For dealers like John Keohane of Temecula Valley Buick GMC in California, there aren't enough hours in the day to manage every operation at the dealership.
But with his own secret agent, Emily, he can follow every customer conversation, reconnect with leads, and send new campaigns to help his team sell more vehicles and book more service appointments.
Keohane, the vice president of operations and partner of Temecula Valley Buick GMC, explained that the Operator by Podium has provided a “cost-effective” way for his dealership to compete with larger companies.
What is an Operator? Podium founders Eric Rea and Dennis Steele said that 4,000 dealerships are using “Jerry” today, which was their first agent launched in 2023.
Today, the Podium operator is solving for dealers having to utilize 20 to 25 tools to engage customers and close sales. Rea described how an operator orchestrates across systems, data, and agents.
“Operator is your GSM or a GM….You can basically tell it to do stuff in plain English, and it’ll go do it, and it’ll go try it,” Rea said.
Endless uses: The uses are endless for the operator.
A leader of 37 dealerships asked to find 100 customers who haven’t serviced with us for over six months. With the operator, after pulling the data, it can build out and run the campaign to contact the customers.
Another example is building a report card on all reps that pulls data from different sources in the dealership to compile a comprehensive report.
Keohane noted how he’s been able to go from creating generic bulk messages to customers to personalized messages based on customer profiles.
He created a revival campaign to touch base with leads that have gone cold after 45 days with new incentives or increased trade appraisal kick-ins.
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“As an operator of your business, you get to think about outcomes that you want to drive and collaborate with the AI on how to achieve those outcomes,” Steele said.
Direction of the industry: Keohane explained many operators received an incredible amount of data from their DMS, CRM, and other tools, but it’s tough to run a business and act on all those data points.
Keohane said finding someone you trust to execute actions with that information is a limitation of many of what he termed BDC functions that would require training, execution, review, and feedback.
“My belief, and I might be wrong about this, is that a lot of that stuff is kind of low-hanging fruit for what technology can do,” Keohane said.
Additionally, Steele noted that AI and agents can be amazing, but dealers need to figure out how to best leverage new capacity in the dealership and change operations to provide more value.
Bottom line: Keohane challenges other dealers to consider finding one sore spot in their dealership and allowing their version of Emily or operator to tackle the task.
“I think you’ll be surprised with how easy it is,” Keohane said.
A quick word from our partner
Every dealer feels it: leads are coming in, but closing them is getting harder.
Podium's AI fixes that. Its agent, Jerry, works every lead until the appointment is booked, sending walkaround videos of the actual car and re-engaging shoppers when a price drops or a new incentive hits.
1 in 4 dealerships use Podium, converting leads 40% above industry average.
Buying more leads won't fix a follow-up problem. Agentic workflows can.
