Latest / What's Working in Auto / How Garber became the highest-rated dealer group in America with Robert Norcross, Marketing Director
Transcript
- Jake Hughes: This is what's working in auto, a new show from Widewell. I'm Jake Hughes, Director of Marketing at Widewell, and the host of this show. We built the Widewell Index more than 20 million customer reviews from dealers all across the country. It's how we find the operators that customers rate above everyone else, and then we invite them onto the show and have them show their work. For this episode, we ranked the 150 largest dealer groups, and Garber Automotive came out at number one. Rated of 4.9 across 70 locations. I asked their marketing director, Robert Norcross, how did they do it? So today we're going to take away three things from this episode. One, the system Garber built in-house to make reviews automatic. Two, why Robert throws out the industry average and what he tracks instead. And finally, three, the opportunity that he thinks everyone's sitting on, the service drive. Let's get into the show. So I'm here today with Robert Norcross from Garber Automotive Group. thanks for being here, Robert. Robert Norcross: Yeah, of course. Glad to be here. Thanks for having me. Jake Hughes: Can you just give everyone a little bit of a intro to who you are and what your job is and a little bit about Garber as well? Robert Norcross: Yeah, of course. So my name's Robert Norcross, obviously, but work for Garber Automotive Group. I'm the marketing director. So we're a family owned dealership group, actually founded in nineteen seven, third generation. Jake Hughes: wow. Robert Norcross: somehow a third generation and nineteen seven is our founding date, which is just absolutely wild. Jake Hughes: Yeah, how does that math work? Robert Norcross: A lot of longevity along the way for sure, but we'll get to the fourth Jake Hughes: Uh-huh. Robert Norcross: generation here soon enough. But we have 25 dealerships in six different states, new car dealerships, and then we own a used car operation called Right Way Auto Sales. That's we have about 50 of those in seven or eight states. And then we own a subprime bank as well called Gateway Financial Solutions. And then to top it off, we own a OHL hockey team called the Saginaw. spirit. So we get we get a Jake Hughes: no way. Robert Norcross: wide range of cars, banks and a hockey team, you know. Jake Hughes: Yeah, so you guys have a a large network. I asked you to be on today with us because when we looked at Widewell analyzes review and customer sentiment content from the entire automotive industry, but we also looked specifically at the top one fifty largest dealer groups. And out of the top one fifty, Garber has the highest Google rating at a group level of any of any group at four point nine. Robert Norcross: Amazing. Jake Hughes: Which I think for any business, any individual dealership to get to four point nine is an achievement, to do it across a r over seventy locations is a totally different story. So that's why we're here today. We want to hear what's kind of what's going on behind the scenes, how you maintain that performance. so congratulations first off. Robert Norcross: Yeah, when when you guys told me I was I was like, we're number one. Like, you know, I Jake Hughes: Number one. Robert Norcross: I think I I think we're good at getting we get good reviews. I think we're good at it, you know. I think we give a good a Jake Hughes: Mm-hmm. Robert Norcross: great customer experience. But when you hear number one, you're like, I wasn't thinking it was gonna be like, you know, that good. but but honestly, I think the biggest thing that I think about is like I think it's it is the culture of Garber. Like I think I think if I could summarize the culture in general, it's like, okay, but what's next is such a garbage. way to look at everything. So even if we thought we were pretty good, right? we we still are like, okay, but how could we get better? How can we get better? And so even like Jake Hughes: Mm-hmm. Robert Norcross: where we're at right now, I knew we got really good reviews. I didn't know we were number one. But even hearing number one, it's funny 'cause like I'm still working on a bunch of things that are like, okay, but how could we get more reviews this way? How are we are we quick enough on the negatives when we get So like I I think like the culture around it is just always trying to be better. So I think it makes sense where we landed, you know. Jake Hughes: I want to dig into two different parts of this because I think the the execution strategy that you oversee to get reviews and manage those is part of it. And then also the operational strategy. So let's just start with the straightforward stuff. For the review strategy, what what are kind of the blocking, tackling of how you approach it? What has worked so far and then where do you think there's opportunity to improve? Robert Norcross: So About eight years ago for the marketing team, we made what we call it the Garber app. But basically, it was a custom app built where the salespeople could take a delivery photo of the customer and it posts this to social media automatically and writes captions and copy Jake Hughes: Mm-hmm. Robert Norcross: automatically, all that stuff. So post it to Facebook. And then it also sends a review request to the customer. And we did those two things because we were like, okay, delivery photos, very valuable. And this was before AI and stuff, so like building an And stuff was a pain compared to now. Jake Hughes: Yeah. Robert Norcross: but the other part was request reviews because the customer experience to post a review is a nightmare. Like, okay, where do I go? Do I go on like Google Maps? Do I go, do I Google your dealership? Like, how do I get there? And we're like, we just need to give them a straight link. And you know, Google used to not even br provide straight links, so you had to kind of figure out a way to do it. So those two things we were trying to like, how can we make this as easy as possible for a salesperson in the moment to get those things. So quick link to the customer, leave that review. and it hopefully it happens in the moment while they're you know finishing selling the car. So from that standpoint, we did those things and then because we were doing it inside of this app, we were tracking it. So we would actually rate all the dealerships against each other, like here's how many sales you made, here's how many reviews came in, here's your percentage, you know, all those kind of things. So stack them against each other. Dealerships love rankings. So from a basic sense, we were just like Like, okay, how can it be easy for the customer to leave a review? How can it be easy for the salesperson to request it without explaining a million things in the process? Jake Hughes: I I am curious to dig into the internal operations, like how how are you distributing this to your teams with the rankings? How often are you updating the teams on that? Are they able to go check their ranking themselves? Kind of what's the behind the scenes of that? Robert Norcross: So so within the app they can look at it and see how many each person sent. Like here's how many delivery photos they took, here's how many review requests they sent by salesperson. So a manager could look at that. But but then you gotta put it in front of them. So we send once per week, we send like a ranking scoreboard of overall, like here's how the dealerships are doing on delivery photos, here's how they're doing on Jake Hughes: Mm-hmm. Robert Norcross: reviews. And then recently we kind of split it out even further. So we can kind of break that out even more because we want service to get its own you know special love. so once a week and then we do a like a monthly one as well that kind of wraps up how'd you do on the whole month. and and and we as a marketing team present to our stores every single month, like here, you know, a whole digital marketing meeting that is Jake Hughes: Okay. Robert Norcross: part of the conversation. Here's how you rank amongst everybody and how you did. So Jake Hughes: I know Garber does a a number of things internally. How large is the marketing team there in comparison to the rest of the headcount of the business? Robert Norcross: Yeah, so we we're headquartered in Saginaw, Michigan. Garber Management Group is our headquarters and there's about a hundred and fifty people here. The marketing team is thirteen people. but yeah, we our goal is to do everything in-house. So we have developer website support people, a four-person ad team to run, Facebook, Google, all that kind of stuff in-house. Writer, Jake Hughes: Mm-hmm. Robert Norcross: video creator, SEO people, right. Reputation management person, of course. we have Jake Hughes: Mm-hmm. Robert Norcross: to use wide whale, but you gotta have somebody that kinda owns that whole process. so yeah, thirteen people on the marketing team. Jake Hughes: Just f for the audience, how do you use Wide Wheel i within that setup? 'Cause it's a little bit unique. Robert Norcross: Yeah, for sure. So mostly it's to just stay on top of the reviews that are coming in, respond to those reviews, but the negatives are are the biggest thing. Know immediately when we're getting a a negative review and trying to go handle that situation. so it's mostly review response. Jake Hughes: Mm. And you guys are in our platform, but your team is is managing the customer experience, right? Robert Norcross: Correct, yep. Yep. Jake Hughes: So y we talked earlier about things that you're trying to improve. You always you have this culture of continuous improvement. Robert Norcross: Yeah. Jake Hughes: I would say the the sort of the digital landscape is changing, AI is front and center, AEO is is becoming a real thing that everyone needs to get on top of and win. Robert Norcross: Yeah. Jake Hughes: what's your team focused on from a marketing perspective and and then How do you think that's impacting customer experience? Robert Norcross: I mean I think like any dealer group we're probably focused in a lot of areas, you know, like content on the websites and development coding, all that kind of stuff. Like we're using all this stuff in a lot of ways, but but what's what's interesting is like getting having a good customer experience and getting a good review is never gonna have more impact than right now because you know, ChatGPT and all of them are pulling in not only the Google reviews but from a million sources. So like you have to be looking good everywhere and you know for the dealer groups that if you struggle with getting good reviews I feel like the gap is gonna widen so much because how are you going like AI is already telling people before you even get the shot that you shouldn't do business there or you should pick here. So like your reputation matters way more than ever. You know it kind of reminds me in a weird way like like your Google profile mattered so much and then started to like outrank or out impact some of your general SEO that you were doing. And I'm like now Jake Hughes: Mm-hmm. Robert Norcross: like in a way like all the reviews you have everywhere is playing such a role in your ranking in AI. So it's like weirdly feels similar in some way. Jake Hughes: I I as a marketer myself I think it is similar in a in a lot of ways. I've heard the comparisons to the early SEO gold rush that Robert Norcross: Yeah. Jake Hughes: it does as marketers it's sometimes hard or that's not always true that you can get a wedge because things become commoditized in a way. SEO for a long time has been to a degree commoditized, but AEO is totally kind of opening up this new gold rush of we need to get there and we need to be first now because we have an opportunity, even if you're not the biggest player, to create your wedge. Robert Norcross: It's it's a little wild west and and just like Google used to not tell you that much about like how you can impact, I feel like it's the same way with Jake Hughes: Mm-hmm. Robert Norcross: AI right now. Like, how can we impact it? Well it's you know, a little more vague, you know, right now. Jake Hughes: Have you made any observations of the impact that the content within the review itself is making with AI? I know there's a lot of I think in our world, the reputation world historically, it's a lot of focus on ratings, which is sort of the overarching qualification of quality. But I think there's Robert Norcross: Yeah. Jake Hughes: a lot of nuance of what's being said in the reviews as well. Robert Norcross: Yeah. it it definitely matters. Like it it does matter a lot in general, I think. Like I think that impacts how you r rank like how how you rank in the map pack and all that stuff. I think it really does. But But with AI, I think maybe even more so because it's it's kind of it's even if it finds something different every time, it's trying to pick out things that it's finding, you know, like even Jake Hughes: Mm-hmm. Robert Norcross: during like this FTC stuff with like hidden fees and all that kind of stuff. If you were to like say, should I buy a car from this dealership, it's going to look at the website disclaimers, it's gonna look at some social posts that it finds or review responses in this case. If somebody has called out something it's obviously scanning through so much content to find those things. That's why I say, like you kinda gotta be good everywhere now and have and your reputation's gonna matter more than ever before, you know? Jake Hughes: Have you guys made any moves related to the FTC feedback? Like are you looking through your content to try to get on top of that? What's your approach been? Robert Norcross: We weren't too worried about that change. I know that sounds funny. Like we were actually happy about it because we Jake Hughes: Mm. Robert Norcross: haven't really done any kind of fees historically. So we were like, well, for our for some of our competition that we felt like, you know, don't love how they do some of their pricing. We felt like, okay, Jake Hughes: Right. Robert Norcross: now it's an even playing field, you know. Jake Hughes: Mm-hmm. Robert Norcross: I think for everybody they added their dock fee into the line item, but I think the biggest thing is the things that you didn't see that the customer never saw that were just fees that were never, you know, in existence on the website that they all eliminated. So for us, I was like, it's kind of nice because we didn't have to do a huge amount of change as a business, you know. Jake Hughes: Mm-hmm. It definitely feels like this patch is good for some, rough for others, and it'll level the playing field for all 'cause everyone's gonna kinda get on get on the same page. But it once there's no competitive advantage to not disclosing that info, then kinda goes back to normal, I guess. Robert Norcross: Hon honestly s dealerships will get better reviews now because Jake Hughes: Mm-hmm. Robert Norcross: that's one less thing and that's a big thing. That was probably a big thing that people were complaining about, if they were leaving negative reviews. So, you know, to me it eliminates something and probably makes, you know, the whole business rise up a little bit in in review response, I would think. Jake Hughes: We did we looked into this f over the last two years and found that seventy two percent of dealers across the US have at least one review flagged with something within the realm of FTC fair pricing. So it's Robert Norcross: Yeah. Jake Hughes: like it's very widespread. There's about forty thousand cases a year of negative reviews with that we, you know, verified and said, Yes, this is legitimately related to one of the FTC topics. So it Robert Norcross: So there you go. Forty thousand. Jake Hughes: It forty thousand. I mean, The industry does between four to five million reviews a year, Robert Norcross: Mm-hmm. Jake Hughes: so it's it's not, you know, a dominant thing, but it's not nothing. It's definitely Robert Norcross: How many Jake Hughes: there. Robert Norcross: out of the four or five million though, how many are negative reviews? Jake Hughes: It is around nine to ten percent. So actually I think that's what's not talked about much within auto is ninety percent of reviews are positive and the vast majority of the experiences are very, very good. But so Robert Norcross: Yeah, that's Jake Hughes: that leaves us with about four hundred thousand negative reviews a year, ten percent of those mention FTC. Robert Norcross: Well and and you know, I thought when you guys said like, you know, you guys are number one or whatever, I was It was awesome, but I was surprised because there are a lot of great dealer groups. Like there are you Jake Hughes: Mm-hmm. Robert Norcross: know, and a lot of are still family owned operations and have similar stories to to Garber. and and, you know, we know a lot of these people and they we know they're creating a an incredible experience for customers too. So like when you think about it like that, you know, you're like, there's a lot of competition for being a great dealer group. So it makes it more flattering, you know. Jake Hughes: My interpretation of your rating is consistency for a decade plus. Like as long as Google's been part of the process, your group's performance has been very consistent. To maintain that level it it's it's you know, it's like a to get closer and closer to five becomes harder and harder. So you've just stayed there. Robert Norcross: Yeah. Yeah. Jake Hughes: What are the key parts of your operation that are driving great customer experience? Let's start with that. What what are kind of the some of the fundamentals for you guys? Robert Norcross: People. Jake Hughes: People? Robert Norcross: People. I mean I you know, not to sound like a manager Jake Hughes: Ha. Robert Norcross: but but it always comes down to people. It really does. And and you know Dick Garber has spent his whole career, I mean, talking about people and creating a customer experience so that they come back and do business again. Like it's our it's literally our mission statement. And Jake Hughes: Mm-hmm. Robert Norcross: he preaches it all the time. We have a new way of saying it right now. Create a lifetime customer. and and you know, I think when you have an organization that people want to come and work for, they they they take pride in that. That's a person that's probably gonna take a lot more pride in. how they take care of the customer, doing it the right way, doing the right thing. They know that this isn't just a one sale. They've heard the message. Create a lifetime customer. All right. So Jake Hughes: Mm-hmm. Robert Norcross: we know the we know the mission, you know, and I and I hope that, you know, I think seeing four point nine across the board as an average shows that it has, you know, spread to all of the people that work in the organization that that is the expectation that we're trying to create for the customer. I hope Jake Hughes: Mm-hmm. Robert Norcross: I I think I think we are doing that and but again, funny enough, like we're talking about it and saying, okay, but how can we do better? You know? What can what more can we do to you know make the customer experience even better? Because I think it's easy to look at this number and say, you know, hey, you know, we're number one, everything looks good. No, there's definitely some experiences that the customers have had that could have been better, even if they didn't say it could have been better. Objectively looking at it, let's try to make it as good as you know, the best possible experience we can. So I think there's still room to grow, but honestly, it does always come down to the people. If you don't have good people, are they gonna give a great one of a kind experience to a customer? No. So it's always gonna come down to, you know, the people that you have in the organization and the belief in the organization that it's unique, you know. Jake Hughes: Or there's some tactical things that Garber does to create a culture where it obviously permeates throughout of people sticking around, people kinda creating that good experience that you can help our audience learn from. Robert Norcross: I mean, yeah, I think I think just in the culture, I mean you you know, I think anywhere you would work, a lot of people would say, you know, they th the old joke is throw the pizza party, you know what I mean? Jake Hughes: Yeah. Robert Norcross: but no, I think I think Garber is very like rewarding of your efforts and time. But but also s also not not trying to be such a typical car dealership, like just drive to get the X amount of sales or whatever. Like I think we would value the culture and the people more than just the sales at the end of the day. And and and I think we show that in a in a lot of ways. but yeah, I think there's definitely just a big focus on the people, you know. as opposed to just trying to make sure the end sale is done all the time. Jake Hughes: Is there more of a focus or kind of a measurement focus on retention versus net new sales? Is that weighted Robert Norcross: Yeah. Jake Hughes: a little bit heavier? Robert Norcross: Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I and I and it was funny, we were in a meeting recently and we were kinda like, this is better than the industry average. And that was said at the end of it when we were talking retention as a way to say like we're actually like kind of beating this up saying we need to do better. It's kinda back to that whole thing I've been saying, it's like we still we're not looking at it like what's the industry average, you know what I mean? because to us it's like we think about it like, how is it possible that that many people could come through the door and not come back to do business with us? Is that really the the environment we're creating for the customer. And and so then you start you start ignoring that what's the industry average question because you're like, I just care about those customers coming through and is that the experience, you know? Are we creating the best experience? Jake Hughes: Yeah, that it's interesting for me. I think in our reporting we think about the industry average as a starting point, but it's especially for the top performers, it's not good enough. So how do you think about us creating a comparison set or a standard that is aspirational for your team that's actually gonna drive to a better outcome and not just continue to say, Yeah, okay, we're better than than normal? Robert Norcross: Yeah, I well, I think you just throw it out. I Jake Hughes: Mm-hmm. Robert Norcross: I think that and honestly, the it's f I know we're talking about these this benchmark being like number one in reviews and stuff, but If it's like you know if the process is broken or what you need to do to make it better outside of whatever the industry norm is, you know what I mean? So foc to me it's like focus on that. Like just focus on your own dealership, so to speak, and Jake Hughes: Mm-hmm. Robert Norcross: and figure out what's best for that. Because I think that takes you a lot further than you'll ever get if you're just trying to say, Okay, retention is, you know, seventy per this is just made up. Attention retention is seventy percent Industry wide, we're at 73 or we need to get to 73. It's like, is that really does the number help you be better? Probably not, because you need new processes and new things to if you're gonna change like the environment, right? So you gotta think bigger than that, I think. Jake Hughes: Right, right. You c you're going under the hood and looking getting into operations. So Robert Norcross: Yeah, exactly. Jake Hughes: what are some things that your dealerships have been doing recently to drive more attention? Kind of building on top of that strong core base of staff performance essentially. Within the Robert Norcross: I think it's Jake Hughes: last year, let's say, six months to a year, something more recent. Robert Norcross: So I think I think utilizing things like the C D P has been huge. I know that's Jake Hughes: Mm-hmm. Robert Norcross: such a hot topic in automotive right now, but but for me it's huge because, you know, I you know, I think as a marketer a lot of the easy solutions is well advertise, right? But But that's not great because like really think about like say the industry average internet lead performance is like you sell ten percent of your leads, right? So that means ninety percent of the people you marketed to at some point that month did not buy a car. So what are we doing with all those people? And and that's not even like to speak to all of the customers that we've already done business with. What has happened to them over this time? And, you know, I think Training your people to have great relationships and maintain those relationships is huge for retention. But we do have some tools nowadays that are much better in the automotive industry than in the past of trying to stay in front of those people, either with AI Jake Hughes: Mm-hmm. Robert Norcross: or just tools that nudge your people to make sure that you're staying in front of a lot of those people. and you know, defection reports and things like that. But but I think for you know, and I know this is a little more of a marketing stance. that I'm taking on what we would do, you know, for retention. But Jake Hughes: Mm-hmm. Robert Norcross: but but I think some of it, to be honest, I think some of it got a little ignored, you know, and and I'm just talking industry wide, like service is a great example. I think it just it gets kind of swept under the rug and marketing and, you know, all these things don't give as much attention to these things. But that would probably solve a lot of the retention problem because we need to stay in front of those people, you know. Jake Hughes: Have there been some new marketing tactics you've applied to service recently? Robert Norcross: we're working on one right now. which to me is just a solve of a basic industry wide problem. but We don't have a great way to track like a marketing success to the service departments. Why? Because the service schedulers absolutely are atrocious. The coupon pages that we're offering people something, you can't even take an action on it or anything like that. So what is that experience? So like really think about that. If we market sir service, like somebody clicks an ad for service somewhere, what are they doing? Like so they see sev you know Seven 79 bucks on an oil change. What do they how do they take advantage of that? They go to a coupon page, there's no CTA, nothing you can actually do. They go to the scheduler page, they can schedule it, but wait, is this oil change that I just scheduled? Is that the 79 bucks? I don't know. You know what I mean? It's such a Jake Hughes: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Robert Norcross: like terrible customer experience with it. And what we found is we would run ads for service, right? Of course, but like we're putting them through the same experience that we know. Know is terrible. so we did some testing and made our own coupon page essentially where you can just take advantage of that yourself. like say, hey, I want this offer, you submit some information. This isn't rocket science, this is just producing leads for the service department, right? But for the customer, they are clicking on some sort of ad somewhere, 7999 oil change. They get to the website, pops up, says, Here's that 7999 oil change. Just give us your information. You can get this offer. They are being contacted by somebody that says, Hey, saw you wanted that 79 oil change. Let's get you set up. I got Wednesday, I got Thursday. What time can you come in? that's a pretty complete customer journey and great experience. And for some reason, to me, just like should have been developed a long time ago. Maybe that's a, you know, website provider thing that could be done. but something very simple that creates a better customer experience. Hopefully that does produce more retention because our own current customers are going to be able to take advantage of these things in a more simple way. We'll see. We'll see. Jake Hughes: I love it. So is is that out in the market yet or are you still working on that? Robert Norcross: No, not yet. We're we're about done with it, but it was it was pretty impressive. We did some test runs with it at a couple of our dealerships and it it it actually the reason we're moving quicker that than we were on it is it produced more leads than we were expecting. And for the service departments, that never happens. You know, like they're not used to that. They're like, Did you get more s did you get more service scheduler schedules? You know, like now Jake Hughes: Mm-hmm. Robert Norcross: I got actually something I can put my finger on and say hey we had this many leads here's the here's the total ROs here's the value of that versus how much we spent on the ad and and honestly some of them won't even have ads ran to them you know it'll just be a spot on the site that people can passively get these offers and specials so we'll see how it goes but it produced a lot more than we were expecting and honestly like where the market's going tougher sales market need more success and service I Jake Hughes: Do you find that more of your time and thinking is being shifted into the service part of the business to promoting that and growing that? Or is it it's still split? Robert Norcross: well, I think personally I I've service is like this hard thing to figure out into market and I don't think we've we or any dealer group has had a lot of success with it, so I've been trying to personally just figure it out 'cause I like service and I think there's something to crack there. Like Nine, ten years ago we made like body shop specific websites. Like we decided to not have any content on the actual dealership website because we needed to compete with all the body shops out there, so we made separate websites, right? And it drove a ton of traffic and we were able to pick up a lot of leads that way. so in some weird way, like that was my first project at Garber ten years ago. Jake Hughes: Is that strategy still viable today? Robert Norcross: So it it doesn't work like as well as it did then, but I think it still has Jake Hughes: Mm-hmm. Robert Norcross: a lot of there's a lot of meat on that because it totally pulls it out and you can market it in a separate way. You can rank and Google a little better I you know, obviously that by pulling it out. Maybe it helps a little bit having less direct association with the dealership. You know, there's a there's a lot of factors there. But But it was sorta like my first project i in at Garber and it started pr to produce a lot of leads for the body shop departments. And so in a way, now doing this for the service, I kinda feel like hopefully I can kinda produce a similar thing that benefits fixed ops again in some other way. so we're gonna we're gonna find out. Jake Hughes: Awesome. This this makes me think of going back to an earlier statement you made about you building your own apps internally. Robert Norcross: Yeah. Jake Hughes: And the commentary I'm hearing around the industry related to AI is whether or not you like AI B D C and it and it is it good or bad? And that's like kind of the extent of the conversation. And and Robert Norcross: Yeah. Yeah. Jake Hughes: you're smiling 'cause you you know it's somewhat true. And I think In the broader AI conversation, there's a lot of well, you can just build your own software that suits your business specifically. So has Garber been doing any anything along those lines so far? Robert Norcross: Yeah, I mean I think I think it we so we have two developers and so I th I think with AI coming into the full I thought I was ahead on AI, I was the first one percent of chat GPT users, but the developer on my team was the first point one percent. So I'm like he's way ahead. Jake Hughes: Okay. Robert Norcross: we're always like a can we do it ourselves. type of group, you know, like that's the whole reason we have that our marketing team is like let's try to do as much in house as possible. I think it opened the door a ton, like, let's build this on our own t in hyper speed. But but I even for us who wants to do that, I still think there's like this like okay, we didn't just jump and like let's cancel these things and let's do this on our own, this, that, and the other thing. Because somewhat it's like it still has to be like a viable thing. Like just 'cause you can doesn't mean you should. Like And you know, it's like in a very dumb comparison, it's like everybody doing the AI flyers, you know what I mean? We're we've been joking about this on the marketing team a ton. Like suddenly they're everybody can make a flyer and they all look exactly the same and they're horrible and half inaccurate and all that, but you see a lot of like salespeople at car dealerships doing it, you know, to try to jump ahead. But Jake Hughes: Mm-hmm. Robert Norcross: My point being is they're terrible, they don't match your brand, they're not really what you're intending to do. And you with AI you can do that in a million different ways if you go too fast. So it's like, are you still like solving a business problem? 'Cause like that to me has to be the first like answer, you know? Like like for us it's like, okay, that the the coupon problem or whatever. Like we know that's a problem and no who is working on that. No website vendor in the dealership space is creating anything new on that because I get it, it's boring and everybody does the same thing, so it's just getting ignored. But it's like we can solve an actual problem and produce some new business from it. Okay, so that's practical. All right, let's run with that. We know we can develop it because of AI. So solve a problem is still the thing, even if you have like you Jake Hughes: Well it gets at it's a communication problem that you're solving. And like a customer experience through communication problem. And we when we look at reviews, communication continues to be the number one complaint area, which I know it's a broad bucket, but it's i consistent in both sales and service and it's getting steadily a little bit more present over Robert Norcross: Yeah. Jake Hughes: the last few years. So creating that tight, you know, step one, two, three We don't lose any information, we the person knows that they're gonna get the deal. It's a clean digital experience. It doesn't surprise me that it works. It does surprise me a little bit that you've had to like build it yourself and and it's new and novel, but I'm excited Robert Norcross: Ha ha. Jake Hughes: to to see how it turns out for you. Robert Norcross: Yeah, for sure. I think it'll be good. Jake Hughes: all right, so we'll we'll start to wrap this up here. What are you excited about that we haven't talked about yet? Robert Norcross: Hmm. I you know, I think what will be interesting is like how AI is going to be sort of and and with Widewell, how is it going to be like woven into all of the reviews, like all our review content, right? Because you Jake Hughes: Mm-hmm. Robert Norcross: have you guys have provided like here's what people are saying, here's the sentiment on your positive, your negative, all this kind of stuff. But I think it will almo it will get even smarter, right? Like, I think where it goes is like, Hey, by the way This month, customers are saying, you know, in bulk this. And it might be positive, it might be negative, but like more alert based, I think Jake Hughes: Mm-hmm. Robert Norcross: where we're I think that is just a strength of AI. Whether it's reviews or anything else, but like put more putting more information in front of you to make you more aware in real time. I I could totally see. I'm sure Wide Whale's been thinking about that. How to implement that. Jake Hughes: Mm-hmm. Robert Norcross: but I mean to me that would be great. I mean, I know we're sitting here saying four point nine, but I'm like, there's definitely things that are happening. There's so many reviews, there's thousands of reviews happening. And then also, you know, a lot the four point nine is about sales. Well, service is a huge missing piece to me because all of the competitors, Midas, Bell Tire, all the big chains that we're competing with in service that customers believe are cheaper than car dealerships and all that kind of stuff. competing with them, we're probably not getting, you know, we're not getting a tenth of the reviews probably that we're getting on the sales side because sales side is so built out and we're all dealerships think about it that way. But like service, so there's a lot of opportunity there. Well s somebody like a wide whale can tell us like you know in service this is this is the things that are happening you know and split it off from sales and all that kind of stuff. So I think we and we need that, right? Because AI is Is AI is having such a huge impact, like your reputation is having such a huge AI impact that you gotta know almost more now, you know, and try to Jake Hughes: Mm-hmm. Robert Norcross: try to get in front of some things. Because to your point earlier, it's reading all these reviews. Is there anything out there that could kill me right now? You know what mean? Jake Hughes: Mm-hmm. Robert Norcross: so Yeah, I think the AI integration to some of the things we already use, whether that's a vendor or that's in-house, I mean, you know, I hate to be that guy, but those that is the the more exciting things happening right now in the industry, you know. Jake Hughes: yeah. We are working on that. products are coming out at the Robert Norcross: There you go. Jake Hughes: end of the summer. I really like in auto the AI use case slightly more on the internal operational side of like how do we take this massive amount of information that you can't read through realistically by yourself and make sense of it. Robert Norcross: Yeah. Yeah. Jake Hughes: AI is really good at that and that's what we're trying to put together for dealers. and then we also have this what we call the index, the like layer of national review content, all dealers to to give you a baseline so that I think what the unlock might be for you is the industry average isn't good enough for us. So let's let's dig in here, use AI to figure out what's the top ten percent doing. How do we stack up against the top ten percent and and find those little edge cases more quickly? Robert Norcross: You know what would be really interesting, like we're sitting here saying four point nine, but like AI could look through three and four star reviews and find those things that are like you know, it it was g it was fine, but Jake Hughes: Mm-hmm. Robert Norcross: this one thing happened. There's there's plenty of those reviews out there and I think like that's like that's like weirdly Jake Hughes: We see a lot of those. Yeah. Robert Norcross: like probably where your problem areas are because that person almost they they are complaining, like in a way that's negative in my you know what I mean? Like we have something Jake Hughes: Mm-hmm. Robert Norcross: to solve there. So like to me it's like all those things, like you could never find that, but AI is gonna be able to help find that, you know. Jake Hughes: We do we see there's there's a phenomenon in the US particularly where it's very binary. Either you give five stars or one star. Like you know this, I'm sure you've taken an Uber before and Robert Norcross: That's fine. Yeah. Yep. Jake Hughes: it it's like it it better have been a terrible experience if you're gonna give anything less than a five because then then you're taking a shot across the bow. And I I think Robert Norcross: Yeah. Jake Hughes: people have a tendency to you know, overall the experience was good, give a five, but there's more nuance in. in Robert Norcross: Yeah. Jake Hughes: in the free text there because usually it's one thing, you know, hey, they fixed my car, but I had to screenshot this coupon and and bring it to the front desk and barter with them to make sure that they accepted the coupon and I really Robert Norcross: Yeah, exactly, exactly. Jake Hughes: wish this was a little bit more streamlined. Robert Norcross: And for us, amazing data to have because then it's like I can reach out to that store and say, Hey, what are we doing about this coupon situation? How can we make the you know, like let's just it's always comes down to a process probably with a bad customer experience, I would think, you know? So how can we fix those? AI is definitely gonna get us there the rest of the way on some of these things that just you could never pick up as a human. I mean, there's just too much data, you know. Jake Hughes: Awesome. Well, thanks for talking. are you gonna be at any events that people can connect with you at for the rest of the year? Kind of what's your schedule looking like? Anyway, people can find you. LinkedIn. Robert Norcross: LinkedIn. LinkedIn. Yeah. That's the easiest one. Jake Hughes: Awesome. It was great to talk to you today. Thank you so much. Robert Norcross: Yeah, thank you, Jake. Jake Hughes: all