Cheap AI is Expensive: Why Good AI Beats Bad AI Every Time

Jim Fitzpatrick: Jim Fitzpatrick with CBT News. In automotive retail today, dealers are racing to adopt AI, but not all tech is created equal. While cheap bolt-on AI tools look tempting on paper, budget bots that give robotic answers, fail to sync with your DMS, or drop lead follow-ups don't save you money. They cost you sales, damage your brand, and burn through hot leads. In dealership operations, cheap AI is actually the most expensive mistake you can make.

That's why forward-thinking stores are taking a different approach. Podium has engineered the number one converting AI agent for dealers, a system built specifically to engage shoppers instantly, handle complex customer inquiries 24/7, and consistently book real appointments on your sales floor and service drive.

To break down why low-cost tech is quietly draining your bottom line and how high-performing AI pays for itself, I'm joined today by two experts from Podium, Jordan Parker, Automotive Marketing Manager, and Misty Tippets, who's a Senior Automotive Marketing Manager as well. I think Misty is going to be joining us shortly, but Jordan, thank you so much for joining us.

Jordan Parker: Yeah, Jim, thank you so much for having us. Great to be with you all. Great to be with you at CBT News. It's our first time doing a webinar together and we're super, super jazzed. VP of Automotive Ross Tinkham was on a little bit earlier this summer. So it's great to be back with you and your audience live. Always love doing these webinars, and no better way to kick off the fall and kick off a new month than to talk a little bit about AI.

I'm sure everyone on this webinar has never heard of AI. You've never received a pitch or a demo from any companies. This is all going to be new stuff. No, but in actuality, cheap AI is a problem. You get pitches all the time from vendors, from partners, from new companies, new startups saying, hey, our AI can do this, this and that. While it might sound great on the surface because the price is attractive, or you get X amount of months free, or there's empty promises, ultimately that's going to cost you in the long run.

So today we're going to break down why cheap AI in the long run is actually way more expensive, to save you some of that headache, save you some of the trouble, and really just talk about why investing in good technology, investing in a good partner, is really, really critical to achieving your goals.

So as Jim mentioned, my name is Jordan Parker. I serve on the automotive marketing team here. Misty had an emergency come up, so I'm not sure she's going to be able to make it. So you all are stuck with me for the next 30 minutes or so, but we're going to go through this, have a great time together, and hopefully learn a little bit about each other and learn about what really sets incredible dealers apart.

I don't want this to be a negative webinar, though. I know we talked about how cheap AI can be expensive, but we want to talk about the solutions, how you can really overcome that, and what to look for when evaluating a great AI partner as dealerships move through different waves of the AI and technology journey, coming into that next era of dealership.

So we're going to talk a little bit about the industry to get us started. And I would love for all of you to let me know where you're watching from. We have dealers joining from around the country. So if you hop in that chat box at the bottom of your screen, type in your location, your dealership, the city you're in, or say hi. We'd love for this to be interactive. As we move through the presentation, it's more fun for me if it's more fun for you guys. So make sure you're dropping in questions, comments, concerns, anything you want. The more you talk, the more we talk with y'all. And we really want this to be an interactive and productive 30 minutes.

So first of all, the industry's really shifted, and AI is now a requirement. A couple of years ago, AI was new. It was an experimentation phase. Dealers and local businesses across the country were really talking about, should I do this? It's new, I want to be on the cutting edge, but I don't want some rogue chatbot to go off and piss off a bunch of my customers. And so that question has now shifted from "should I adopt AI" to "when I finally do, how far behind am I going to be?" What we see is nearly nine in 10 dealerships across the country are already using AI for customer communications. And that is reflected on the customer side too. Nearly seven in 10 customers are already using or plan to use AI for their next car-buying experience. So that's learning information and getting educated on the cars, or learning about the latest incentives and programs from the OEMs. Customers are more educated than ever. A lot of that is in part due to AI.

So if you look back to 2024, as I mentioned, we were kind of in that "should we" phase. In 2025, we talked about, does this affect my customers, and how does it affect my customers? And now, as we're in, hard to believe, the back half of 2026, moving into 2027, the question is now, okay, there are incredibly powerful AI tools out there. How much more can we do with it?

And AI in dealerships has really moved through three waves in the same number of years, looking back to 2024. So wave one was, as I mentioned, that chatbot. We're capturing and responding to leads quickly. Thanks so much for calling CBT Motors. Somebody will be with you tomorrow. Somebody will be with you later this afternoon. But it wasn't qualifying. It wasn't nurturing and warming up that lead. It was just simply responding. And customers' expectations aligned at the time. Speed to lead is still the king. Whoever responds first, they have about a 391% higher likelihood of doing business with whichever business responds first.

That moves us into wave two, which is connected AI. And this really gets into your systems. It's more of a bolt-on solution. It has context and can send more details. It can confirm availability. Yes, this blue Mustang is on the lot, available. Would you like to come in for a test drive? No, this gray Chevy Silverado is not available. A little bit more context, a little bit more detail.

And now we're in wave three, where you have an AI workforce, an integrated system of AI agents that's taking action on your revenue goals. However, not all AI providers have made it to wave three. A lot of them are still in wave one, and that's where that cheap experience comes in. So sure, they'll promise you fast response. It kind of ends there. And is that what we're really looking for as we move into this new modern day? Not really sure.

So where's your store in this? We'd love for you all to type, if you're comfortable, which wave your store falls into. There are three main waves. Wave one is, we have AI that answers leads but simply just hands them off. And that's where a lot of providers are sitting. Wave two, our AI knows the customer history and continues to follow up. That's where a good chunk of AI vendors are sitting now. They have a little bit more context, a little bit more capability. Or are you in wave three, which is where we want to see all dealers in eventually? And that is AI that finds revenue that we didn't ask it to find.

So if we look back to that "cheap is expensive" mantra, if you invest a little bit more in AI, is that AI going to actually go out and find you lost revenue? In all likelihood, nowadays with Podium, you certainly can do that. And those cheap AI bots, those cheap chatbots, really aren't doing this. They're actually costing you more money. That opportunity cost shoots way up.

So let's look at the numbers. 20% to 25% higher lead generation occurs when AI personalizes an automotive ad campaign. So that's putting in the customer's number. Hey Jim, we see you're due for an oil change. Would you like to come in? Or, hey Jordan, new lease incentives just came out on F-150s. Are you interested in swapping out, trading, upgrading your vehicle? 27% higher showroom rates occur when dealerships are using automated tools. That's to confirm appointments, to confirm test drives, to confirm service appointments. And that's work that AI is doing automatically to increase those conversion rates and ultimately increase your bottom line. And then last, but certainly not least, is a 26% improvement in lead-to-sale conversion metrics. Why? Because the lead is continuously being nurtured. Competent AI that has context, that is as customizable as it is capable, speaking to your dealership's goals and playbooks, is converting at scale. And that's why Podium is proud to be the number one converting AI agent for dealerships.

So what do we know? As we said, the majority of dealerships are using AI, trying to solve for the same four jobs. There are a lot of big problems in dealerships, but four that are probably keeping you up at night are missed leads, slow or no follow-up to those leads, lost service revenue, and under-leveraged customer data. These are all huge opportunities that in reality are not that difficult to fix with the right tool and the right partner. And so you have to ask yourself, is the AI product that I'm currently using not only addressing one of these issues, but is it addressing all four of these issues? Is it doing it well? And is it doing it on a continuous basis that's improving your store's metrics, improving your store's revenue, and ultimately making the customer experience better?

So as we move into what does this AI workforce look like, well, most dealerships deploy one chatbot. So you have it on your website. It's that little bubble that we all know, with the face in the bottom right-hand corner, that pops up. Hey, I'm available. Are you interested in this G-Wagon? You might reply, you might not, you never know. But that's one thing that's pretty universal across all dealerships now. However, that leaves you with a disconnected system and leaky revenue that's not turning into conversions at the end of the day. So wave one and wave two of the dealership experience are kind of in that section now. 25% of those are lost due to poor communication. 62% of after-hours calls are going unanswered, which is crazy. And there's a 27% reduction in service retention from sales.

I actually experimented with a couple of dealerships recently that have a competing or another AI provider in the space. I was inquiring, just for fun, with the chatbot. I was looking at the inventory page that had this vehicle available. I think it was a blue Mercedes. I typed in the chat, is this blue Mercedes model available? Hmm, let me connect you with someone who can help. The AI didn't even have the context to know that the vehicle sitting on their website was in inventory, ready to test drive. The AI chatbot that was on their website, on that same exact page, couldn't even recognize that. So that's where you're losing that revenue. Instead of the AI saying, it's available, when can you come in for a test drive, we have availability today, locking down that conversion, the revenue went out the window in this hypothetical scenario.

So what does an AI workforce really look like? When you invest in the proper AI partner, not just a product but a real partner, and choose to spend that extra money and get your staff on board to get really excited about these AI products, that's where you find that massive increase in revenue compared to the cheap chatbots.

So what does that look like? Some dealerships are really starting to deploy agents that unify the entire customer experience. You don't just have one agent here, one agent there that's a bolt-on, but you have a roster, an army of AI agents that are owning outcomes. Just as your employees at every level of your business are responsible for a metric or an outcome or a deliverable in their respective departments, your AI employees, your AI agents, should be no different. You should be measuring them and benchmarking them against those goals, but working off of one customer record. So the customer's not having to repeat themselves, and the AI and the employee are not missing context about conversations that may have been had during those 62% of leads that come in overnight and are not responded to.

And you've got to manage it like a team too. So it's not just this one thing that sits off to the side in some corner and nobody really owns it. Stores that are in wave three really have this entire system that you see on the right. So you have your GM, who is using Operator, which we're going to talk about in a little bit. You have your BDC managers using Operator as well. But then on the sales and the service side, you have your sales AI agents, your service AI agents, marketing and voice AI agents. So throughout that entire pyramid of staff, you have AI not only empowering employees, but driving revenue to make their lives easier and give them back more time day in and day out.

So let's look at the Operator agent. This is something we're incredibly excited about that, to my knowledge, is not offered on the market anywhere else. And what is this? This is an investment, of course, and this is not something cheap AI providers are offering at all. This is a back-office agent built for GMs. For so long, we've seen AI providers provide agents that are externally facing, that are helping the customer. But when have you seen an AI agent that is built for you, built within your system, that is helping you as the GM? And that's what Operator is. Operator is going to be your best friend at a 3.5% margin across dealerships. You cannot hire your way out of these gaps. There's not enough time. There are not enough resources to go in and solve all of these problems. And this is where Operator comes in.

You're accountable for your entire store's number on top of keeping day-to-day operations, staffing issues, HR issues, whatever it may be. You don't have time, like you would want, to dig into the leaks and really find that revenue. So it's back to my previous point of, hey, cheap AI is expensive. Not only is it not bringing in more revenue, but a very high-quality AI product that you invest in is finding you more revenue, finding incremental revenue through holes in your business.

What does that look like? That looks like missed calls. The phone rings while your advisor is mid-conversation with a live customer. AI answers that call, qualifies the lead, books the service appointment, nine out of 10 times without ever having to escalate to a human. Slow follow-ups, another big issue that we talked about. Buyers contact three to five stores. Most go with whoever replies first. You want to be that person replying first. Not only just replying first, but replying really, really well.

There's no proactive outreach. What if your leads have gone cold? In all likelihood, the majority of your reps have moved on from August leads, let alone July, and are now focused on new, hot September leads. The amount of revenue and customer leads that are sitting from the last two months is incredible. What if you could have an AI that would proactively reach out to all those customers, nurture, rewarm those leads, and then provide them to your salespeople at a moment's notice? That's what Operator can do.

And then idle customer data. You all are sitting on thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of pieces of data, customer records that are untapped potential. Okay, what if you were able to see every customer who regularly came in for an oil change and then hasn't contacted you in the last 12 months? You haven't reached out. Do you have the time to manually go do that? No. That's where Operator comes in, because Operator can. You can simply prompt it in plain English, like you would, and say, hey, go find me every customer who was a regular customer, came in for regular service, hasn't talked to us in 12 months. Great, I found 18,000 records that match that description. Would you like me to draft custom messages and send them out? Yes, please do. Boom. Just like that, Operator has now found that data, extracted that data, qualified that data, and created a custom messaging campaign to go do proactive outreach to all those customers, leveraging all of that idle data to drive more revenue for the store.

And so as we move into this wave three, as I've been talking about, that's where Operator really takes action. Ultimately, it surfaces insights. It gives you answers from your data using those questions that are coming up. Maybe you're lying awake at night thinking, dang, I see a big drop in service revenue over the past four months. I don't know what it is. My team can't find it. Let's have Operator go do that. It's proactively finding those insights and then serving up reports daily, as much as you like. Then it's recommending. It's giving you next steps. And this is where a lot of products also stop. Here's the recommendation, here's what you should do, but I can't actually do it. Operator performs recaps and next steps, but then it also takes action. That's the really big one here, where a high-quality, worthwhile investment of an AI product comes into play. It's doing the work. It's giving you back five, 10, 20, 40 hours each month to focus your attention on other areas of the business that may need that human touch. So it's not only working to your goals, but it's finding ways to hit new revenue targets, new metrics, and ultimately improve the efficiency of your dealership. This is the agent that gets your work done, as I mentioned.

So, as I just talked about, Temecula Valley CDJR is a great example of this, a customer in California currently using Operator. They've been on it for a couple of months now. They sent out 18,000 automated messages a month, and that led to a 12% jump in monthly service revenue. That's huge. Think about how many ROs you have a month, or multiply that by how many stores you have. A 12% jump. What would that mean from a dollar perspective for your store if you had an AI agent that could actually do this work?

What does it look like? 30 to 60 minutes of daily stand-up prep, gone. One GM replaced his whole morning ritual with a single morning prompt. Operator texts him every morning with a daily recap. Things that need his attention, coaching notes drafted for salespeople, trades that need approval, incentive bumps, so on and so forth. He can then approve those, and Operator goes ahead and takes that action. It looks like 91 high-intent buyers surfaced in one pull. Customers that nobody had time to get back to. Think of those leads from June, July, August that have gone cold, not been nurtured. Operator rewarms them, re-engages them, brings them back into the sales funnel. And again, 40-plus hours returned to the BDC on BDC campaign work. That's a huge amount of hours that are increasing efficiency and allowing your staff, your team, to do more meaningful work.

Let's talk about the sales side. As I mentioned earlier, our sales AI agent is the number one converting sales AI in the industry. That's something we're super proud of and would not be possible without our customers. And that's where that worthwhile investment really takes place. So is Podium the cheapest AI product on the market? No. But is it the number one converting AI agent on the market? Absolutely. That's where the differentiator really comes into play, and why we see so many new Podium customers each and every month coming over from other providers. Because they're like, this one was cheaper. I got six months free. I was in a month-to-month contract. That all sounded shiny. It's a shiny object. But when the rubber hit the road, the results weren't there. They looked really nice on the demo. When I actually got into my store and integrated it, it didn't work as promised. It was a lot harder to get support. I couldn't customize the agent. I had to wait two weeks for support tickets to go overseas and come back. That's what you're really evaluating when you're looking at these AI partners. Not just the shiny product on the demo, but the actual motion it's making in your store.

So speaking about sales in particular, your buyer starts browsing right after work, right when your BDC logs off. We all do this. At least once a week, I go home and look at cars, shop for cars online. You are all car people. I'm a huge car person. What's going on in the market? Dealerships are closed. The problem is the average dealer response time is over two hours. There's a 91% attrition rate for customers who do not get a response within five minutes. Extrapolate that over two hours. They're gone. They're on to the next dealership. They're on to a dealership across the country. They're on TikTok, whatever it may be. Customers are moving on.

The bigger problem is that the lead doesn't close in a week, and it gets ignored. Nobody reworks it. Nobody goes and finds it. Nobody notices when matching inventory lands. That gray Silverado I was talking about earlier, it's now on the lot. I'm interested. Oh, I wanted it. Still haven't found one. No one's going back and saying, oh, Jordan was really interested a month ago. We have that vehicle now. Let's see if he's still in the market. I am. Great. Why is that lead not being worked?

That's where sales AI really comes into play. And it's ultimately built to drive more traffic to your sales force. You see in the example on the right here, qualifying. Is the blue Bronco Sport still available? Yes, here's the information. Would you like to come in for a test drive? Boom, booked. Automatically booked into your system directly through integrations. No rekeying required. Jerry's answering every lead across text, web chat, social, email. We know customers are responding or inquiring on a myriad of sources, and averaging a 36-second response time across all of those platforms is critical. Not only that, but it's maintaining context across all of your platforms. So if I text in, I call in the next day, and I message you on Instagram the following day, Podium has all that context, and it's providing it up to your salespeople. So when I walk in the door, they know that I've inquired, and I'm not being asked to repeat myself, because all that context is maintained in a single platform. And that all adds up to that 40% better converting agent than the industry average.

So Van Horn Automotive Group, a large automotive group out of the Midwest, very respected. We love our friends over at Van Horn. What does this look like? When they implemented Sales AI, they booked 607 additional test drives through AI alone across 15 rooftops in just a month. An 80% better conversion rate than the industry average after switching from Impel. Back to the cheap AI versus worthwhile AI. Just from switching vendors, maybe it cost them a little bit more than other providers on the market. They saw an 80% increase in conversion rate. That's huge for a dealership. A 14X ROI. ROI is a big one. I've been in meetings all week talking about ROI from our internal planning. ROI is huge. So yes, if you were able to go to Vegas and you're guaranteed a 14X ROI on every single bet you place at the blackjack table, we would all be there all day long. Now, of course, this isn't a guarantee. This is an anecdote from one dealership, but a 14X ROI, with 45% of test drives booked after hours, is incredible. That's a huge unlock. Think of all the test drives, all the incremental revenue coming in from a worthwhile, high-quality AI product while you're asleep. That's huge.

Lastly, 72% booked with no human interaction. This is critical. When a customer comes in, you want your best people greeting them at the door, shaking their hand, nurturing that relationship in person. What you don't want is all the leads coming in while they're busy going to the wayside. And that's what's really, really critical here. It's filling those gaps, not just while your salespeople are on the lot, but while your salespeople are at home, while they're on vacation, while they're out sick, while they're on maternity or paternity leave. And that's where a quality AI agent really makes the difference. We see a quote from Fetford. Christina said conversion is absolutely higher with Podium than our previous AI, and that's something we're super, super proud of. And they've seen the worthwhile investment there as well.

Moving into the service lane. We know that service is a huge unlock for dealerships. A lot of your revenue is coming through the fixed ops side of the business. And as markets change and consumer demand changes for the variable upside, fixed ops is that consistent, steady presence that you want to be able to maximize month in and month out. But what that looks like is not having to do more work, not adding more work to your team, but actually reducing their workload, increasing their efficiency, and allowing them to be in the service lane with customers that come in.

The service advisor has the hardest job in the store. They've got a customer at the counter, the phone's ringing, a text waiting on an approval. They owe somebody a call from overnight. This isn't an effort thing. It's not because these people are lazy. It's not that they're not good at their jobs. It's math. There's more coming in than can be going out. And there simply aren't enough people, and hiring your way out of this is, in all likelihood, not the best solution. 30% to 50% of service calls go unanswered at the average dealership. And for a mid-sized store, that's millions of dollars. You can do the math for your own groups and your own stores. But think of how many missed ROs you have each and every year. Now think if a single point solution was able to come in, handle all those leads, book all those leads directly in your system with no rekeying required, reschedule, cancel, handle a million RO codes. Think of how incredible an unlock that would be for your service team, for your BDCs, and ultimately for your bottom line.

What does this look like? This is 24/7 coverage and more booked ROs. So as I mentioned, it's not only just booking the appointment, but it's rescheduling, it's canceling. Something comes up. You've got to pick your kid up from school. You're stuck late at work. You can't make it in. You can text or call the dealership. Jerry, our AI agent, is rescheduling that automatically. But not only that, it's writing it right into Xtime, Tekion, and CDK as well, with no rekeying required. Above and beyond that, it's mining your DMS to fill the schedules. Looking a little light on your service department schedule for the month? Operator, Jerry, can go in, mine all that DMS data, extrapolate new opportunities for your store to have those service drives, those service bays, full week in and week out. That's handling hundreds of op codes, answering real questions live, and transferring leads warm with full notes.

So maybe a customer texts in and says, hey, my check engine light came on. Jerry's not going to just be, okay, drive into the dealership. The vehicle is deemed unsafe to drive. Jerry's going to say, hey, pull over. This shouldn't be something you should be driving. Let's get a tow truck arranged. Now, it can't necessarily arrange the tow truck for you, but it's not going to be giving customers misinformation, disinformation, that's going to put them in harm's way, which is really, really cool. And it's not just booking oil changes and tire rotations. It's handling recalls. It's handling complex service issues. It's handling above and beyond just your basic services. Again, ensuring that when a customer calls in with a more complex challenge, it's able to handle that end to end with no human interaction, nine out of 10 times.

Madera Chevrolet was a really, really cool story. They had, on average, 1,100 to 1,200 service appointments a month. They lost three service advisors. The AI, Jerry, Podium's AI, was able to make up that entire gap of service appointments. So they went from six to three advisors, added on Jerry, and the service AI, the voice AI agent, made up that entire gap of service appointments without increasing headcount. That's a huge unlock from an efficiency, a revenue, and a cost perspective.

So what does this look like? Well, the workforce is centered on one customer record. So you have Operator, Sales AI, Service AI, and Voice AI all coming into AI Studio. So it's all in one easy-to-view, easy-to-work-out-of place. And not having to have 14 different tabs open with 14 different logins, you're able to see all your customer data in one unified place. From the lead, from qualifying the lead, to booking the service, booking the test drive, having the RO owned, booked, and the service work, all in context and maintaining context across all of those records. So again, if the customer leased a vehicle from you and called in to book a service appointment, that's all in one place. So when a human eventually takes that conversation on from the AI, they have all the context they need, and the customer's not having to repeat themselves.

And so what does this look like? Well, with voice AI, we know phones are the highest-intent channel. When somebody calls in, they're ready to take action. They've got five minutes on their lunch break. They're ready to book. Sitting on hold with that annoying hold music for 10 minutes isn't going to work. So why not employ the voice AI agent, which is our AI agent, as it sounds, a voice that speaks to you, that you can talk to in regular English, that works very, very well, and answers the phone? And that changes your service center's capacity dramatically.

So what have we seen from customers who use voice AI and stop letting phones just ring and ring continuously? Van Horn saw $1.5 million in booked appointments. George Kelford saw $190,000 in AI-influenced ROs in just 30 days. Madera Chevrolet saw half a million dollars recovered from lost ROs. And Van Horn, as I mentioned earlier, nearly nine in 10 calls resolved with zero escalation. That's a huge unlock, not only giving your team back hours, but also showing how worthwhile the quality investment is, to make sure that when you're employing AI agents, an army of agents across your dealership, they're driving those goals, driving that revenue, and not just simply responding to leads willy-nilly.

So what does this look like when managing the workforce? We've talked a lot about AI agents, AI products, and this all sounds great, but how do you manage it all? How do you bring it all together at the end of the day and say, okay, this is great, how do I keep it all in check and understand where it's all going? Well, that's where AI Studio comes in. And that's kind of the foundation on which all of this is built. And what we really don't see a lot of AI vendors, if any, having available to you as the end user. And what this means is you're really managing your AI just like you manage your employees. It gives you control and visibility over your AI workforce. If you see something, one of the AI responses that you don't love, you're able to go into AI Studio and, in plain, natural English, coach the AI agent to make sure it never makes that mistake again.

So essentially, every single dealership across the country is different. The way you speak is different. The way you handle customers is different. The brands are different. And this is not a one-size-fits-all solution. It's a one-size-fits-one solution with endless customization. So if you want your agents to be a little bit more pushy, to be a little bit more reserved, to ask them how their day is before they just jump right into booking an appointment, this is all stuff you can do. There are no support tickets required. You're not sending it overseas to a foreign country to hopefully make the change from the product team, the engineers, in a couple of weeks. You're able to coach AI right in Studio and have visibility over your entire workforce. And this really does translate to results.

So we look at two dealerships here. These are the same brand of dealerships, both Podium customers, both have our AI agent, Jerry, implemented in their stores. But dealership B really took it upon themselves to own AI, to own the relationship, and coach them and train them just like they would train their best employee, week in and week out. And what do we see? Well, dealership A, they implemented AI, didn't really coach it much. They saw a 2% conversion lift. Okay, we'll take that. That's a meaningful increase. But dealership B coached, was involved, managed it like an employee, and saw a 26% increase in conversion.

As far as leads managed goes, what did it look like? Dealership A, 60% of leads were AI-managed. Fine. Dealership B, 90% of leads were AI-managed. Feedback given? None. Imagine you hire a new employee and you're like, okay, off to the races you go, go have a good time, and never provided any feedback. Would you expect that employee to improve month over month, week over week, and their metrics to improve? No, because no matter how good an employee is coming onto a new team and into a new business, there's still room for improvement for all of us. And that's what dealership B did. They had weekly feedback given to the AI. They were in the inbox reading messages, understanding what was working, what wasn't, and then provided that feedback on a regular basis.

For the policies, each dealership has their own playbooks, their own policies. Dealership A kept it at the default playbooks and just said, okay, go try your best. Dealership B had their own. They input their own playbooks during onboarding, our white-glove onboarding service. They implemented and imported their own policies. And then, in plain English, they were able to customize all of those in regular time. They weren't having to code or program or get engineers involved. Any Joe Schmo, if you can talk to me, you can talk to Jerry in AI Studio and be like, hey, I don't like the way you did that. Let's change it. Jerry's going to go fix the problem, train himself, and make sure that mistake never happens again.

They tested every change before they went live in our sandbox environment. Once you implement a change, you can test and see how Jerry's going to respond, and continue to refine that before shipping that change in your own store. And who owned it? In dealership A, nobody owned it. There was no AI champion. They implemented it. It kind of sat there. But dealership B had an internal AI champion. And we're seeing this a lot more with dealerships, whether it's a chief AI officer or a marketing director or an internet director. There's one person who's owning this relationship, who's owning the product. And their job is focused on continuously improving it to drive those incredible numbers we saw on the previous slide for their store.

So AI Studio really gives you the visibility and control you need to trust your AI to self-drive. This is crazy. We're moving to the world of autonomy, self-driving cars. And for a lot of people, it's still really sketchy, because you don't have the visibility or the insight into what's driving it behind the scenes. That's where AI Studio bridges that gap. And this investment allows you to have full control over your AI and get it to a point where your AI agents, where Jerry's out working, doing his thing, and you trust it empirically to deliver on the customer experience that you would expect from your best employee on any given day.

Managing the AI like your best employee is pretty simple. You can write in plain English. You don't have to do any crazy code, crazy prompts. Just, hey, no price estimates until inspection. And that applies to every conversation from then on. You simply thumbs-down the message in Podium Studio, in the inbox, and speak to it to make that change. The agent then updates the same day. No developers, no support tickets required. You can sandbox it first, as I mentioned, but then also have analytics, which show the policy it referenced and why. So if Jerry says something, it's like when we were all in school and the teacher said, hey, show your work, show your math. I want to see how you got to this answer. In Podium Studio, Jerry does the same exact thing. It's going to show you which policy it's referencing. So you can be like, ooh, that policy actually changed. We need to go rewrite that to make sure that when it's referencing that policy next time, it's not making that same mistake.

And then the FTC wants to see that AI is actively monitored, not just switched on, with product and add-on disclosure surfacing early in the conversations instead of buried at signing. And AI Studio provides you the reporting on your AI action to make sure you are in compliance at all times. And there's not a black box, not a black hole of what AI is doing, but you're empowered to own that relationship, champion it, but also have the data and the reporting you need to make sure that you are staying above board from a legal standpoint.

So looking ahead, what does that look like? Well, where we're going is one operating system, which is really, really cool. Five systems collapsing into one customer record is really critical. Again, we've talked about, we don't want disconnected, disjointed systems, and your agents are only as good as what they can see. So bringing the systems they depend on into one place, communication, CDP, CRM, desking, and service CRM, to make sure that you can operate easier, more efficiently, more effectively, with less swirl, less headache, and fewer logins.

So this is a little bit of a demonstration of Operator, which I talked about earlier, on your screen. You can see how the person is just prompting, give me sales and service brief, appointments, hot opportunities, aged escalations, and anything blocking revenue. Operator serves that right up to you. Then you can continue to talk with it, provide coaching notes for your reps, approve trade bumps, look at incentives, draft coaching notes, send out messages to mine service data, all that stuff. And not only is Operator serving up those opportunities, but actually doing the work to drive conversion as well.

And so, as we're wrapping up here, I want to make sure we have time for questions. And I know Jim's going to hop back on in just a second. But now is the time, really, to deploy your AI workforce. Making that investment in your dealership, not just in AI, but quality, well-thought-out AI that's driving revenue for your dealerships, is critical. I'm sure all of you, or most of you, are on AI at some level. But think, why are you really on that AI? Was it because it was the cheapest option? Was it because it looked nice on a demo? Is it actually providing the results that you expected of it? When you hire a new employee, you expect them to be ramped and operating at full steam within a period of weeks, months, whatever it is. Is your AI doing the same thing for you? You need to make the changes in order for your dealership to be successful with a quality partner like us. We think we can do that together. We're in over 7,000 dealerships across the country. One in three dealerships in America use Podium, which we're super proud of and grateful for all of our customers. And with our Sales AI, Service AI, and Voice AI products, you sell seven more vehicles monthly than those who are using a single product in the suite. When you combine all those together, the revenue and the incremental results follow.

So I think we're going to move to the Q&A time. Jim, if you're going to hop back in, I believe. I know that was a lot of information, you all.

Jim Fitzpatrick: Yeah, Jordan, that was phenomenal. It really was. You brought it home just in time and did a phenomenal job. Thank you so much for that. I know there are questions. Very good questions, by the way.

Jordan Parker: Awesome.

Jim Fitzpatrick: Of course, I might remind everybody that this entire presentation will be available under our Solutions Central tab here at CBTNews.com. We'll also send out this complete video to you in your email, for those of you that have already registered for this, so that you'll have it to refer back to. And of course, you can see there on the screen all the information to get a hold of Jordan Parker. Thank you so much for a job well done.

Jordan Parker: Of course.

Jim Fitzpatrick: And then I think you're going to go through some questions.

Jordan Parker: Okay. Yes. Again, any questions, no questions off limits. You can drop it in the chat or drop it in the Q&A box, whichever is easier for y'all. I think we want to make sure, I think the chat is up and running. I think everyone should be able to type in there. No questions off limits.

First question we have: do customers know when they're interacting with AI, and does that seem to matter to them? This is a phenomenal question and one that we get a lot. And the answer is really up to you. Now, some states' policies are different. You must disclose off the top that you're interacting with an AI agent. Not all places are the same way. And that's what's really, really cool. You can customize it to exactly what you want.

What's really funny, and we see this all the time, there's a stat somewhere. It used to be over 2,000. I'm sure it's higher than that now. But there are over 2,000 Google reviews of real customers leaving reviews for Jerry, our AI agent, because they think it's a human. And they have such a pleasant experience with Jerry that we have customers all the time coming into dealerships asking for him. Hey, I'm here to buy my car, wanted to pick up my car, wanted to shake their hand, say thank you, appreciate how wonderful they were. And dealers are like, oh, he's off today, or, oh, he's an offsite employee, or, hey, he was AI. And so you can disclose as much or as little as you want. A lot of our customers don't disclose that off the bat because the quality is so good. And most end users don't realize they're chatting with AI most of the time.

As I referenced at the beginning, nearly 70% of customers are using AI in the car-buying process at some point. And so you have to think, would this person rather talk to a human in four hours, or have their issue solved right now with AI? If I have five minutes after this webinar, between grabbing lunch and my next meeting, if I need an oil change, I'd rather call, get an AI, book my service appointment right then and there, and not have to worry about it, than wait for someone to call me back. And so I think, the word escapes me, but people's willingness to interact with AI agents, AI products, has become a lot higher. And we see the results speak for themselves in dealerships. So that was a long-winded answer to your question. But ultimately, you can disclose it or not disclose it. On the whole, we do not see customers minding. Again, nearly nine out of 10 interactions with Jerry, our AI agent, go fully resolved without any escalation required. Great question.

Next question: is the onboarding process straightforward? Yes. We have an incredible team of onboarding managers that are going to walk you through, hand in hand, white-glove onboarding service in the first couple of weeks. And then you'll have a dedicated customer success manager as well, to make sure that through your entire time using Podium, you have one point of contact that you can go to. Hey, Jerry's doing something weird. I don't know how to fix it. Can you help, hop on, or come into your dealership and make sure that those issues are addressed? So onboarding is very straightforward. We can go as fast as you want. We have dealerships that we signed up last week that are willing to onboard, getting Podium up and running in their stores. Or if you want to slow-roll it and bring your team along for the journey, we can do that too. I was in some email threads today. We have a few of our CSMs going in-store in Texas to coach stores, bringing the whole team in, talking through it, one-on-one, in-person training. So it can really be as hands-on as you'd like. And ultimately, your success is our success, and vice versa. And if we're not with you the entire way, we're not doing our job. So yes, very straightforward. Obviously, there's work to do on your part, bringing in your playbooks, bringing your data, getting integrations set up. But we have an incredible team of experts to make sure that it is as seamless and frictionless as possible.

Another wonderful question. What happens when the AI gets a question it can't answer? At what point does a real person step in? Again, that's all part of the beauty of customization. So any time one of our AI agents is stumped, it's going to immediately escalate to a human in the flow that you have landed on. Whether that's on the phone, transferring it to a person, one of your representatives, or in text, transferring it to a person, or if the customer is like, representative, human, whatever. The AI is never going to step in and speak on behalf of a human when not prompted. So if the AI can't answer a question, it'll revert to a human, let them know, hey, I'm going to get this answer for you, I don't know. And then a human will be in touch and pick up that conversation whenever available. So that's really, really cool.

And yeah, again, at what point does a real person step in? Whenever you want. So if you want it to just take that initial touch, if you're at a luxury dealership where you want that human-to-human, one-to-one contact off the bat, and you just want Jerry responding instantly to the leads and then immediately connecting them with a human, it can do that. If you want it to manage the conversation end to end, 24/7, you can do just that. I believe Van Horn, the dealership I used as an example earlier, just uses AI after hours. So during the day, it is human-to-human, one-to-one interaction. Then after hours is when Jerry kicks in. It can really be as hands-on or hands-off as you'd like, depending on your store, the goals of your store, your brand, et cetera, et cetera. Excellent question.

Any more questions? We've got time. Jim, any questions from you? I know you were in this world.

Jim Fitzpatrick: Thorough presentation. I think it was phenomenal. I think this is obviously something that is very impressive for the dealers that were watching. Certainly, I have the comments that I saw.

Jordan Parker: Awesome. We appreciate it. We're going to be at a couple of different things this month. We're going to be at NCM Client and Friends next week. So if you're going, let us know. We'd love to chat with you. I'm going to be there. My colleague Misty, who wasn't able to make it today, is going to be there. Our VP of Automotive, Ross Tinkham, is going to be keynoting on the main stage. And then we'll also be at Digital Dealer later in the month. So some really incredible opportunities. Come chat with us. We can demo you the product, show you how it can work for your store, much more in depth than I can show on a webinar. But if you're going to be at any of those events, either now or through the fall, we'll be at NADA, of course. We'd love to see you and love to hang out, get to know you and your businesses a little bit better.

Jim Fitzpatrick: Thanks, Jordan.

Jordan Parker: Absolutely.

Jim Fitzpatrick: Anything else before we wrap?

Jordan Parker: Nope.

Jim Fitzpatrick: Great job.

Jordan Parker: Oh, I had one more question. Sorry. One came in last minute. Ron asked, what is the breakdown for pricing? That's an excellent question. There is a myriad of factors. Number of ROs, number of vehicles on the lot. We're in program with a lot of OEMs. So for FordDirect, there's actually a FordDirect pricing incentive right now that's running this month. So if you have a Ford store, you could take advantage of that. So if you shoot me an email, jordan.parker at podium.com, I'll put that in the chat for you. I can get you in touch with someone who can get you pricing for your store, or you can reach out to one of us and we'll be happy to do that as well. So I can't give you exact pricing, because it depends heavily on your dealership. But we'd love to get you in touch with someone who can get you the right answer.

Jim Fitzpatrick: Fantastic.

Jordan Parker: Well, Jim, CBT, thank you so much for your time. We really, really appreciate it. Appreciate you having us, and we look forward to doing this again very soon.

Jim Fitzpatrick: Yes, thank you so much. Great job. And for those of you, just a reminder, this complete presentation will be available under the Solutions Central icon on the CBT News homepage. So check it out. Otherwise, Jordan, thank you so much. Great job.

Jordan Parker: Of course. Take care. Talk to you soon.

Jim Fitzpatrick: Thanks. Bye.