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What Comes After Reputation Management with Cuyler Owens · What's Working in Auto

• Jake Hughes: This is what's working in auto. I'm Jake Hughes, Director of Marketing at Wide Well. Recently, we launched Customer Clarity, a new product from Widewell. So I sat down with CEO Kyler Owens to hear some of the behind the scenes of that product and its development. Here are the three things you're going to take away from today's episode. One, what changes when you connect your review content to your DMS? Two, How dealers are using the index to see what sits behind a competitor's five star rating, and three, why Kyler thinks an open-ended review can teach you a whole lot more than a very structured survey can. Let's get into the show. We've been working at this for the product's been in development for a year, the last year. And I've been working on the data part of this for three years now as we've been building out the database. what's your experience been during the product development phase of this, Kyler? Cuyler Owens: Yeah, so joining about a year ago, and seeing and understanding the opportunity in front of us, I think great company built on best in class reputation management, but there's more work to be done. And so what was awesome and starting and something that our entire team has been doing is really asking customers what they wish they had, asking customers what kind of information that they're trying to glean out of the data that they're getting from reviews and from online data points that they're pulling together. So I think it's been awesome to be able to build with our customers and be able to have discussions with folks that are trying to constantly improve their business and understand their customers more effectively. And so that's been a really great part of it. Lots of great discussions, lots of great discovery, lots of great insights from our customers to get us to the right spot where we felt comfortable launching a product that's actually Jake Hughes: So do want to get into your backstory a little bit in a minute here. But before we do that, I'm curious, just as simple as you can, what is customer clarity? Why do why do dealers need it today? Cuyler Owens: Yeah, so Customer clarity is a step beyond reputation management. Reputation management has largely been how do I get as many reviews as possible? How do I engage as many customers as possible for them to leave feedback, largely so that the dealership looks good in search, that customers are finding positive activities and things that are going on within that experience. And I think customer clarity takes it a step further, which is appropriate, which is analyzing all that information, taking the great information that's coming from all those signals and really discerning what are the things that customers are asking for, finding trends, finding opportunities, and really defining down to the employee level what a dealership can do better and what they're doing well. And I think the expansion beyond that is because of the way we've built customer clarity, it allows us to see everything that's happening at every dealership all of the time. And finds those nuggets of improvement that are sitting with your competition, those nuggets of improvement that are sitting with folks that are really doing a good job. And so customer clarity largely is like operationalizing this great customer feedback into a way that you could build a better business off of it. Rather than looking good, you're actually doing better with customer clarity. Jake Hughes: So it's your opinion that this product starts to impact more of the business? It's impacting more departments. Cuyler Owens: Yes. Yes. Yeah. So it's you know, reputation management has lived inside the marketing department. It's a don't wanna call it a vanity exercise 'cause a lot of dealerships do a good job of trying to read all of them and ascertain what's going on. But moving it into fixed ops, variable ops, F and I at the GM's desk so that they can understand everything that that customer experience is, every single touch point you have with the customer and improve it along the way, is that big difference, right? So it's not looking good, it's actually fixing operations and listening to your customers and applying that to your decision process. Jake Hughes: So Widewheel has long been in the automotive industry, but we've also worked outside of automotive as well. Under your leadership, we've shifted our focus entirely into automotive. Tell us a little bit more about your automotive career for those who are less familiar with you and the company and kind of walk us through it quickly. Cuyler Owens: Yeah. Yeah, it is it is I'll try to do it as quickly as I can. There are several stops along the way. So my my first job out of college, I was actually embedded at a Mazda location, in Austin, Texas. running a enterprise desk embedded directly into the service drive. And so that gave me a lot of appreciation for how hard people are working to the dealership, what the day-to-day looks like. I saw every single aspect of that customer experience. And, you know, when I moved out and into more of a technology role, working at at Dell and some other large technology companies, I still had an appreciation for what that looks like. And so fast forward to you know, what I guess 15 years later, I jumped in and jumped at the opportunity to manage and create dealerware out of the silver car platform, which was eventually acquired by Audi. but dealerware was built to improve the courtesy vehicle courtesy fleet management at dealerships. And so started that from nothing. It was sort of taking the technology that was running Silvercar, which is an airport. Poor car rental business and improving that, building it a bespoke product just for dealers to help them operate their fleets. and by the time I left, we were in about 4,000 dealerships. and it was extremely successful. But that sort of really stoked my passion for the automotive business once again. And so spent six years there building it into what it was. still going today, and it's a great product. I left there with a board member that was on silver car to take the CRO role at Trust Radius. And Trust Radius is the other side of this coin, which is B2B software reviews. So it's a bespoke review site that is built for those that are trying to buy the Cisco's, the IBMs, the you know, cloud flares of the world. and we would analyze some really deep, knowledgeable users and their feedback on the product and then we would help those brands use that to sell, to improve their business, to take feedback, to generate leads. and so did that for about three years until they were sold. And that timing was pretty perfect for me to join Wide Whale and take the helm. And so when you have a a rich background in the hands-on day-to-day operation on a service drive, building software and working with the largest companies in the space at Dealerware. and then really, really cutting my teeth on the review space and customer sentiment analysis. that sort of was a great, you know, sort of custom built role was Wide Wheel and taking the taking the helm. So, the one piece of my business, history that really ties in is I have always built businesses based on customer feedback and customer sentiment. the fastest way to build a business is to make your customers really happy and take care of them, listen to them and apply what you're learning. And so that ethos really dials into what we're doing with customer clarity and what we're doing at Widewell. Jake Hughes: So you came in last summer and we kind of had this, it was the beginning of this next phase of Wide Whale, which we are bringing to market this week right now. Really excited to to show the world customer clarity and it's a defining moment for Wide Whale. for for me personally, I've been at Wide Whale for seven years and kind of seen the whole evolution of the business. And we started out with review response managed services and then got into technology and We've been working on ways to collect automotive retail customer feedback across the Cuyler Owens: Mm-hmm. Jake Hughes: whole industry and start to make sense of it and learn what that is, what how it could be valuable t for dealers. And today this week is is the the product that we're bringing to market to make that real. which I'm personally very excited about. We've been working hard on this for a long time. I wanna zoom out as much as Cuyler Owens: Mm-hmm. Jake Hughes: we can here, Kyler, and get your your take. We both believe that reputation management is still valuable, but there's more out there and and new and different ways to use this information that dealers can find value in. we're defining this as customer intelligence is sort of the next phase of this feedback. So if we zoom out here, where does reputation management fit today? And then what's the total scope of the opportunity if you look maybe ten, five, ten I'll make it five, five, ten years ahead down the market, kinda where's your head out with this? Cuyler Owens: Yeah, so I think reputation management is largely what I would consider for most of the operating dealers table stakes. This is something that everybody should be doing. with the way search has really adjusted, having a strong online presence, having recency, and having a lot of content that's available for the, you know, answer engines and and AI to search, but also just from an SEO perspective, having a presence where people can find what you're about, what your customers say about you, what they think about you is imperative. never been more important and AEO itself has been driving So I think reputation management will always have a place in the industry. And I think you have to do a good job of starting that conversation with your customers and engaging Jake Hughes: Mm-hmm. Cuyler Owens: in that conversation with your customers. And we've seen that. I don't think that's a shift. What I think changes with customer clarity and customer intelligence as a broader category is now decisions need to be made with that data. So before it was look how great we are, we're taking care of our customers. We got that five-star review. We've got happy customers. maybe you have the the top 10% that are really reading all of that content and getting into it. Now, especially with AI, our ability to take that information across the entire industry and synthesize recommendations for who needs to adjust, how they need to adjust, and what the customer expectation is. I think for a long time, decisions have been made in this industry. With two things in mind, and I think there's a need for a third. the first is everything that's coming out of the DMS, all of the information that's coming through, what is the you know, average RO dollar amount, what's the upsell amount, what's your conversion rate, all of the numbers, all of the data, the operational data that's coming in, that is driving decisions. And never met any GM or principal that's not looking and in the numbers all the time to make sure that they're optimizing everything at the It can. The other aspect where that comes in is like the staff. so your team is going to tell you what they think you should do. We're reacting as frontline employees to what the team needs and how we can be successful in that feedback is always going to be critical. But what's been missing is that voice of the customer in that decision. And so getting into a place where there is truly discernible data and information that's highlighting the trends and also a comparative analysis of Of everybody else you're competing with, that has not existed. And I feel like that is a critical input. Any decision that you're making around customer facing activity should use that information. You should have that at the ready. You should be talking about it every week and every meeting. And that's how you understand your customer more effectively and meet them where they are. What I think when you look over the next five, 10 years, and we're already seeing some of it where you have this demographic shift that's happening, right? You have some of the older bio. Buyers that are aging out, and you have younger buyers that are coming in. And let's be honest, the way that those people grew up, the way that they have learned to consume products, the way that they have learned to shop, the way that they have learned to engage with brands is so different. And so this is your doorstep. What you find online, what your reputation management tells you is exactly what they're going to think and exactly how they're going to behave. And I think that only heightens over the next several. Years, right? Technology is going to improve, visibility is going to improve, but also the consumer that's buying now does not want, in most cases, to talk to a brand. They don't want to talk to anybody. They want to find this information themselves. They want to understand what other customers are talking about and thinking about. And so you're only going to get feedback on these forums. You're only going to get that really direct feedback by really intently listening to your customers and adjusting as you need to. and that's how I think the business changes. And there's some Great proof points of that that are have sort of been out there. Think about the online car buying experience, you think about the pickup and delivery requests that are coming, you think about mobile service, these are all things that are popping in based on customer sentiment. was reading an article earlier about you know Carvana selling cars for significantly more because people will pay more to stay out of what they fear is the traditional dealership experience. And I think that type of of feedback that type of information is fuel for the fire that you need to understand what your customers want early and often and you need to adjust to those needs. Jake Hughes: I do so you so you touched on AI earlier on and Cuyler Owens: Mm-hmm. Jake Hughes: I think that's an important one to double down on. I'm seeing this in our business and the way that that we kind of work these days as it's evolved with AI and I think this applies to the automotive industry as well and is an aspect of AI that's not talked as much about in auto retail is the ability to understand large swaths of information. quickly with at a relative you know a manageable cost. I think it's accessible. It's much Cuyler Owens: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Jake Hughes: more accessible than it has been. And that's prevented the industry from using all this information that's been available to them through customer feedback tools that have existed for a long time, but I think the ability to normalize it, standardize it, analyze it all, and compare it against the entire industry is what we've been able to unlock with AI and customer clarity that I think is unique to this time. And I Cuyler Owens: Mm-hmm. Jake Hughes: do think we're gonna look back five years down the road and that sort of behavior will become much more standard, much more table stakes as you as you called it, in the way that reputation has been a s become a standard practice that dealers need to execute on just to stay competitive within their market. The ability to use all this data to inform your business is going to become more and more standardized, but I do think it's a competitive advantage right now. Cuyler Owens: Yeah, I would agree. And I I think that, you know, we talked a little bit about focusing just on the automotive vertical and why that's so important. Jake Hughes: Uh-huh. Cuyler Owens: and for us the there's so many details, there's so many nuances in this industry. It's a very unique industry, it's awesome. But the industry itself has a lot of non-standard practices that you need to understand. There's a lot of data sets and data sources. DMS doesn't exist in other places. that's for dealership management. And so understanding Jake Hughes: Mm-hmm. Cuyler Owens: the ecosystem, understanding the partnerships, understanding the way that our customer operates, I feel like is critical. when you think about the pervasive distribution of AI across everything right now. Context wins. Context and understanding of an industry. Context and understanding of the customer, the very specific customer is critical. And I think the reason, I know the reason that we have decided to focus just on this industry is because I firmly believe that that's what it takes to understand the customer and deliver the value that's out there. I think when you start to dial into 20 different vertical Or 20 different industries, you lose that context of an absolute expertise and understanding of that customer, that process, that transaction. And automotive's different. And so that's why I think it's so important that, you know, would I love to run a company that oversees 20 different markets and our TAM explodes and we have so much more potential? Certainly. But If we were to ever do that, we would do it right and we would make sure that we understand our customer first. And that's what's really critical here with automotive. there's so many nuances, there's so many differences that us leaning in, us being at every conference, us understanding exactly what those customers need means we need to be focused. And so that's really what we've done here with customer clarity. It is focused on the automotive customer. Jake Hughes: It is, so let's let's get into the product. That's a great segue. I wanna highlight three things. We're gonna go through each of them. We're gonna go through connection to the DMS data, which I think is an interesting foundational element of the product, staff performance and competitive intelligence. So those are three major ideas that we've put into the product that are specific to automotive and early users have confirmed are very valuable and we're gonna go through each of them. So we've connected DMS data to customer feedback data and that's unlocked some very unique possibilities for us. So what does that unlock for us right now, Kyler? Cuyler Owens: Yeah, so the DMS data, which is the operational data I was talking about before, holds all of the information about every transaction that's happening in a dealership. And what's important about that is when you tie this review content directly to that DMS data, what's interesting is it used to be that you would wait for somebody's name to be referenced in a review to understand who was there. By tying the DMS data with the review data, we're able to take the metadata and really understand which transaction this was and go from a 7% hit rate to upwards of 50 plus percent of the transactions that were actually tying. Directly back to a review. And so what that allows you to do is identify the team members associated, identify Jake Hughes: Mm-hmm. Cuyler Owens: the process, identify the technology used, identify the preferences, their ultimate transaction, right? So when you start to correlate all of the information, the operational data with this sentiment, it allows you to understand a lot more about what's going on. And that DMS data allows us to be able to, you know, I know we're talking about some of the additional. functions, but tie it to a direct staff member so that you can coach them in real time using the voice of the customer and directly line that into what they're doing. It allows you to understand macro trends like, hey, my happy customers spend $170 more per RO than those that are not, right? So the correlation of one point of communication or one point of you know wait time communication, those are things that you can add actively manage and see that there's a direct correlation between customer sentiment and their happiness and direct business results. And that's really what we're trying to do is make sure that you understand how you can optimize everything that's happening in a dealership to make sure your customer gets the best experience. And that in turn ties with it revenue. And so that's really what we're we're working to tie in. And the DMS tie-in with the the review allows us to do that. Jake Hughes: a major part of the development under the hood was what we call the attribution model, how we connect Cuyler Owens: Mm-hmm. Jake Hughes: review content to ROs. And we've increased the amount of connections by about seven times compared to what it was before. And for each one of those ROs, typically there's a range of two to six people associated with each one. So now we have a situation where each review and the sentiment and the details within it can be attributed to frontline staff and those that are not directly interacting with customers and there's more coaching Cuyler Owens: Right. Jake Hughes: opportunities. I think a key challenge that dealers face is you need enough data to consistently act on to improve the business. And if you're not generating and creating enough touch points, then you start to struggle to have the impact that you want to see. And through Wide Well and our core reputation offerings plus this attribution model. We're going from the average dealership in the US is generating about twelve reviews a month. Cuyler Owens: Mm-hmm. Jake Hughes: We're able to help clients generate forty-four reviews on average. Can be much more for many of them. And then for now for each of those reviews, more and more people are being associated with each one. So you go from a handful of coaching conversations to, you know, thirty, fifty, one hundred potential opportunities to train your staff. And I think you can get a lot more specific and take advantage of those opportunities to train the team. Cuyler Owens: Completely agree. And I and I think the the other aspect when you start looking at that is This industry is heavy with consultants, coaches, a lot of third party folks that are coming in, focus groups, and literally this is the largest focus group that you could possibly engage, right? When you start talking about the numbers that you were talking about, Jake, where over Jake Hughes: Mm-hmm. Cuyler Owens: five hundred reviews a year that we're able to capture and push in. And that every single one of them has nuggets of information that we can push back and give feedback. You can tread that information, you can understand what's going on. And that feedback is absolutely fantastic. So it's like a free focus group that your customers are gifting you. And so analyzing that data and using it to its the maximum amount that you can, I think is a far better way than third-party consultants coming in or other information that you're pulling in to interpret what your customers are saying and help the dealership improve along those lines. Jake Hughes: It's a it's like a continuous focus group that that's always there giving you trending data and that you're able to operationalize on an ongoing basis very efficiently. so there's no setup, there's no waiting for the report to be done. It's just in your inbox, in your dashboard every single week. And that's great. Cuyler Owens: It's an easier way to operate. Jake Hughes: Mm-hmm. So that's what we built customer clarity for. Another big part of it is the opportunities provided with the Widewell Index, which we'll define in a moment, and competitive intelligence. So three years ago we started to analyze the industry, take public data, make sense of it, identify what the common trends are, what customers are talking about. We've been producing this research for a number of years through a report series called The Voice of the Customer. That content is now the foundation of customer clarity within the competitive intelligence tool. So we have we call it the Wide Wheel Index. When we say the Wide Wheel Index, we mean this database of over twenty million reviews from across all franchise dealers in the US, which we can do a number of interesting things with. So Benchmarking, benchmarking in small markets, which is a key detail that our customers have expressed interest in. We're able to help dealers define what normal performance is within their city, within their state, against other mass market brands, whatever is their real comparison set. So the the Cuyler Owens: Mm-hmm. Jake Hughes: index unlocks that and then we've packaged that up within what we're calling competitive intelligence. in a number of unique ways. So how are we doing that, Kyler? Cuyler Owens: Yeah. So the from a competitive intelligence perspective, this was the When I when I joined Widewell, this is the thing that got me so excited, is this information is imperative for understanding how you get better, understanding your competitive set, understanding where you sit versus the OEM, et cetera. And so in taking all of the information, every review that comes through and doing the analysis that we walk through, it allows you to to sort of understand who's beating you in certain aspects of what you're doing, what they're doing, and their customers talk very specifically. about what they're doing to create these results. you also are seeing where you're ahead of the curve and maybe your operational processes are are benefiting you. And with the DMS tie in that correlation of of what that looks like from a revenue perspective certainly ties in. But you know when you think about the competitive benchmark, there's a lot of places where you're going to look. It's either locally, right, in a small geographic area, what are the w the motor mile that I'm in, how am I competing against everybody else? Every one of these other stores up to a national level, which is like, hey, I'm a BMW dealer and I want to understand how I'm competing against other BMW dealers of the same size. where do I sit in my market? Where do I sit in my region? Where do I sit nationally? and that's all really important information when you think about that. the learning potential of seeing who's doing a great job, which is information that has been previously pretty much impossible to get. You can see high ratings, but that doesn't. Necessarily capture the what is happening. It's the results, the output, it's that five stars. But what's behind that is really what's important. And that's what we're capturing and allowing people to really readily go in and examine what everybody else is doing to try to hone their game and improve, or make sure that the processes that are in place are fully differentiated so that you're winning all that business. That's an important aspect of it. And so what's been awesome is the reveal of showing the map of the product and watching the aha moment with a lot of our customers that say, Wow, I can literally go in and look just down this road or this location or in this area in a five mile area around my dealership and understand how everybody's doing. That's been a great aha moment and and a lot of our pilot dealers have really, really enjoyed that and use that a lot. I was on a call with one of our our dealer groups that we're working with and she hadn't seen customer clarity yet, the demo of it. The the immediate outcome of the call was let's set up time next week and we'll walk you through it. But she was saying, Man, I gotta go in and I grab all this information, I try to synthesize it using AI, and I have to go pull these reviews. From so many different places and try to piece it together. And she was saying, I don't know exactly what I want, but it needs to be easier for me to do a market analysis. It needs to be easier for me to go through these processes. And I I sort of started getting this huge grin on my face. And I was like, I think we have exactly what you're asking for. And this is the exact information that you're pushing out into the marketplace. So it's been fantastic. The the use cases that have started to come up with Our pilot dealers of how they're using that information and what they really care about. It's all different. Every dealership is different. but the ability to really go out and scan and understand the marketplace is a huge differentiator. Jake Hughes: So if if a dealer's listening that is already attempting to do some of this competitive analysis, sort of do it yourself using some Cuyler Owens: Mm-hmm. Jake Hughes: off the shelf AI tools, what is the value that customer clarity is bringing for that person that's already attempting to do this solo? Cuyler Owens: Yeah. Yeah. So one is very high fidelity analysis. of this, right? So we're gonna do it every second of every day. It's gonna be real time data that you will have and that information will be available for you. The second is you know, you don't have to continue to recreate that and continue doing those things. You don't have to, you know, process that, bring it back. And then I would say our tags and our analysis of that data allows you to create trends much faster and easier, right? So that is proprietary for us that we've built these tags Jake Hughes: Mm-hmm. Cuyler Owens: and we've built this analysis. And so you can understand where you're winning and where you're losing. And because we've benchmarked everyone using those same tags, that analysis, not just from an overall five stars, and here's a number of reviews that are coming in, but that analysis of well, where did you land on communication? Where did you land on wait times? Where did you land on knowledge? Where did you land on professionalism? To really dial into the very specific thing that you're looking for, that analysis is fantastic. And so it saves the Time of interpretation, we interpret all of that information for you, and we're benchmarking it across a huge swath of dealers so that you can grab the information and we'll we'll actually provide verbatims that support the information that we're sharing and actually make recommendations on how you can improve. So those steps of man, I've got to go find all this data. Now I have to analyze it using an off-the-shelf tool that doesn't have contextual awareness, that does hasn't created this tagging system. hasn't built a full this is automotive and I understand the nuances of it. We've tied in the DMS data so that you've got information now about how those things are going, but the benchmarking really pulls into how I specifically compare in this one component with the rest of the market. that's a full-time job. even if you're using AI, that's a full-time job. And that you know, in that description, if you have somebody that's really delivering at that level, like that is a full staff member that is doing that, maybe two, maybe three, that are pulling that information together and you'll never get the last three years of data that we're also adding to the mix, right? So super important. Jake Hughes: There's this concept in AI right now about prototyping versus production. And customer clarity Cuyler Owens: Mm-hmm. Jake Hughes: is the production version of this. We spent Cuyler Owens: Mm-hmm. Jake Hughes: about six months really firming up our data pipelines and not the most glamorous work, but I think the output is that the index is updated every single day without fail. And it's solid and robust. if you have a data lake, that works really well with customer clarity. And I think It's fairly easy to create a prototype version of this analysis, but then the maintaining it, updating it, all these ongoing production level things make it work, as you said. and so customer clarity is there to say we've done the work, we've bridged the gap, the system is consistent, the tagging system is consistent, normalized across the industry. We have a lot of historical data to reference to to give you good perspective on it and there's good amount of value provided there. Cuyler Owens: Yeah. Yeah, I would agree and and You know our engineering team as well as anybody, Jake, and it's what's interesting is and and anybody who's used AI has seen hallucinations and has seen some data that came through that was misinterpretation or and one of the things that I really appreciate about our engineering team and the reason that we have been really careful and thoughtful as we've put this product out is that we have checks and balances in place and the data that we're sharing is correct. It's authenticated, it's gone through a very rigorous process. And it isn't just the first pass. and for those of you that have done any work with AI and gone through that first pass, whether it's hallucinations or misinterpretations or things that have gone sort of the wrong way, we have trained the model and built systems so that w you know, as a customer intelligence company, the intelligence that we're generating is our product. That is the most important thing that it has to be right. And so we've put the time and energy, we've built a system and a process that allows us to feel really confident. About that data when it comes out. And that's been a four-year process at this point for us to put all those things together and make sure that it's right. And the team has a high level of confidence that the data that we're pulling together has been double, triple, quadruple checked, and then we're running it through the right processes to make sure that this is the actual data and this is the actual assessments that are coming through. And that's an important distinction. You can get some bad data every so often and make decisions off of bad data. Certainly anybody that's done. On a quick clod search and try to figure something out and we're like, wait, that data's wrong or it was misinterpreted or this data was four and a half years old or five years old and that's what it's basing Jake Hughes: Mm-hmm. Cuyler Owens: its information on. we have checks and ballasts of place to make sure that this data is accurate and worthy of sitting in your Monday morning meetings and running your business off of it. that is not something we take lightly. Jake Hughes: We spent so w when tagging reviews, we we look at twenty five different aspects of operations, aspects of customer experience. So let's sit take communication for one. We we developed the system more or less from scratch, and so it took us two years to figure out what normal is and what's the best way to measure that. So knowing how often communication comes up in your reviews in a vacuum is sort of useful. It's okay if you can trend it over time. Knowing Cuyler Owens: Mm-hmm. Jake Hughes: how much communication comes up in your reviews versus the ten stores around you that all sell the same makes, so you can identify if you're ahead or behind, that's when you start to get that real value unlock. And it took us a long time to come up with that system, figure it out, pressure test it, but I think we're at a good spot now and it's ready for the market. Cuyler Owens: I totally agree. Very proud of what we're what we're launching. So one of the things that the opportunity that we've been given with this intelligence that we're pulling in is what a great ecosystem that we work within. And so thinking about the places where there's a need for better customer information to solve problems, right? We we always as a company think in jobs to be done. And what we found is we've started to move in this direction of customer intelligence and speak with different departments and different places in the organization is there's massive opportunities for us to make people's jobs easier. and so a few of those things as we look at it, one is that's right in front of us is training. and so our ability to identify not macro level information, but down to the employee exactly what they're doing well and what they have an opportunity to improve and feeding very customized training is a huge opportunity. There's some great training partners out there. we certainly work with Rock Ed as one of those who's offering to for sixty days free trial for any customer clarity customers, but what that does is say all right, it's not a one size fits all. It's a customized breakdown of exactly what needs to happen. We have another customer that has asked us to try to generate like an annual review coming from the voice of the customer so that every employee gets a full analysis of everything that's going on. we've had some issues with the FTC and the automotive industry coming in and trying to clean up some of the challenges, and those show up in reviews, right? So our ability to work with compliance officers and give them early warning signals, for example. Exactly what's going on. Like there's so many opportunities for us to help folks within the organization who maybe don't even realize that the voice of the customer is a great conduit for better data and better information, but that's really what we want to unlock. and so there is no staff member at a dealership. There is no staff member in an OEM that doesn't care about that customer experience. We can help them do their job more effectively with this data. And that's really what we want to unlock. So Jake, you mentioned earlier what does five years down the road, 10 years down the road look like? That is the voice of the customer and customer intelligence being used for every single decision to be made and informing every program, every process that happens because ultimately those are the people that spend the money. That's what drives the whole engine, the whole business is customer satisfaction, customer retention, and making sure that you are doing everything that your customers are asking to do to earn their business and retain their business over time. And that's really what we want. customer clarity to evolve into we still have lots of work to do. This first pass is gonna, I think, make a huge splash in the industry. I think it's gonna be a new way for people to understand how they improve and what they do. But forward looking, I think every role at the dealership, every role at an OEM, every role at a dealer group is gonna need this information. It's gonna be like critical data that they're running their business off of because it's that third entrance of this type of information directly into the decision process. And that's the way great companies are built. Take your customer and put them in the center of everything. Jake Hughes: For those that manage larger group enterprise level or OEM, how could customer clarity be useful to those people? Cuyler Owens: Well, I mean when you think about dealership, it's pretty obvious, right? You have how am I doing in the marketplace, how am I doing against my peers, how is my staff doing, and how can I show evidence to the staff members of what their customers are saying so that you can correct some of that behavior. I think when you look at a macro level, and we've certainly already had a lot of OEM discussions around this, there are things that programmatically, systems that are in place, vendor selections that are made that That impact that customer experience literally at every store. And so understanding there's an operator at the dealership that has a big part in what that customer experience is. But there's also partners that they work with, vendor partners, OEM partners, where they're pushing down programs or they're pushing down processes and systems, and helping to understand how those impact the customer experience when you see broad trends across the industry, when you understand what's going on, and that may be an OEM pricing strategy. where it's like, hey, we changed our pricing strategy and now there's a lot of concern or friction with the customers around pricing integrity and people are worried about that. You may have technology vendors that make some adjustments or roll out some new technology that impacts that customer experience. Think like a chat provider or even a scheduling provider, right? Where those adjustments are UI or UXs and what customers understand, and so you're getting a lot of negative impact on that. You can analyze everything that's going on across the business by that. And you can also pick up at the dealer group level, at the OEM level, where Regional trends will actually change the perception of a customer. and so it's so fascinating when you look at the data and you really dial into the correlation between big decisions, policy changes, adjustments, and the impact on the customer experience. And again, just like I said, this should be taken into account every time you make a programmatic decision, every time you make a vendor decision, you should be looking at this data and how it impacts the way it affects. Your customer and that customer experience and learn from that. If you make one one mistake or one adjustment and things dip down a little bit and customers don't like it, don't do it again. figure out the right Jake Hughes: Mm-hmm. Cuyler Owens: way to adjust that. And reviews are fantastic for giving you really good insights about how you should approach that or how they wish you would have approached it, or maybe what preferences they're leaning toward, or where they spend their money to call those things out. So there's a lot of information that we can capture. And I think the macro views are just as fascinating as the dealership level views. And that's, you know, we've been putting reports out quarter after quarter and they're very well received and it's fantastic data. But I think when you start applying questions to this data set and trying to figure things out, that's where the the gold really sits, is how you can learn from mistakes, make better decisions, learn from your competitors who have made different decisions and try to apply those. Jake Hughes: If you were to describe let's take a spectrum here between reputation management and survey programs as they exist today, where does customer clarity fall within that? Does it fall within that? How is it different? Give people some perspective based on what exists today. Cuyler Owens: Yeah, so I think reviews are an open-ended question. What did you think of your experience? That is an open-ended question. I think surveys, you're leading a customer down the path that you want them to answer. And so surveys very much are focused on what you as a brand or you as a dealership or you as a dealer group are trying to understand about that experience. And it is curated and it is a little bit biased, right? Because a lot of times that request is delivered either by an individual who's telling you that this really matters to them from a compensation perspective or that they're spiffed on it and you are tying a human. into that. I think with the review, you get the honest answers of people that are literally just talking to other consumers. Here's what to expect, here's what I liked, here's what I didn't like, here's what they could have done better. Here's was another experience in another dealership and this was substandard to that or that was better than that. It's completely open-ended. And so I think that has been the reason that review data hasn't been used in the past is because that it has been, up until recently, really hard to analyze. And, you know, it's it's like hurting cats to get the right data and the right sentiment out of it. That is no longer the case. Now this information can be categorized, it can be tagged, it can be pulled together, and that's what we've done. And I think surveys certainly hold their place of setting a brand standard, ensuring that brand standard is happening and making sure that that happens. I think the the lines are blurred a little bit from where they have been in the past where you couldn't get the information that you were looking for out of free text and out of general sentiment, but you can now. And so I think sort of up for grabs on how that should be analyzed. I personally believe that reviews give better actionable data and insight for dealerships to improve what they're doing. If you do both as a OEM brand and you have surveys and you have these reviews and you're sort of mixing them together, I think that's interesting. But the reality is that the review data we have found and we have seen to have much more clarity on ways that dealers can improve than going through a formulaic breakdown that's like always the same question, always breaks everything down, and maybe doesn't give the insight that you would potentially get if you just let somebody say, This is what I thought of. Jake Hughes: Exactly. Whenever I'm trying to write something for marketing for copywriting, usually the best nuggets come from interviews with potential customers. Because they say Cuyler Owens: Uh-huh. Jake Hughes: things in a way that they actually talk and that would resonate with them. And I think it's the same thing with customers. They'll say details within a review that were not guided by some specific survey question that'll get you insight into a specific strength or weakness that might surprise you. Cuyler Owens: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Que agree. And and there's always things that pop up that you're not expecting, right? And that's that's the benefit of the forum is that, you know, I was on a call the other day and I pointed out that cleanliness of the dealership, they were like way behind the benchmark and the GM was like, I can't believe that. That blows my mind. But that's feedback that you're never gonna really see unless you're looking for it. And even reading through the hundreds of reviews that they had, it would have been really Jake Hughes: Kyler Owens, thanks for joining me today. if you're interested in customer clarity, go to widewell dot com, you know, browse around, There's pricing available there as well. So connect with us, schedule a demo. We'd be excited to show you. Thanks for joining me, Kyler. Cuyler Owens: Thanks, Jake. You're a good man. Jake Hughes: All right. See ya everybody.