Dealers have spent more than 30 years investing in technology to change how their stores operate, but the real breakthrough is happening now, with AI. While CRM systems and lead management tools laid the groundwork, AI connects all the tools dealers already use, leading to a more efficient store and an improved customer experience.
Impel is among the companies leading this change, developing AI that helps dealers consolidate their data and automate tasks across different platforms. Matt Muilenburg, Chief Product Officer at Impel, joins us on this episode of Inside Automotive for a closer look at how AI is creating real value for dealers today and where the technology is headed next.
Why the tools of the past never delivered
CRM systems and lead management tools promised to break a stubborn ratio of one salesperson closing every 10 vehicles sold. But, Muilenburg said, that ratio has barely moved.
"We're finally at the verge… where the AI is actually making it possible to deliver on the things we thought were going to be possible as a result of those tools that were developed over the last 30 years."
The core issue is fragmentation. While each system a dealer purchases captures its own portion of customer data, none communicate with each other. Consolidating this data into a unified customer record requires coordinating hundreds of vendors. However, Muilenburg noted that AI is now transforming this process. He believes that it functions like an added workforce that never tires and moves far faster than a human employee, building integrations across existing systems through MCPs, APIs or RPA. That doesn’t mean one vendor running everything, but fewer vendors, driven by AI and getting more done.
Even if you’re not using AI, your workers are
About half of the dealers Muilenburg talks with say they aren’t formally using AI in their stores. But many team members are already using AI to help them do their job on their own, he said, often without approval from management. It shows that workers are willing and ready to use AI at work, but without clear guidelines from leadership, it can lead to serious problems. Muilenburg’s advice is to get ahead of the issue by updating employee manuals and setting clear policies on what appropriate AI use looks like.
Muilenburg pointed to the service lane as one of the clearest examples of AI paying off today. Dealers who have adopted AI in their service departments are seeing strong results and winning back customers they hadn’t seen in over a year, he said.
He also compared the current moment to his early days when dealers didn’t know what to do with internet leads. The solution then was to create a new role, the internet sales manager. Now, the same pattern is playing out, with dealers starting to identify specialists responsible for training their AI, ensuring compliance and managing the data it needs to work.
Every employee is about to get an AI assistant
The most important role in the AI-driven dealership won’t be a new department; it will be the human overseeing the AI. Muilenburg calls it the “AI quarterback,” the person responsible for keeping a human in the loop as AI takes on more of the day-to-day work.
"We're not reinventing the processes. We're just putting in the missing pieces that allow the process to actually work."
Every person in the store will soon walk around with an AI assistant app on their phone, prompting them throughout the day on the work that needs attention, Muilenburg said. He pointed to service lane car buying as an example of what that orchestration looks like in practice. The best dealership he’s worked with buys 35% of its inventory through the service lane, compared to 1% or 2% at the average store.
With an AI assistant in place, a dealer principal could get a notification the moment a high-value repeat customer pulls into the service lane, prompting a personal thank you. A used car manager could get a similar alert when a vehicle with strong equity rolls in, cueing them to follow through on a trade evaluation the customer has already been primed to expect.
From point solutions to a single platform
For most of the past five years, dealers have bought AI in pieces. One vendor for a digital retailing assistant, another for the service lane, another for something else entirely, but Muilenburg said that era is ending. The value isn’t in the individual product anymore, he said, it’s in the core data and how the system gets trained on it.
That shift is what Impel is building toward. Rather than stacking point solutions, dealers are beginning to select a single platform provider that acts as the central brain powering their AI, with a broader marketplace of tools built to tap into it.
For the first time, dealers have a reason to train one central system on their standard operating procedures, their brand guidelines and how their store fits into its community, Muilenburg said. Once that system is trained, it can power the individual agents handling customer conversations across every channel.
Engineering a more welcoming car buying experience
Muilenburg said his decision to join Impel wasn’t about the job, what drew him in was the size of the opportunity and how real it felt.
Muilenburg has six children, including four daughters. He said he wants them to feel comfortable walking into a dealership to buy a car, but that comfort still doesn’t exist today for most women. Many feel intimidated, threatened or mistreated during the process, and he noted men often don’t fare much better.
That’s one area where AI has a real opportunity to make a difference, he said. AI is already improving the quality of communication and information customers get before they ever set foot in a store, shaping their impression of a dealership before the first visit even happens.
