Welcome to another edition of the Car Dealership Guy Podcast Recap—a rundown of key lessons from top operators, founders, and execs shaping the future of auto retail.
Today’s episode features Chris Murphy, General Manager of Volkswagen of Oakland, and Monik Pamecha, CEO of Toma.
We explore how forward-thinking dealers are reallocating human talent away from low-value phone work and back into high-impact, in-store customer interactions.
Complex service questions require advisor-level expertise.
Most service calls involve questions about diagnostics, parts availability, repair timelines, and vehicle-specific concerns that require deep product knowledge and daily exposure to the shop floor to answer accurately.
"A lot of the times the questions the customers are calling in for are a lot more complex. Majority of those times, there's a reason they're calling and not just booking online. They have more difficult questions that usually need to go to a service advisor who's got the background who's got the expertise, and that was the big problem." - Chris
Chris added two more service advisors and eliminated the BDC entirely, routing calls directly to the people with the expertise to handle them.
Skilled advisors should focus on the drive, not the phone.
CDK data shows the average service department makes customers wait nine minutes to speak with someone, but the bigger issue is whether those advisors should be handling basic appointment scheduling at all.
"I have these really skilled advisors. Do I want them on the phones booking an oil change appointment, booking a maintenance appointment? No, I want them focused on the customers in our in our shop." - Chris
The tolerance for long hold times exists only because customers have been trained to expect terrible service. Answer in seconds instead of minutes, and you win customers before the conversation even starts.
AI completes the service experience by filling operational gaps.
The fear that AI eliminates jobs misses the real function: it handles tasks that would otherwise fall through the cracks due to human capacity limits or timing constraints.
"I think it's like the glue. So all of the gaps that you had in your processes and staffing and you know people... I think it glues it all together and makes it complete." - Monik
Even with more advisors, calls still get missed during peak hours, and customers still call after hours, which means AI solves problems no staffing model can realistically address.
Simple appointments can take three to four minutes on the phone.
Routine appointment scheduling sounds quick, but once customers start checking their calendars, comparing dates, and changing their minds, these calls consume significant advisor capacity.
"Someone books for a Tuesday and then says, ‘Wait no. Let me check my schedule, I'm busy that day, and I want to book next week. What do you have next week?’ Those calls can go on for three to four minutes." - Chris
Freeing advisors from this back-and-forth allows them to concentrate on the complex diagnostic conversations and customer concerns that actually require their expertise.
Presented by:
1. Toma - Toma builds AI agents that protect dealership revenue, retention, and reputation by automating communications and workflows with safeguards that protect the customer experience. If you’re evaluating AI at NADA, see what thoughtful deployment actually looks like by pre-booking your demo at: toma.com/nada-2026
Forty hours saved is forty hours redirected to revenue-driving work.
Time saved is about redirecting their capacity toward the work that actually drives revenue and builds long-term customer relationships.
"Toma in the last two months has saved our advisors about 40 hours on the phone." - Chris
Service advisors are always running, so every hour reclaimed from phone routing is an hour they can spend solving problems for customers standing in front of them.
Minutes saved matters more than traditional service KPIs.
Most dealers try to track AI impact through traditional metrics like set rate, show rate, and CSI, but these have too many variables to isolate the effect of any single system change.
"There's so many variables when tracking that stuff. It's hard to point to one system or one process change. What what I really look at is minutes saved." - Chris
Tracking time saved gives dealers a clear, measurable way to understand whether AI is actually freeing up advisor capacity for higher-value work.
Text-based outbound campaigns are outperforming outbound calls.
Outbound voice calls face regulatory constraints, spam labeling, and low pickup rates, which limits their effectiveness outside of narrow use cases like safety recalls.
“Nobody likes getting called at random times…even from a human. The probability of converting with outbound voice is pretty terrible. But with texting, assuming you have consent, customers can respond on their own time.” – Monik
Chris shared that early outbound text campaigns focused on overdue service, and recalls are already driving strong engagement, with response rates north of thirty percent.
Dealer operators should talk to other dealers using AI before buying.
The AI vendor market has exploded with companies at different stages of development, making it difficult to distinguish between demos, beta products, and production-ready solutions.
"The right way to buy AI is just talk to dealers that are using it like effectively." - Chris
This approach helps operators understand real-world performance with actual integrations rather than relying solely on vendor demonstrations.
Specific outreach drives action, generic reminders get ignored.
Generic service reminders feel like spam and get ignored, but permissioned messages that clearly explain who is reaching out and why are far more likely to get a response.
"On the texting piece, we had a campaign that we had launched with Chris on overdue service, right? So customers who came in who had agreed to receiving communication…we're letting them know that [they’re] overdue for service on text. You can see a message, you can you know exactly whoever is reaching out to you and why. And all you have to do is say, ‘Okay, yes. I want to get it.’ And then the next message is ‘Okay, when are you free? When can you come in? Because we already have all the information.’ It's like five text messages and you can complete the whole transaction as opposed to a phone call." - Monik
The real test is whether AI frees advisor time and improves responsiveness vs how sophisticated the technology sounds.
Dealers who can't answer at 1:00 a.m. will lose to those who can.
The marketplace is resetting expectations around response time and availability. Customers now expect instant answers and twenty-four-seven booking capability because other industries have already normalized it.
"It's not going to displace people. It's just going to raise the bar on what's expected because people will still need to manage that process." - Chris
A dealership that can't respond to service inquiries outside business hours or follow up on declined work will lose to competitors who can. This is about meeting a standard that manual processes physically cannot achieve at scale.
