Welcome to another edition of the Car Dealership Guy Podcast Recap newsletter—the key lessons from top operators, founders, and execs shaping the future of auto retail.
Today’s guest is Daniel Kim, Director of Operations at Barnes Crossing Auto Group.
We dig into his journey from tech entrepreneur to dealership operations leader, the promises and pitfalls of AI BDCs, and why he insists his team stay on the phones.
Live vendor comparisons deliver better results than product demos.
Traditional RFP processes and demo sessions only reveal 25-50% of how products actually perform in real dealership environments.
"So what we did was we split up the stores, half of them got impel and another half got a different solution. And yeah, we set up metrics on what dictated success and we just kind of let it roll."
This hands-on testing approach forces vendors to provide exceptional support and custom work since they're still competing for the full contract.
AI agents increase BDC capacity without reducing headcount.
Implementing AI for initial responses and long-term follow-up allows human agents to focus on high-value phone conversations during the critical first 24 hours.
"Ever since we've implemented an AI agent, our centralized BDC now handles 50% more leads. I think each BDC agent is now at around 300 leads a month versus I think an industry average around 200."
The result is more leads managed per agent, while maintaining a 99% contact rate, and without sacrificing speed or quality.
Data warehouse ownership provides more vendor flexibility than traditional CDPs.
Most dealerships rely on automotive-specific CDP vendors that limit options and increase costs for services like direct mail campaigns.
"Most of the time, these people will just find third-party data sources to kind of send mailers to. If I have control over my own data, I could just go and work with a Silicon Valley tech company like Lob, who does one-to-one direct mail, based on the customer journeys, that you could set and at a much lower price."
A strategy like this reduces direct mail costs from $1.20-$1.80 per piece to approximately 80 cents by bypassing traditional automotive vendors entirely.
Strategic vendor partnerships substitute for internal technical resources.
Most dealership groups cannot justify hiring $150,000-$200,000 data engineers, making vendor selection critical for technology implementation success.
"Even though our dealer principal, he's great, he's very supportive, he's a great businessman, trying to go to him and tell him, ‘Hey, we need to hire a data engineer for $150,000 to $200,000 a year,’ is a pretty difficult sell."
Partner vendors provide comprehensive support and act as extensions of dealership staff rather than just software providers.
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Reduced advertising spend with improved conversion rates creates operational efficiency.
Combining AI implementation with strategic vendor management produces measurable improvements in cost per vehicle and lead quality.
"We've drastically reduced our advertising per vehicle spend as a group. That's something that I'm very proud of. We've reduced our advertising per vehicle spend by $200 per car, which I think is very significant."
Cost reductions occur alongside 20% increases in lead-to-conversion rates, demonstrating improved efficiency rather than reduced volume.
Context-aware AI responses outperform template-based human communication.
Traditional BDC operations rely heavily on copy-paste templates that lack personalization and context about customer inquiries.
"What they end up doing is they will literally copy paste templates, without really having the time to look at what the actual conversation is about, or without gaining any kind of context or knowledge."
Contextual AI responses, on the other hand, improve initial engagement quality without requiring template management or constant human oversight.
Service department AI implementation requires different approaches than sales applications.
Early AI testing in service departments revealed challenges with customer confusion and appointment scheduling that don't exist in sales contexts.
"The service AI, it might have been the vendor that we decided to go with previously, but it just blew up on us in terms of just the confusion it caused the customers, it didn't really decrease our call volume, maybe scheduled some appointments, [but] couldn't really figure out in terms of giving status updates on cars."
Department-specific AI solutions require different approaches rather than one-size-fits-all implementations.
Business intelligence tools eliminate CRM reporting frustrations.
Standard CRM reporting systems lack the flexibility and speed needed for comprehensive dealership analytics and decision-making.
"I'm a very analytics heavy person and just the lack of [CRM] flexibility, how long it took to update every time I tried to create a new report, outdated UI, I just really made me want to, you know, head against the computer."
Separate BI layers over data warehouses provide leadership with customizable dashboards and real-time access to key performance metrics.
Data foundation work matters more than targeting features.
The industry's focus on customer activation and targeting capabilities often overshadows the importance of proper data infrastructure and hygiene.
"Do you remember digital retailing? I think we got so caught up with the software and we totally forgot about process, right? Which was actually the more important part of digital retailing."
CDP implementations prioritize targeting capabilities over fundamental data quality and relationships, following similar patterns.
Resource limitations require careful project prioritization and vendor selection.
Managing multiple technology initiatives simultaneously creates bandwidth challenges that require strategic focus on high-impact implementations.
"One of the things that I learned on the retail side when I came in was, I don’t think there is a specific, very complex concept per se, but there are many concepts that you have to learn and get used to."
Success depends on finding vendors who provide comprehensive support throughout implementation rather than just selling software products.
