While AI continues to reshape how many of us conduct business, not every AI solution is built with retail automotive in mind. Joining us on today’s episode of Inside Automotive is Scott Traylor, Vice President of Sales at Mia, to discuss how the company built an AI platform specifically for dealership operations.
With more than two decades of dealership leadership experience, including roles as Head of Sales at EchoPark Automotive and General Sales Manager at Berkshire Hathaway Automotive, Scott brings a unique perspective on where dealers need the most support and how AI can help.
Traylor explains how his industry background directly influenced Mia’s feature design to address the real-world pain points dealers face daily, from scheduling appointments to organizing workflows. He said, “We are car people making solutions for car people,” adding that having former dealership operators on staff alongside Mia’s AI development sets the company apart from vendors with no retail background.
Additionally, Traylor traces Mia’s origin back to November 2022, when OpenAI released ChatGPT, followed a month later by Microsoft’s roughly $10 billion investment in the company. He said the moment convinced him something significant was underway, though he lacked the technical background to build on it himself. By April 2023, Traylor reached out to the University of Texas at Dallas’s AI Society and cold-called its president, who now serves as Mia’s CEO.
Why Mia
According to Traylor, he walked through the evolution of dealership technology, from fax machine leads and paper showroom logs to early decision-tree phone systems that frustrated customers with scripted responses. He said, Mia represents a shift to agentic AI, a system capable of reasoning toward a goal rather than following a fixed script.
“We get to share that dealer perspective so that Mia is dialed in specifically for the dealer.”
While Mia integrates with a dealership’s CRM, DMS, inventory system, and service scheduler, it enables the dealership to set sales and service appointments, answer detailed vehicle questions, and automate a significant portion of BDC work around the clock. Traylor said many customers shop between 8 p.m. and midnight, hours when dealerships are typically closed, and pointed to demand for overnight and weekend service from shift workers such as first responders, pilots and truck drivers.
Notably, dealers using Mia generate an average of $10,000 per month in after-hours revenue, primarily from service, Traylor said. But top-performing dealers using Mia for 24/7 front-line phone coverage see that figure climb to $30,000 or more per month.
Further, Traylor said Mia avoids dictating solutions to dealers, a practice he found frustrating during his own time in dealership leadership. Instead, the company customizes its platform based on direct feedback, with engineers from its Austin, Texas, operations team present on dealer performance calls.
GM partnership marks industry milestone
Mia recently became the first and only AI vendor listed in General Motors’ IMR co-op category for AI and conversational technology. Traylor credited GM for identifying early that AI would become central to automotive retail and said the OEM conducted an extensive vendor search before selecting Mia.
GM dealers can now select Mia through their IMR DDS portal under the AI and Conversational Intel category and apply available co-op funds toward the platform, according to Traylor. However, co-op allocations vary by dealer.
"We're not going to let your retailers down…We are going to service them with honor."
Looking ahead
Traylor predicts that within the next year, most dealers will move past debating whether to adopt AI and instead focus on what their AI strategy should look like. He encouraged dealers still evaluating vendors to benchmark Mia’s capabilities directly, noting that onboarding can take as little as two to three weeks.
