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Industry Spotlight—Why most dealers fail at lead follow-up, and how tech closes the gap
Featuring Yuriy Demidko, DP Fox Motors, and Matthew Muilenburg, Impel
Welcome to another edition of the Car Dealership Guy Industry Spotlight Podcast recap newsletter.
In this episode, host Sam D’Arc catches up with Yuriy Demidko, Chief Information Officer at DP Fox Motors, and Matthew Muilenburg, Chief Product Officer at Impel. Together, they discuss how AI is transforming lead handling, reshaping BDC roles, and becoming a real part of the dealership culture.
1. Improving the customer experience should be a priority.
Fox’s use of generative AI grew out of one mission—improve the customer experience.
“If a store is really busy with foot traffic, a lot of your sales staff will spend a lot of time with the people that are in front of them. Meaning the internet leads kind of fall by the wayside. With (the) advances of AI and technology, I saw…an ability to find something to fix that problem.” —Yuriy
Generative AI enables the team to give as much attention to the internet leads as the floor.
2. Traditional sales methods can be tough to break.
It starts with changing how the team thinks about the lead process.
“Traditionally, if I have somebody in front of me, yeah, they're a lot more likely to be engaged and a lot more likely to become a customer. Frankly, a lot of that sales experience nowadays actually happens online.” — Yuriy
Today’s customer does not walk into the store to get educated. They walk in because they're, they're a buyer, more than not.
3. Every dealership should be reassessing its lead processes.
The challenges associated with digital leads are widespread throughout the industry.
'‘23% of the time, when the phone rings at the dealership, it doesn't result in a meaningful conversation in the store. It never gets answered. It gets put on hold. They hang up, it gets transferred, they fall off—or it ends up in a voicemail and they don't even leave a message.” —Matt
A lot of potential revenue is being left on the table due to ineffective lead processes.
4. Service departments also suffer.
70% of the calls that go unanswered are from people who want to talk to the service department.
“That's where it really falls apart—when you pass a call onto the service department. Nobody in that department really wants to answer the phone. Most dealers will round robin or ring all the phones in the service department all at once.” —Matt
Time management is a major issue for many service departments.
Impel AI - Impel AI helps you drive loyalty with proactive, personalized service outreach that scales seamlessly. From service milestones to recall alerts and tailored incentives, Impel makes service outreach feel more like a concierge service than marketing. With AI-powered service scheduling via text and email, your team can stop managing calendars and focus on delivering exceptional customer experiences. Future-proof your service drive today at impel.ai/blog/the-dealership-service-drive-of-the-future.
5. AI enables dealers to set higher goals for sales and service leads.
Fox uses AI, aiming to get 100% attention for 100% of the leads.
“100% attention is defined as…the customer feels like the empathy is there and the person they're engaged with, or the AI…they're engaged with, is fully in tune with what's happening.” —Yuriy
It’s important that people know that the response to their questions/inquiries isn’t canned or some static response.
6. Think of AI as a partner and team member.
To be truly effective, AI has to be trained to fit into the culture of your dealership.
“AI doesn't know how to do that out of the box, right? You have to orient it to who your business is and how you wanna engage with consumers…The reality is once you give it a name and you give it a photo and it starts having meaningful conversations with consumers, it becomes part of your staff.” —Matt
Customers have become very accustomed to AI assistants—with offerings like Siri and Alexa.
7. An effective AI strategy works seamlessly with sales and service associates.
The intention of using AI in a dealership is not to replace humans, but to work with them as a team.
“Depending on what the customer starts talking about, a person needs to step in. For example, some people will go on…like, ‘Does the car have this? Does it have that?’ And ultimately just book an appointment and you never have a person involved. That happens all the time.” —Yuriy
It could be a matter of someone telling AI they want an out-the-door price—which is when a real sales team member steps in.
8. Not all dealership AI applications are the same—nor should they be.
The degree in which dealerships rely on generative AI varies from business to business.
“A lot of dealers start to eliminate or reduce the size of their BDC, but some of the bigger dealer groups actually moved to a centralized BDC smaller staff. Now they've got a group of trusted automotive professionals that are taking these nurtured leads that have come from the AI, and they're taking it to the next step of getting that appointment set in the dealership.” —Matt
The scale of the AI application depends on a specific dealership’s needs.
9. The quantifiable impact of an AI offering like Impel is clear.
The biggest impact of the technology is the fringe leads.
“Fringe leads…leads that get cold, leads that have not responded to any kind of engagement…in two-plus weeks. The average person (that) a human would be like, ‘okay, look, this person will never respond.” —Yuriy
Generative AI enables Fox Motor Group to achieve a more frictionless customer experience—which Yuri values at $50,000 a month from a communications perspective.
10. The potential applications of generative AI will continue to expand.
The auto industry is in the midst of a major innovation shift—driven heavily by AI.
“If you don't start innovating and leveraging these new emerging technologies, I truly think you could already be dead, and you just don't know.” —Yuriy
“Consumers want a great experience. Dealers have proven that they can't do it consistently in the store or for a continuous period of time. You can teach that AI to do it the way you want it done all the way down to the most granular of lead levels.” —Matt
Generative AI completely changes the way dealerships interact with consumers—and it will only get better.
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