s the difference between:
“We fixed your car.”
And:
“We verified everything, double-checked the repair, and ensured you’re 100% taken care of.”
That’s how you build trust.
And yes—AI can help document, track, and enhance all of it.
It also reinforces something most service departments still miss: clearly communicating value. If your team isn’t presenting services effectively, even the best process won’t convert—something this article breaks down well: Service Department Menu: 6 Tips to Increase Service Profit.
The Bigger Problem: Dealerships Are Still Playing Catch-Up
Here’s the uncomfortable truth:
Most dealerships—and even manufacturers—are behind.
Way behind.
They’re still:
- Investing in outdated software
- Chasing old marketing strategies
- Measuring the wrong things
Meanwhile, AI is changing how customers:
- Search
- Decide
- Choose where to service
If your dealership isn’t adapting, you’re not standing still—you’re falling behind.
What Smart SERVICE MANAGERS Are Doing Right Now
The best operators aren’t waiting.
They’re:
- Testing AI in small, controlled ways
- Using it to enhance—not replace—their team
- Focusing on efficiency and customer experience
- Connecting data across departments
Most importantly, they’re asking:
“Does this actually make us better?”
Not:
“Are we using AI yet?”
Final Thought: AI Is a Tool—Not a Strategy
AI isn’t the solution.
It’s an amplifier.
If your processes are broken, AI will scale the problem.
If your team is strong, AI will make them unstoppable.
That’s the difference.
And for SERVICE ADVISORS and SERVICE MANAGERS, the path forward is clear:
- Double down on human connection
- Use AI to eliminate inefficiencies
- Focus on delivering a better customer experience
Because in the end, the dealerships that win won’t be the ones with the most technology…
They’ll be the ones who use it best.
FULL VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
AI and the Impending Doom of the Future
Welcome to The Big Show. I’m Chris Collins. Adam is here. Hoagie is here. And today we are going to talk about AI and the impending doom of the future. Adam went to the TMC conference and had some cool takeaways from that that he’s going to share with everybody. And much, much more coming up right now on Service Drive Revolution.
I’ve been looking at boats. Something we might touch on a little bit today is AI. But where I need to buy a boat up in Washington, the boats that I would like, there’s no dealer there. And so I have to compromise on the brand of the boat. I was emailing the dealership there about a boat, asking how long does it take to order a boat and get it. And it’s all AI answering me. And you can’t get a straight answer. So it just says virtual assistant in the signature. It gives it a name.
The Psychology of Robots and “Virtual Assistants”
You guys know those little igloo coolers with wheels that drive around LA? Have you guys seen those that deliver food? So for the rest of the country, if you haven’t seen this, I don’t know that it’s in other places. It’s certainly not in rural places. But there’s these coolers that will go to restaurants and pick up food and then deliver them for Instacart or Uber Eats. And they drive on the sidewalk, but they do this thing where they give them a name and they have a little screen with eyeballs because the psychology of it is if it has a name and it seems more human, you won’t just push it off into the weeds and mess with it.
There’s all these studies about human behavior and robots and how you interact with robots; but if robots have human-like characteristics, you treat them different. And then there eventually will probably be people that fall in love with robots, I would guess, if that hasn’t happened already; I think maybe it has. So what’s interesting is this robot that I’m asking about a boat, which is just answering email, has a name, has a signature, but their title underneath is virtual robot or virtual assistant. It’s AI, and it can’t answer anything. So it doesn’t know how long it takes to order a boat. It doesn’t know what they have, itt doesn’t know anything, it basically is an autoresponder. It’s super annoying.
The Failure of the “Autoresponder” Experience
Is it just getting your information? Does it at least do that? No, it’s like… “Hello, Chris, I’m blah, blah, blah. I’m here to help you. I saw you inquired”. And then I’m like—because the first time I hadn’t read the title, I thought it was an actual person, right? Because it looks like an actual person’s signature. I didn’t read the title. And then I was like, “How long does it take to order a boat and get it?” And then it comes back and it’s like, “I’ll look into that for you”. I’m like, okay, here we go. And that’s when I read the signature. And I’m like, oh, this is a waste of my time. I got bit. I got sucked in thinking it was a real person. And it’s a lot of nothing.
And then, of course, a sales department in a car or truck dealership probably doesn’t answer emails until 11:00. Imagine a boat dealership. It’ll be 1:00 before I hear from anybody. If even then, they might just reply to emails on Monday. It’s funny. It’s funny you say that with the AI and the responses, because I actually called American Airlines to cancel my credit card. And there was an AI person. They have that right. It was very simple, very easy, very personable. Thanked me for my time. And we fired each other. We’re done.
Human Agents vs. Artificial Intelligence in Travel
Boy, that’s great. That’s probably because you were talking to Citibank or something. The one thing that American Airlines gets right is you can cancel. Yep, I like it. You canceled your credit card? The credit card, yeah, the whole thing because that’s what I was doing and we’re done. Oh, that’s funny. It’s all United, baby. All United.
I read a thing on Apple News about United and Delta; both their AI things, they aren’t working as well as they want them to. People still want a live agent when it comes to their travel being messed up. They were trying to scale down on their call centers, and they haven’t been able to do it. They’ve had to add to it. When they were investing in the AI stuff, the idea was that they’d be able to reduce that, and they’ve had to increase it as travel has increased. I thought that was really interesting. Kind of like Chris is talking about, I think sometimes, especially if it is the difference between you getting home tonight and not, the robot’s not enough.
Manufacturing, Labor, and AI Implementation in Dealerships
Elon learned that too in manufacturing. He’s even said recently, building the robots that he wants to build and all that, I think he estimated they’ll hire another 150,000 people to manufacture. I’m kind of seeing that here. So we are starting to pilot AI with a couple dealerships because we believe with what we understand and how we’re using AI that we can do some incredible things with marketing, driving traffic, profitability, efficiencies.
I think most of the people that are installing AI in dealerships don’t really understand how the business works. They’re installing AI to install AI, in a sense. And we’ve been through this with inspection software. We’ve been through this with tablets where it doesn’t actually make the customer experience better. And it doesn’t actually improve profitability in any way. We’re just doing a thing because it’s the shiny new toy. Because as humans, we’re very attracted to novelty, to the new thing. And so our approach is going to be a lot different than others in that way.
Broadening Capacity without Replacing Humans
I’m excited to do that, but I will tell you the way we’re starting to use AI here at the company, it’s making people more efficient and it’s broadening their capacity to intake knowledge and process knowledge. It would never replace anybody. Like we’ve been building these machines that have AI and, in the background, we’re watching different things. It almost is going to require, especially if we start doing it for our clients, it’s going to require us to add people. It isn’t going to reduce.
I would, if dealerships wanted to do what we would do for them or what we’re planning to do for them, it would require a person, at least if not two, to do it. There are some positions I think that can be eliminated with AI eventually, but I don’t think it’s advisors. I’ve said that forever. Like when people say, “Oh, advisors are going to get replaced by kiosks”. It’s a good thing to have that in the back of your head if you’re an advisor; because if you’re terrible at your job, yeah, you could be replaced by a kiosk. But if you’re really good, there’s nothing that can replace human connection in that way.
Streamlining Warranty and Logistics
Could a warranty administrator be replaced by AI? Yeah, for sure. So there’s positions like that where it could happen and also it could be so much better in a way because you could cover liability in a different way. But also you could see what you’re missing maximizing potential; it would analyze things in a completely unbiased way. And it doesn’t point fingers in that way too.
How many times—and I’m not picking on warranty administrators, I’m just saying—how many times have you sat with a warranty administrator where the schedule’s out of line and it’s like you don’t know where to start because it’s like, “Well, it’s the techs, it’s this, it’s that”. AI just doesn’t work that way; it’s just black and white. It makes everything very straightforward and linear. I think it would streamline the process, though, too, in connecting the different facets of the dealership from warranty. Because you’re saying going back and forth, trying to collect the entire story. What if it just gives different prompts for a technician just to be able to do a couple of clicks on what actually happened based on what the part was? And it’s just running in the background to have a creative story to be able to file for warranty or customer pay.
The Efficiency Killer: Parts Availability
I also just wonder, in that same vein, is how many times lately do you still hear about parts not being able to get parts? I just hear that constantly and I don’t understand from a logistics point of view how manufacturers haven’t figured that out. It’s such an efficiency killer on the dealership side or on the end user side, but also the parts department. I don’t for the life of me understand how they haven’t connected those dots.
Parts inventory and supply and demand is barely a snack for AI. It’s not a hard thing for it to do. It’s a little more complicated for humans, but for AI, it’s super simple. So I just don’t understand how some of these manufacturers and the money that they spend on things haven’t figured out the parts supply thing when it’s so much money to them. It’s so much revenue that’s lost and morale and inefficiencies; it’s crazy. Especially with how much emphasis there is on customer experience. And there should be an emphasis on customer experience. But the real impact that can be made with parts availability on customer experience is huge.
I’m no stranger to an open RO list. And some of these brands now, it’s not uncommon at all. Well, they’ve cut back on the market team too, right? Before you would be like, “Hey, can you get this? We got to have this part”. And they’ll pull it from the assembly line if they have to. The manufacturers have cut back so much on support that you don’t even have anybody that can do that. And the people that are left in support roles for the manufacturers are just overwhelmed.
The Frustration of Parts Support and Tracking
I also think that even those parts support people just have to sit there and wait. Can you imagine from a customer experience point, like you’re saying, is that you just tell a dealer as the customer, like, “Well, we don’t know, or we’re still waiting for tracking, or we’re still waiting for an estimated ship date from the supplier”. “Okay, where’s the supplier?” “Oh, maybe it is overseas or maybe they got to manufacture it”.
I remember there was times, man, not even that long ago that, like you said, Chris, you could just pull off the assembly line. It wasn’t the ideal situation, but sometimes you just got to get it going. People would even pull it off of vehicles that were on the lot to get a vehicle going, knowing that you’d have to obviously get a new part when it comes in. Anything to get those things rolling, especially in states that have lemon laws, because the clock is ticking. I always hated pulling a part off of another car, but sometimes you got to do that.
Empathy Training and Inefficient Logistics
I won’t say the brand, but I had to take a required parts course one time. They wanted to show us a couple of different things behind the scenes. The first day was at one of the parts distribution centers, and that was kind of cool, seeing the logistics and seeing what happens. And then they took us to the call center, to the parts hotline call center. And every single one of their computer monitors had these “be empathetic” pep talk quotes all over their computer screen. These guys are just getting yelled at every day.
But the whole thing, the whole class was built around to make us feel sorry for them because how hard it was on their side. It was this weird thing to create empathy for the mistakes instead of, “How can we partner to get solutions?” It was all this thing, like, “It’s not going to get any better, so maybe if they just feel sorry for us, there’ll be more understanding”. It was an odd thing to experience, but it kind of speaks to what Chris is saying. The problems, they just kind of treat them like they are what they are, and we’re just letting them lay there instead of all this technology laying around us.
Guided Discovery and Self-Awareness
Now, the other thing that’s funny about that, though, is a lot of times there’s a guided discovery we use with service advisors to tell them they are their customer. There’s a funny thing where if you have an advisor list characteristics and expectations of their customers, they’ll say they’re needy, entitled, all that stuff. And then I say, “Okay, now let’s pretend we’re all parts people”. Go to the parts counter and pretend you’re a parts person. And now I’m going to ask you, “What are the characteristics and expectations of a service advisor?” And they’ll start listing off the same stuff: “They’re needy, they’re entitled, they want everything right now”.
The reason I bring that analogy up is we talk about the thing with parts is real and embracing AI to solve some of those problems. And then what are we doing ourselves to be self-aware? I feel like it’s the same thing because that’s a big thing you hear out there right now is, “Oh, we can’t get parts, we can’t get parts”. There’s a lot of things we can be doing to improve our businesses, our shops, things like that; but we get stuck on these things that just live rent-free in our head.
The Amazon Model: Robotics and Error Rates
Have you seen that Bezos raised a billion dollars for another company that he wants to do that is just logistics and manufacturing with AI in a sense? I’ve talked to people who have been to a couple of Amazon warehouses that there are basically no people. They run completely on robotics and AI. Just think about—because I’ve been to quite a few parts depots for manufacturers—and the whole game there is figuring out human error. There’s still just a ton of mispicks and human error.
And Amazon—if you just try to think about the last time you ordered something from Amazon that came wrong, it just never happens. And they’re logistically doing something way harder than Ford is doing with parts. It’s interesting. There’s probably two parts of the economy that are really, really inefficient. One is healthcare and how the billing and the communication and paperwork all happens and the logistics of nurses and doctors. But the other one is manufacturing.
We have firsthand experience with automotive or truck parts depots being super inefficient. I mean, they still have the charts up of like—they’re trying to be under a 2% error rate, and that’s good. Think about two out of a hundred parts are pulled wrong and get to the end user wrong. And still, there’s a high level of error rate with all the amount of eyeballs on it and double-checking that’s in place. It’s just nuts.
The High Cost and High Risk of Automation
That’s crazy, though, Chris, when you bring that up. I keep thinking about I was just talking to a truck dealer the other day, and they’re looking at investing into those vending machines for their parts that has some sort of AI software that helps them. But I still think of how much money it takes to invest in some of these machines, not even just the software. When those things go or break down, they still take some sort of maintenance.
If the conveyor or whatever breaks down, I ask, “Well, what’s the failure rate on that? And how long does it take to get back up?” “Well, it depends. They’d have to send somebody out, but their goal is 48 hours”. Can you imagine waiting for parts to get off on the opposite side or whatever on a parts vending machine for 48 hours? That’s crazy. Yeah, but it saves space. It’s a Band-Aid. It’s treating the symptom, not the cause, really.
This stuff is going to advance so fast. It’s insane what you can do. I don’t want to really say the stuff that we’re doing here with AI because it’s a competitive advantage for us, but it blows me away. It’s unlimited what you can do and its ability to connect dots and see past human comprehension and be able to process different scenarios and see it as a grand strategy or as an ecosystem. It takes an army of humans to do, and it can do it pretty quick.
Takeaways from TMC: Professional Networking and Best Practices
So Adam just got back from TMC. Adam, just briefly explain what TMC is. What does it stand for? TMC stands for Technical Maintenance Council. It’s a subset of ATA, which is American Trucking Association. Which is similar to NADA for the automotive side, right? ATA and TMC is really probably more geared towards the fleet side of commercial trucks, but there’s two major meetings a year.
We just got back from the annual meeting in Nashville. To summarize it: you get like-minded individuals from the fleet service providers and OEMs together to help create recommended practices for the industry in the commercial space. I look at it as a way to network, interact, improve the embedment of the industry for maintaining vehicles on the road, making them safer, but efficient and maximize their full potential and giving back. That’s why I like going every time; it’s just giving back to what the industry has been able to give me.
Understanding Different Business Models: B2B vs. Consumer
Our listeners on the car side might understand that on the trucking side, a lot of trucking is B2B; it’s fleets and business-to-business. It’s not consumer-based, so it’s a different business model which everybody should try to learn and understand different business models. Because on the automotive side or the heavy-duty part of automotive, there’s a lot of fleet that can be had dealing with cities, construction companies, different things. It’s an untapped part of the industry that most Chevy or Ford dealers don’t think about.
But there’s huge fleets out there. And the ones that get it are literally printing money. So you should always try to understand and learn from both sides. What were some of your big takeaways from the meeting? It’s a long week but it’s very eventful. I represent two major takeaways in some of the discussions. There’s various study groups for technical issues like technical looking at wheel ends and vibrations or how you organize a shop.
I typically go to more of like service provider and how do we have efficiency in shops? How do we organize them? The biggest takeaway that I got from this one is AI is really hitting the forefront when it talks about the future of trucks or trucking. Not only from a technical side of the vehicle itself, but AI and how fleets can run their businesses more effectively and efficient by leveraging the telematics piece and leveraging the maintenance and all those different programs to make better decisions. I thought that was a really big takeaway, probably more like scratching the surface, trying to get examples from how some fleets have introduced that into their business versus others and just sharing of best practices.
Moving from the Three C’s to the Five C’s
Another thing that really stuck out to me—from when I first started as a tech and writing stories and filing for warranty —when we file for warranty today, it’s usually the three C’s: complaint, cause, and correction, right? There was this open discussion, and I think there might be one or two companies that have best practices internally of actually doing five C’s. So it would be complaint, cause, correction, coverage, and confirmation.
If you think about it, coverage is outlining within those—in addition to the three C’s—what’s covered under warranty or what’s not. Really having that in, let’s just say, your invoice or your statement that you’re submitting, you have what’s actually covered and what was not. For an independent shop, you could still do it because there’s still parts warranties. Can I just explain one thing? In the trucking manufacturer side of things, they have, in some situations, allowed independents to do warranty work on their behalf, which never happens in automotive. But in trucking, Flying J can do certain warranty repairs up to an amount for certain manufacturers.
Warranty Administration in the Independent Space
There are larger, really well-run independent businesses that have relationships with the manufacturers that also can administer warranty for a couple of reasons. One is the dealers are either backlogged or they’re just not in that area. The goal is to keep those trucks up on the road and going, and so the truck manufacturers are assisting in that sense. There were some discussions brought up that with the independent shop, some of them have vendor agreements with certain part suppliers if they’re somewhat large enough and not necessarily an OEM franchise.
Like that coverage piece can kind of be widespread, but then the fifth one which I feel like in my experience with truck is confirmation. The quality check, right? I think in most of the cases that I’ve came across, it’s just about doing good business with a customer is that you just do a quality check. You do a test drive. A lot of times in my experience, you’d hire somebody specifically to do test drives. Somebody that was maybe an old tech or an old foreman that has retired, but you bring them in there to test drive and check all the work.
But it’s also about intentionally writing that down on an invoice that we did a confirmation. From a customer standpoint, if I’ve got all those five C’s, it really encompasses the entirety of what was actually wrong, what you actually did, what was actually covered, what I’m responsible for, and then the peace of mind that you did a quality check. If that actually becomes a widespread practice and customers are going to expect that more and more, I think that changes how warranty is filed in the future. I don’t care if it’s car or truck; if the customer is demanding that, I don’t know how you don’t have that as part of your practice. And layering some AI in there just increases the customer experience without a doubt.
The Future of Software vs. Solutions
The coverage part would easily be covered by AI. The confirmation, you kind of need a human, right? But it’s just about keeping record and then seeing—it’s just cool. I would love to do SDR from a TMC and have some people on and talk to them about the industry and what’s going on, I think it would be really fun, I also think we should probably go to NADA and do it, even though they’re so dumb, they don’t know how to host us. We could just do it in a hotel somewhere and have people just come to the hotel.
We literally asked NADA to try to do SDR and they can’t—like they don’t understand that we are the largest in the industry as far as viewership goes and they just can’t figure it out. The idea that we’re new media is funny to me. Anyways, I think we should do that coming up for next year. I spoke at TMC a couple years ago; there were so many great people there, so many smart people trying to figure it out and looking for solutions.
Morning People and Vendor on Vendor Crime
Do you remember what time we had that breakfast that you were speaking? You were like, “I did not want to do morning crazy”. So at 6:30, I’m like, “I’m the speaker” or whatever. Didn’t I go on at 6:45 in the morning? People were in there at 6:00 because I’m there at 5:30 because I’m early for everything. And I actually sat on a panel before I spoke. It was crazy. They’re morning people there; they’re ready to go.
It’s such a great mix too, because there’s techs, there’s guys running things. Car doesn’t really have that. It seems like NADA more is like vendor on vendor crime. It’s just like people trying to sell you stuff. A lot of the people speaking don’t really have solutions; they’re trying to sell you their thing more than anything. That’s been my experience.
Super fun, I love the five C’s in that. Overall, AI is the topic. I don’t think anybody quite understands the power of it, but they know that it’s coming and they know it’s something that you’re going to have to embrace. I’m surprised that the manufacturers aren’t leading this though. I was going to pull a clip for this today, but I don’t want to get in trouble for playing clips from other stuff. But the CEO of NVIDIA—I forget that guy’s name—but he was on Lex Fridman lately. There’s a clip that’s super fascinating where he’s talking about what computers were and then what they’re going to become.
The Disappearance of DMS and Accounting Software
In the experience I’ve had with what we’re doing with AI lately, I think software is going to go away. If you think about when we put AI into a dealership and we’re collecting all this data from all the different islands that they have—accounting, parts, appointments, all these different internet sales—once all that’s connected, the AI can create its own accounting software. You don’t need a DMS anymore. You don’t need all these islands of things; they just become solutions.
What would you ever use Excel for anymore? What would you use an appointment software for? Because the appointment software would be so ingrained in the marketing, the revenue, the projections. It completely changes your ability to run a business where you’re connecting everything that currently is in software that is proprietary and held on its own. But it loses the fact that that’s the dealer’s information or the manufacturer’s information, but none of it works together or talks together. We’ve wanted to track retention by advisor forever; you can’t do that, but we could do that like that.
QuickBooks will go away because you don’t need it. Like throwing your taxes into AI and say, “Hey, look at this and analyze it,” and it does it in 30 seconds. It comes up with all these ideas. So we’re going away from software, and it’s really solutions in a way.
The Irrelevance of Traditional Software Companies
Think about Adam internally has wanted us to switch from Zoom to Microsoft Teams. What business is Microsoft in in 10 years? AI. Well, they don’t have AI, though; they’re partnering with a company and that contract will expire. Where will Zoom be in 10 years? I don’t think it’ll exist.
Already, Zoom is annoying; these software companies are trying to offer more and more solutions, but I just want to get on a Zoom call. I don’t want all this AI stuff where people are transcribing all their conversations. When are you ever going to go back and read a Zoom meeting? What world do you live in that you want to read back a Zoom meeting? I’m on the meeting so I don’t have to do anything else. I don’t get it, I had this guy in here yesterday that was carrying one of those little AI things that listens to everything he does and then I guess writes some report about it, I don’t want that.
The “Blockbuster Video” Scenario in the Industry
The industry doubles down on the software. It’s a running joke with advisors: the steps they have to go through to write an RO? You go in and turn on your outdated computer running Windows 95, and once it boots up, it takes it another 20 minutes to open the 18 pieces of software you need to write one RO and none of them communicate. And then if by some chance the advisor makes a policy mistake because the 18 pieces of software don’t talk to one another, they’re like, “Ah, it’s coming out of your paycheck”. It’s literally tax code.
That’s why I was mentioning feeding my tax returns to Perplexity just to see what it said and see if it said the same thing as my CPA. If you think of a warranty policy and procedures manual, you feed that to AI and feed it a few ROs, how quickly can it come up with the five C’s? It might have the 19 C’s. But we’re very much in a Blockbuster Video scenario. The person who should be embracing AI is the CPA, but my CPA isn’t coming creative.
Inefficient Marketing and the Death of SEO
Then you have the local dealers that spend a ton of money on advertising. Most of the time, they’re doing more online stuff, but they’re still doing marketing and spending. You have three layers of inefficient, ineffective marketing being spent. You ask them what’s working, and they’re like, “I don’t know. I feel like it isn’t working”. It’s just crazy how they can’t figure that out.
They control the dealer’s website, so their dealerships are archaic. Their dealers are talking about SEO and nobody is telling them that SEO has been dead for a year. SEO doesn’t exist anymore; if you’re spending money on SEO, you might as well just light that money on fire because people aren’t searching on Google anymore. People are searching in AI. You’re so far behind the curve. And you’re not giving the dealers the tools they need in order to succeed.
Optimization of Things That Shouldn’t Exist
Whether you like Elon or not—I love Elon personally—I just think he’s playing chess and everybody else is playing checkers. His biggest frustration in engineering and development is the optimization of things that shouldn’t exist. Wherever you look in business right now, you can see examples of that. You’re either trying to figure AI out or you’re falling behind. A lot of times when you bring up AI, people are like, “Well, the verdict’s out on that. We don’t know where that’s at exactly yet”.
It’s an unfair advantage if you’re on this early; you save a lot of money on marketing. So, fun stuff. I’m excited to see you guys next week. We’re going to do a couple SDRs from here. I had a topic idea: ways to motivate technicians. We should come up with other ways that we’ve noticed that work. I’ve probably got seven on my list already. We’ll talk about that. Thanks everybody for tuning in and we’ll see you next time on Service Drive Revolution.
Final Outro
Thanks so much for watching this episode of Service Drive Revolution. We’re uploading new stuff every day, so make sure you subscribe and click the bell icon so you don’t miss out. If you have a question you’d like us to answer on the show, call 833-ASK-SDR, and we’ll answer your question on the show. That’s 833-ASK-SDR. For special deals on our books and training, head over to offers.chriscollinsinc.com. I’m Chris Collins, and I’ll see you in the next video.
🔗 Related Resources
- Service Advisor Sales: 5 Mistakes Advisors Make After a No
- Service Department Menu: 6 Tips to Increase Service Profit
- Why Systems Matter More Than People in Fixed Ops Leadership
Feel free to explore the linked articles above for deeper insights into each strategy. If you have any further questions or need additional resources, don’t hesitate to ask!
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