Jim Fitzpatrick: 0:04

This is Driving Solutions exclusively on CBTNews. com. Hey everyone, Jim Fitzpatrick, welcome into another edition of Driving Solutions right here at CBTNews. com. On today's show, we are joined by Chase Abbott, who's the Senior Vice President of Sales at Cox Automotive. You've seen him here before at CBT News. He shared a very interesting stat with me from cox automotive's latest research study. Despite more than nine out of ten dealers being familiar with the availability of insights on consumer behavior and activity, less than two in ten are currently using them. So this is very interesting. So, uh, why is there such a gap between awareness and action? Why are we seeing how adoption is so low in the industry right now, chase? And welcome, by the way, to the show.

Chase Abbott: 0:53

Thanks, Jim. Always a pleasure to be on CBT. Yeah, so right. The question I think there is. Why not? With the lopsided kind of statistic? I think the first question you got to ask is like is my store a bit of a laggard, or maybe a dinosaur, when it comes to tech adoption? There are some of those still out there.

Chase Abbott: 1:10

You know do we not trust the data set we're working from. You know why is that? A lot of times that's because of a previous experience that a dealer might have had a bad experience. Maybe the the insights that the tool gave didn't necessarily pan out with the customer conversation, or there was some latency involved with the data and it was not timely. Therefore, it didn't really resonate with the customer and, as you know, time kills deals right. So, as I've mentioned before, I think on the show, an irrelevant communication does more harm than irrelevant communication does good, and I definitely learned that from my time in the internet department.

Chase Abbott: 1:46

And so what I know for certain is we shouldn't turn a blind eye to these new technologies, and they can really help create great customer experiences and ultimately sell more cars, which, you know, when I was slaying an iron was kind of what it was all about.

Jim Fitzpatrick: 2:01

That's right. Those were the days right. Can you share an example of how bad data might derail a dealership? What does that look like in practice?

Chase Abbott: 2:10

Yeah. So a few examples of that we see are you know you might end up finding yourselves as kind of being tone deaf to a customer's true needs and wants and kind of create a bad customer experience. But the big ones we see are like the one I talked about just following up on the wrong car due to latency and a lot of times that comes with third party data. You know they may have submitted the lead on a sedan, but now you know that's two or three weeks old and they've switched to a small SUV. Do we know that? Do we know without talking?

Jim Fitzpatrick: 2:36

to the customer. That's right.

Chase Abbott: 2:38

Maybe they aren't responding to our communications because we're sending emails and text about the wrong vehicle.

Jim Fitzpatrick: 2:43

That's right.

Chase Abbott: 2:44

Right. The other one we see pretty often is bad ownership data, potentially limiting the chances of you know retention and servicing the vehicle. I mean true story for you. I mean even today, when I go into my local dealer, they still call me by my wife's name versus my own.

Jim Fitzpatrick: 3:01

That's been going on for a decade now and about four vehicle purchases. That's crazy.

Chase Abbott: 3:07

I've just accepted the role I go by Lauren when I go in there. I've embraced it. That's crazy, yeah. So one, I would say is the solution to all of that is to get one that can give you actionable insights. We invent solutions, use predictive insights that are derived from all the Cox Automotive mega sites, like AutoTrader, Kelly Blue Book, dealer. com that data, being first party, is usually more timely and more robust, and that can create and what it does do is create a buying signal inside of Insolution CRM to identify shoppers that are eight times more likely to buy. And I got to do a short plug on DealPulse and DealCentral, something that I work really closely with because we're kind of cutting the edge again and we're providing the industry with insights they've never really seen before.

Chase Abbott: 3:53

And what I'm talking about is with DealPulse, we're providing dealers with the lead data like they've gotten on every other car. But then we take it a step further and we provide the actual ranges on the financials from the customer's entire online journey. And when I say financials, I'm talking about down payment, monthly payment, trade and apr. You know the four square, anybody. They can really kind of help you reverse engineer car deals, hold more gross and and create a better customer experience based off of knowing you know kind of where that customer's thinking is on the high side and on the low side.

Jim Fitzpatrick: 4:24

Sure, sure, I think you've conned over some of them, but what can dealers do about data quality issues? Is there a way for dealers to regain control of their destiny while still reaping the benefits of technologies like AI and automation?

Chase Abbott: 4:39

Yeah, I would say the big one there is. Just start with the right source. Try to go comb automotive and see what data sets are out there. Find the most timely, the most complete data set that can really span across multiple sites. I mean your customers aren't just going to one site. And the other thing I would say is consider look I see this often consider what you have your tech doing versus what your people are doing and try to increase the relevancy of that.

Chase Abbott: 5:05

You know, quality, real time, kind of consolidated, boiled down, if you will, data is kind of really the foundational success for a dealership in today's, with today's customer. And at Cox you know we're real proud of what we're doing, but we have 82 million unique visitors coming across every single month with auto trader Kelly, bluebook and duocom, which are some of the biggest websites in automotive, across every single month with auto trader Kelly, look uh, kelly blue book and do itcom, which are some of the biggest websites in automotive. So the ability, the odds of us providing insights on, you know, whatever customers in your database are really really really well, well done when you look at the 82 million unique seats.

Chase Abbott: 5:40

That's a role in that into amp too, which is our automotive marketing platform. Cause, look, I learned a long time ago you want these dealers, or I want my salespeople as a dealer, to go do it. It's best if I can drench it in automation wherever possible so that we can make sure that this actually happens, and so we do flow all that data into AMP, our automotive marketing platform and big solutions as well. And that tool uses.

Chase Abbott: 6:04

If that, then this type of technology and so with that first-party data flowing into it, we can get really relevant in an automated fashion just based off of what's coming in about that customer, every single day, Sure sure.

Jim Fitzpatrick: 6:16

What about balancing technology and human expertise?

Chase Abbott: 6:21

Yeah. So I would say you have to be realistic about what your tech does best, what your people do best, and then knowing the limitations of both of those, things.

Chase Abbott: 6:31

AI that can provide you with a propensity to buy view into your customer database can really help find the best opportunities. We know that based on the shopper behavior. But we're also seeing great things with the tech side, on the human element, with the staff around predictive insights, but also tools like generative AI, which we've seen really help lighten the load for salespeople when it comes to writing relevant emails Right. As we all are using AI more and more day to day, we put that in front of the dealer body as well to help them kind of create, you know, more relevant emails at scale. And if you can get the mix right between your salespeople and then the AI powered solutions that actually can bring more customers into the store, you know that'll aid in every single interaction and you know so much so that your customers will think it's just sheer coincidence and I would tell you that it is. It's just coincidence is now powered by technology a little bit more than it used to be.

Jim Fitzpatrick: 7:25

Sure, Any closing pieces of advice to dealers who would like to start implementing more AI and insight driven technology? I mean there's there's still so much to be found out about Right In terms of AI among the dealer community.

Chase Abbott: 7:41

And so many flavors of it. Yeah Right, and so the tech game. Look, since I entered the car business which was about dating myself, 22, 23 years ago, I just made some huge leaps and we're kind of mid leap with AI right now, but you have to embrace it, you have to involve, evolve. Your customers definitely are, so I would say you know. In closing, just ask questions around your current vendor stack. What are they doing? Where are they pulling that data from?

Jim Fitzpatrick: 8:08

What's the?

Chase Abbott: 8:08

quality score. How timely is it? Are the insights panning out with the customer conversations? And then there's, like, the tools that can help with the workload AI chatbots for after hours when nobody's watching the dialer right, yeah. Gen AI to help write emails. But if I was running a store today, I would have a supreme focus on AI tools that can actually bring new customers into my store and ultimately over the curb, you know, with a new vehicle.

Chase Abbott: 8:38

And lastly, the competition. Look, it's back on the rise. Tariffs causing unrest. Customers are evolving the how on what it looks like to buy a car every year with greater speed, and I think you just don't want to be the guy or the dealer that rode in on a horse for the Formula One race.

Jim Fitzpatrick: 8:50

That's a good way to put it, and dealers right now are so focused on aligning themselves with the right technologies for their teams because every single dollar matters and it's all about efficiency moving forward in the industry right.

Chase Abbott: 9:02

Absolutely, and it definitely looks different than it did 20 years ago. I can tell you that for sure.

Jim Fitzpatrick: 9:06

That's right. That's right. Chase Abbott, Senior Vice President of Sales at Cox Automotive. Thank you so much for joining us on the show. I know our dealer community will get a lot out of your visit with us. So thanks so much.

Chase Abbott: 9:16

Absolutely, Jim. Thanks for having me.

Jim Fitzpatrick: 9:18

Thanks. Thanks for watching Driving Solutions exclusively on cbtnewscom.