For anyone unfamiliar, User Experience (UX) is a term referring to the interaction that a user has with a website, application or product. The goal of UX design is to create an easy, efficient and smooth experience for the user. A happy user is a returning user and customer retention has never been more critical.

But there is also a ‘dark side’ of UX design. There is a practice of creating a pattern or practice that will cause a deceitful effect intended to trick the user into doing something they don't want to do, or not even tell the user that they are engaged in an action. UX is supposed to be about people, and the users, and about creating delight in exchange for loyalty. That is the exact opposite of dark UX.

The most famous example of a dark UX pattern was used by LinkedIn and resulted in them being fined $13 million dollars as part of a class action lawsuit in 2015. As part of the LinkedIn sign-up process they asked users to give them access to their email account, on the premise that it would improve your career network. The malice came into play as they really wanted the access to be able to secretly send invitation emails to everyone on your contact list, falsely claiming to be sent by a user rather than by LinkedIn.

These are some common types of dark UX patterns so you can be sure you are not inadvertently creating a bad user experience or developing a reputation for using deceptive lead generating or handling processes.

Trick Questions

While filling in a form a user responds to a question that tricks them into giving an answer they didn't intend. When looked at quickly the question may appear to ask one thing, but when read carefully it asks something else.

Sneak into Basket

A user attempts to purchase something, but somewhere in the purchasing journey the site sneaks an additional item into their basket, often through the use of an opt-out radio button or checkbox on a prior page.

Privacy Zuckering

Users are tricked into publicly sharing more information about themselves than they really intended to. Named for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Price Comparison Prevention

The retailer makes it hard to compare the price of an item with another, so a user has a harder time making an informed decision. In example, there are a lot of price-comparison applications that have been created. However, most of them require a user to scan a barcode of the product using the application. In order to avoid losing a sale to a competitor, many retailers have their own bar codes for most products and stick THEIR barcode over the manufacturer’s thus preventing the price-comparison applications from identifying the product.

Hidden Costs

A user arrives at the last step of a checkout process, only to discover some unexpected charges have appeared, e.g. delivery fees or taxes.

Confirmshaming

The act of guilting the user into opting into something. The option to decline is worded in such a way as to literally shame the user into compliance.

Disguised Ads

Adverts that are disguised as other kinds of content or navigation, in order to get a user to click on them.

Earlier in the month, I wrote a blog that mentioned how consumers noticed and objected to the way businesses were using technology to grow business over using it to provide better service. This leeriness came about in the 60s and 70s as retail began adopting technology. Dark UX is that fear come to life 50 years later.

How a dealership uses their website and the tools they choose to offer for customers need to stay focused on those needs. If a widget is being used simply as a lead generation tool and not giving the customer anything in return, then the dealership might as well not have it at all. The dissatisfaction of that experience is not going to fall onto the widget at the end of the day it always falls on the dealer. The tool won’t lose a customer for life.

The dealership who uses “tricks” to lure in customers rather than providing the information that they were looking for or creating customer journey’s filled with friction and information collection without fulfilling promises made will only end with an upset customer who will probably end up choosing a different dealership.

Anyone not responsible for vehicle inventory management may think it an easy concept but it is a stressful and labor-intensive endeavor normally bestowed upon one person: The Used Car Manager. This individual has an encyclopedias worth of knowledge in their heads about profit/loss margins of every vehicle on the lot - a figure that can change at the drop of a hat in the automotive market. They are in and out of meetings with dealership management, they are going to and from auctions, they are dealing with wholesalers, they are evaluating trade vehicles and adjusting inventory prices on an almost constant basis.

There is no other dealer employee whose time is more in demand. As a result, these individuals need to spend nearly every waking hour working. Most of them wish there were a way to clone themselves or literally add hours to the day. Technology may be able to do those things. In a way.

The most time-intensive and least profitable use of time for the Used Car Manager is evaluating potential customer trades as 75% of these evaluations don't end up in a sale. Using technology that can empower other people to be able to perform the initial vehicle appraisal would free up the Used Car Manager to perform more brain heavy tasks. At the point that a deal is solid, then the Used Car Manager can get involved in order to finalize a vehicle’s value with the Sales Managers. The other 20, 30 or 50 (or more) customers that the sales managers cannot come to an agreement within the box, are going to walk anyways if the trade evaluation isn’t even close.

Consumers, salespeople and business development personnel have been using technology to gather vehicle details and prepare estimates, but it all has to be finalized by the used car manager. This may alleviate some of the pressure, but it would be better if other dealership staff could get a more consistent market value prior to the Used Car Manager being involved regardless of whether the customer is at home or at the dealership. Technology that includes market data would be ideal.

Consumers usually use dated technology to get estimates on their trades before they even contact a dealership. These standard Q and A style tools are all void of detail and salespeople and managers are put in an awkward position where they have to fight against a phantom value from a tool that could just as easily been one that the customer went to on their own or the one that is on the dealership’s website. Designing an experience where the consumer can be more involved with the evaluation process would be the ultimate ‘next level’ for these evaluation tools.

Something that allows salespeople or BDC agents to process trades before the visit would be beneficial as well because it would design an experience that would help the salesperson build better customer relationships and provide a more seamless and timelier sales experience in combination with the Sales Managers or Used Car Managers. In addition, it avoids one of the biggest things that creates dissention in your organization – the Used Car Manager versus the Sales Manager. Take this for an example that I’m sure everyone reading this can relate to: the Used Car Manager manages to “steal” a used car – whether that be from auction or a trade-in – and is just waiting for that car to be sold with a great front end. The Sales Manager certainly also wants that huge front-end gross but sometimes they will deep discount the used car because there is a large front end just to sell a new car. Maybe it’s because the new car is an aged unit, maybe it is because there is a stair step program or maybe it is the OEM pushing certain models. The bottom line is that the Sales Managers control the sales “deal” for the most part while the Used Car Manager’s success in the dealer and General Manager’s eyes is how much gross profit is made from used car inventory on the front-end of the deal. If everyone in sales in the dealership is on the same page, using the same inspection process and judging a vehicle’s condition and value, much of that contention will dissipate. Not all, mind you, but it will improve. And don’t even get me started on the two of them against the Service Department with recon charges. That would be a whole separate blog.

Your Used Car Manager could be doing much more important things for the dealership that result in profit. It seems like such a waste of time and talent to have all the dealership’s vehicle inspections fall onto their plate. Technology has always helped Used Car Managers, but the latest digital revolution has shed light on how much more that could be done for them. A combination of consistent reporting (including images) with fluctuating market data and a human’s opinion can make a dealership more efficient in not only remote appraisals by a customer but also with salespeople starting the process using technology. One of the many things that salespeople are taught is to do a walkaround on the trade and “devalue” it – here’s a ding. There’s a scratch, etc. This can create an adversarial position between the customer and the salesperson when they go into the box to work numbers back and forth with the “man behind the one-way window and lose trust in the salesperson.

The used car manager should be spending their time making the dealership money. That is not something they can do if they are single handedly responsible for finalizing trade offers and evaluations. In addition, oftentimes sales managers are promoted because they were great salespeople – not because they were great at knowing how to buy cars – simply relying on data in industry powerhouse trade-evaluation told which can have values that vary by thousands of dollars.

The COVID-19 Pandemic has accentuated the need for automation across most service and manufacturing industries and the automotive industry is no different. There are countless tedious repetitive, task laden manual processes within automotive sales and service that greatly benefit from automation and its best application is to make business processes easier for humans involved, essentially making human employees more efficient. Here are 3 benefits of an automated workflow.

Eliminating Obstacles

There can be a lot of factors that can get in the way of profitability in the many manual workflows in play at a dealership. Your best salesperson may not be the best email composer, so using a template believe it or not is a form of automation. It can free that salesperson from the tedium of writing an engaging email to a customer so they can focus on what they ARE good at. This is an example of how automation can eliminate sales obstacles. Naturally if you reduce the number of tedious tasks one person is responsible for you in turn reduce opportunities for human error.

If your Used Car Manager is the only person able to evaluate trade vehicles they might as well have their personal mail delivered to the dealership because that is where they live now. They are locked into the building constantly shuffling papers and scrutinizing the used car market. Or, there are 2 days a week where the dealership is unable to evaluate trades which would severely limit their ability to make a sale. An automated workflow eliminates the margin of error associated with shuffling paper docs around or relying on one person for approval or finalization.

Boosting Productivity

The main reason people automate a process is to make it more efficient. A CRM allows one person to manage hundreds of contacts from one hub. Imagine if a salesperson had to look up (on paper) and manually enter an email address every time they want to email a customer as opposed to simply being able to click on the customer's name and find the words: “Email Customer”. The number of people they could communicate with would be drastically lower and so would their sales.

Customer and User Experience

Wasted time is high on consumers’ list of things they do not like about purchasing a vehicle. When a vehicle shopper uses a tool online to evaluate their trade, the language is disclaimed so much that one has to wonder what the point of it even is. If the value they are given is “an estimate”, “subject to change’ or “at the discretion of Blah, Blah and Blah Motors” why not just bring the vehicle to Blah, Blah and Blah Motors to begin with? These types of evaluation systems slow down the sale as the dealer has to back track and argue against a phantom value. How can you blame someone for not taking the word of a questionnaire style analog form over what they see with their own eyes when the vehicle is in front of them? Vehicle shoppers do exactly that. A discrepancy in a perceived value and an actual value falls on the dealer, not the application. 

Automation provides solutions for eliminating obstacles that arise from the tedium of analog process management. It boosts productivity by freeing people from repetitive tasks allowing them to exercise their natural and professional expertise and can make a sale timelier which in turn improves customer satisfaction with a brand. Offering a consistent and seamless digital to in person experience is automation’s best application in the new normal. 

The latest and greatest digital shift since COVID-19 hit has reshaped the retail landscape faster than could have been imagined. It has brought new opportunities and challenges alike. Major retailers are closing physical storefronts and investing heavily in digital platforms with very positive results. While the latest digital transformation may be sudden, the idea of creating or using digital technology to meet changing consumer needs is not a new concept.

In the 60s, technology had almost no impact on businesses or consumers. It was slowly creeping its way into people's homes. The Company was King as business had to rely on customer service and satisfaction to win customers. That lack of impact affected consumers as well because shopping was sharply limited by geography.

The 70s saw businesses using technology to focus on profitability and the ones that did began to crush the ones who did not despite the quality of customer experience. Consumers were weary of businesses using technology to draw more money from their pockets.

In the 80s technology became paramount in consumers’ homes and was changing behavior. Communication tech was booming, and people were using it to share experiences, make purchase and shopping decisions and were able to shop from a greater distance.

In the 90s, technology became more realized in retail. Consumers were no longer shackled to local businesses that were not prioritizing their needs. They also were able to shop based on price. Businesses would use the internet to make themselves more accessible but were still solely utilizing technology to grow revenue and compete.

In the early 2000s, the customer was finally crowned King. Social media allowed consumers to articulate and share experience with a wider audience. More and more people were making purchasing decisions based on a company’s reputation over price and businesses finally understood that all the most expensive digital technology and strategy would be wasted without putting a priority on customer experience and satisfaction.

We certainly thought we lived in a fully digital world 10 years ago, but this pandemic has added an entirely new dimension to the connection between customer experience and technology. Automation and digital technology have always served the need to rise to new customer expectations and challenges in retail. A big new challenge is online shoppers changing expectations. COVID-19 has drawn more customers into digital retail who may have never done so if not forced. They bring with them the same expectations they had when they were having an interpersonal experience in store, like asking a salesperson a question that pops into their head while they have a vehicle in front of them.

When consumers had the ability to see how dozens of dealers were pricing the same model vehicle, dealers had to rethink their pricing strategy in order to win business. Basic consumer facing trade evaluation tools and algorithms have existed since the mid 90s and have changed very little since. A 30-year-old digital strategy just won’t cut it at a time where there are more online customers to engage with higher expectations and greater needs. Take this for an example: the old way of trade evaluation always leads to a customer physically putting a vehicle in front of an appraiser in order to get an exact offer proving that AI alone cannot inspect vehicles with accurate results. By utilizing new technologies, however, both consumers and dealers are able to narrow down values without the customer being present. And this is just one example of how the combination of technology and humans can interact with each other in order to facilitate more accurate and efficient transactions.

Don’t be afraid of new technologies. Changes are inevitable so it is better to embrace them now and be ahead of the game then take a ‘wait and see’ attitude. By making your business more efficient, you not only save money and manpower but create a more satisfying experience for your customer.

Automation has become a key element of digital transformation.  This shift could replace nearly 70% of manual, repetitive tasks, according to a Brookings Institute Report. Automation, in fact, has been slowly transforming the way we do business for the past 50 years.

Many industries have leaned on automation to stay upright during Covid-19 shutdowns and restrictions. Banks have used it to accelerate loan processing for millions of affected businesses as well as employees who are out of work or have been furloughed. Airlines use it to manage the increase in flight cancellations and maximize revenue through calculating profitability by decreasing the amount of flights while still maintaining the customer experience and options for those who need to travel. Retailers that have been forced to convert from brick-and-mortar to digital storefronts (if only temporarily) are processing orders with automated systems. Offices went remote overnight, converting many person-to-person interactions into digital experiences. In fact, many customer service centers and agents are doing so remotely among many other examples.

While some organizations already included automation in long term business plans, COVID-19 has created more urgency and opportunity. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed virtually everything about our work and personal lives this year, and automation has been no exception to that rule. With more people working from home, retailers see the value in providing more remote access to data in real time and remote monitoring in general.

Physical store fronts have factored digital retail elements into their Reopening Plans understanding that reopening discussions can't be just about “the now”. Long term success relies on remote data access and processing as states see restrictions ease and tighten up over and over. Remote connection technologies will drive more industries into and beyond the latest digital transformation.

A reinsurer that attempted to sell policies that would insure businesses against a pandemic thus mitigating not only the businesses financial hit but also taxpayers by absorbing some of the debt that would be incurred through unemployment benefits had developed a model and algorithm over many years. Just like a consumer buys auto insurance (or any insurance), businesses also buy insurance. The fact is that a global pandemic like we are experiencing right now only happens about every 100 years. Do you know how successful they were? They didn’t sell a single policy. Because of that, businesses were forced to transform their businesses quickly to models that were hybrids of human and automation in order to simply stay in business.

The pandemic added pressure to accelerate innovation and growth and automation gave them the potential to integrate and automate workflows in order to adapt to the dynamic conditions of the new normal.

Studies report that up to half of automation projects fail and that is in part due to Automation Anxiety. People see automation as a threat much like some people felt the internet would the end of the salesperson. Perceptions are that automation are a job killer as opposed to a way to modernize the workplace. Along with tool and process changes, it's vital that an automated tool addresses that fear to drive user buy-in and adoption and what better way to do that than by including a human element in that process?

In the drive to go fast and far, businesses can lose sight of the power of the human element and some of the best AI includes human intelligence. Automation should enhance a workflow and free workers from tedious tasks, not the essential part of what makes a business human. As technology continues to level the playing field, an organization's ability to balance the impersonality of automation with the expectation of customized, personal customer experiences will be what separates winners from losers.

From sales to finance, and IT to marketing, workflow automation can liberate almost any departments from the burden of tedious manual processes. A workflow automation process begins with a clear objective and ends at process evaluation. I have already discussed the handful of ways in which dealers are already using automation so let’s take a look at how to choose a solution for a process that would clearly benefit from some degree of automation. Here’s a checklist to identify the must-haves in a workflow automation solution.

Speed

Leaders choose to automate a process to make it easier and more efficient. Speed is an obvious factor. If the solution isn't helping you get to a certain point faster, it is not worth the money.

Simplicity (for employees)

Automation is meant to make life easier, so the solution itself should be easy to use. Look for a user-friendly interface. You want something easy, that won’t require excessive training or onboarding. Your staff won’t use an overly complex system. Just think about how most salespeople use a CRM properly. They might use it for some simple things, but few take the time to learn and use all of its functions.

Simplicity (for vehicle shoppers)

Dealership staff are not the only ones who tend to not use complicated technology. Automation in sales and service processes can be scary and disconcerting for consumers as well. You need to find a solution that consumers will be able to use without getting frustrated and giving up. Nothing can drive consumers away faster than a bad automated process. And once you lose a digital customer they are lost forever.

Integration

Most cloud-based software comes with interoperability with other cloud apps. You want workflow automation solutions with API compatibility. Look for something that will fully incorporate and map into your current technology and business processes. Afterall, the point of automating a process is to improve upon an existing one. You are not looking to reinvent the wheel here so be sure the solution will work within what you already know works.

Reports and data

You can’t improve a process without reviewing it. The best workflow automation software solutions will offer reporting and data. You want the data collected to suit your integration requirements. Something consistent and relevant and be sure to ask who will own any data collected by that solution.

Device Capabilities

Workflow automation solutions in a mostly digital world must work from any location and on any device. Salespeople and BDC agents are no longer shackled to their desks. The most successful ones are on the lot taking pictures and shooting video for customers. The best solutions keep that in mind are ones that can be used by staff on the go. At the same time consumers are also on the move. If the solution is consumer-facing in some way, be sure they can use it on any device as well.

There are many options in the workflow automation solution market, especially for car dealers. No matter what your situation, you want workflow automation software that is fast, flexible for your staff to use and one that will exceed customer expectations. A solution should satisfy a current need, and not create more work in an area where you are looking to simplify.

Automotive sales and service teams are spread thin and are always running in a million directions. A good automated process keeps their involvement to a bare minimum and should keep a digital sales pipeline running smoothly and deliver higher sales faster.

Kevin Systrom, one of the co-founders of Instagram attributes the creation of the powerhouse Photo Application and social network to a particular yet simple life event. He had chosen to study in Italy his Junior year of college, and a professor had replaced the state-of-the-art modern camera he had around his neck with the iconic but ultra-simple Holga toy camera.

The Holga is one of the ‘toy cameras’ that kickstarted a lo-fi photography craze in the late 90s and early 2000s. It was designed in Hong Kong in 1981 to provide low-earning Chinese families with a cheap camera that could take snapshots in sunny weather. The Holga used 120 roll film, a format that had been standard for many cheap cameras through the 20th Century. By the time the camera came out, 35mm film was everywhere and 120 roll film virtually disappeared in China. They began to market the camera as an inexpensive novelty to Western markets as a ‘starter’ camera.

The Holga was a camera reduced to bare-bones simplicity with only the bare necessities for photo mechanisms and provided a cheap and accessible alternative for people to dip their toes into the otherwise expensive world of photography. The Holga began a new life championed by photographers and artists who appreciated its glaring limitations and drawbacks, creating images that made a virtue of overlapping frames, light leaks and severe, tunnel-vision vignetting. Photographers who used the camera were actually fond of the vignetting. The ‘classic’ Holga shot is a square format 6×6 image, with the corners reduced to deep darkness. It is a very distinctive look which may have influenced the Influencer.

As digital photography took hold in the 2000s The Holga’s influence actually flourished. The classic Holga square format shot gained a new life on cellphones. 15 years ago, cellphone photography was in its infancy – the screens on our phones were tiny and extremely low-resolution and those deficiencies helped fuel the lo-fi digital photography craze. Those light leaks, vignetting, cross-processing saturation and dreamy focus fall-off that made Holga’s photos so distinctive were easy for the little cellphone camera technology to duplicate. Naturally, once your turn every cellphone owner into a semi-professional photographer, there needs to be a place to share those photos.

Systrom graduated college in 2006 and after working for Google for a bit began developing a ‘gamified check-in app’. He noticed the low quality of the photos users had uploaded and focused on writing the code that would add filters to the app - using dial-up Internet at a bed and breakfast in Mexico. At the time, the most advanced version of the iPhone was the iPhone 3G. The camera quality was less than ideal so Systrom drew from his experience with the Holga in Italy and created filters that could make use of imperfection.

The billion-dollar photography app-turned-social-network owes some of its DNA to a cheap plastic camera that is evidenced by its iconic logo. Instagram’s bespoke filters allow a drab photo of the Hollywood sign look like an old timey postcard. They made the square photo a modern standard maximizing screen space and looking interesting at the same time and wrote code to imitate and commoditize imperfections that have inspired artists for almost 50 years.

The idea of adding a degree of automation to an analog process in order to create something delightful for users is something modern technology strives for within the vehicle inspection realm. COVID 19 may have sparked the latest digital revolution/dependency but consumer demand will keep that flame burning. Online car shoppers want tools that can combine familiar purchasing processes with digital elements that they can utilize remotely. A human intelligence-first approach to vehicle inspection provides just that. Being able to find vehicle condition discrepancies automatically shortens the time it takes to capture and inspect a vehicle, produce real-time results for consumers and dealers with the click of a button. Dealers have more consistent and accurate information in order to better evaluate a consumer’s trade-in or, for that matter, buy vehicles smarter at auction. Efficiency is key to profit but it’s also the key to reducing customer friction in the sales process, creating a better customer experience while increasing gross profits in the sale.

One of the most popular metaphors in business is how leaders are the pilots of their organizations: in the driver's seat, handling turbulence, and getting employees and customers to their destination. This is an easy metaphor to apply to automation, especially since aviation’s adoption of automation follows a similar path as it does with the automotive industry.

Wilbur Wright, flew the first aircraft in 1903 by lying on his stomach, pushing and pulling levers as the wind blew over his head. Piloting a plane has become a lot less physical since those early days thanks to automation and autopilot functions that do most of the modern pilots’ work for them. 100 years later, aviation still needs human intelligence in order to get passengers to their destination safely.

Today’s pilot’s main responsibility is the pre-flight checklist - an important yet repetitive task that includes medical and security checks, data analysis and system and fuel checks. Each step needs to be completed before take-off. The Pre-Flight Checklist is something that needs to be done by a person while operation of the plane itself is mostly automatic. The right mix of human and artificial intelligence is necessary, and people’s lives depend on it. The pressure to get automation right is huge – it’s a major investment of time, money, and energy for everyone involved.

Most airplane operations are automatic - but not all of them. Some form of automation has been used in aviation for about 90 years. If robots were able to successfully fly planes, they would be by now but even the aviation industry knows that human intelligence is best augmented by automation, not replaced by it. Would you get on a plane powered entirely by automation?

When launching an automated process each step needs to be plotted out and accounted for before allowing the automation to execute tasks. Well managed business sales and service process are much like that pre-flight checklist. Each step needs to be carefully planned and completed before launching and many sales depend on it.

In the 50s, commercial planes had five crew members in the cockpit: a flight engineer, a radio operator, a navigator and two pilots. Over the next few decades, automation and improved technology replaced the first three jobs and saved airline companies a lot of time and money.

The first step is to think about which processes could benefit most from automation such as processes that include tedious, repetitive tasks and incur expensive man hours. Automation success relies on knowing your processes inside out and anticipating each step along the way that will lead to a sale. You don’t want to end up automating an unsuccessful process that ends up driving customers away. That would be like flying a plane with the wrong fuel in the tank.

Autopilot only does what a pilot tells it to do. Figuring out what processes could benefit from automation is a big step, but implementation is even bigger and one that requires constant attention. Autopilot only kicks in once the plane is safely cruising. Intelligent automation – combining human intelligence with automation is the ‘switch’ to autopilot. Technology can handle processing large amounts of data and the execution of repetitive tasks, but automation and technology still need a human element. Your human workforce should spend their time doing things that machines just can’t do. Relationship-building.

Last year, U.S. e-commerce sales generated about $365.2 billion in revenue. With the COVID-19 pandemic resulting in changing shopping habits as nonessential businesses endure mandated closures, there is more incentive than ever to invest in growing your digital retail strategy. One innovative strategy to make your business stand out from the competition is to roll out shopstreaming.

“Shopstreaming” is an amalgamation of “shop” and “live streaming.” and is sometimes just called “live stream shopping.” Its essentially video shown online in real-time encouraging viewers to purchase what they see much like an infomercial or home shopping show – except its live.

Shopstreaming has been a fascinating trend in Asia for at least two years but has yet to be fully embraced by the U.S. Maybelline dipped its toes into shopstreaming with a Chinese video-sharing app and sold 10,000 lipsticks in two hours and Hyundai and Kia have even launched successful shopstreaming services overseas. Just as dealers have been using automation for decades without knowing it, they have also been taking advantage of Shopstreaming in a few ways.

Sales

Anyone with even a tiny bit of marketing knowledge understands that video sells. Even social media platforms place a priority on video in their feeds. Facebook algorithms dictate that videos that are longer than three minutes and offer original content will show up in more news feeds. It’s really a no-brainer as 6 out of 10 people prefer consuming online videos to watching television.

The only real downside to using video in sales is that you have to trust that the shopper will watch it and contact you after. That is where shopstreaming can take video to the next level. Shopstreaming can keep a customer fully engaged with a sales person while taking advantage of the benefits of unique video content.

In addition, shopstreaming a vehicle demo allows a salesperson to guide a consumer through the vehicle features and benefits directly through their website or mobile device just as if the customer was standing right on the lot. The salesperson doesn’t have to learn any new sales tricks or strategies in order to join in on the digital transformation. They can just “plug in” and sell as they always have. They can also use shopstreaming as a way to complete the post-sale delivery process in the event of a cautious contactless sale. Again, simply going over the delivery walkthrough as they always have. PAVE even allows this medium to be utilized in the trade and lease return processes when it comes to grounding vehicles or evaluating trade-in vehicles.

Fixed Operations

The sales department isn't the only branch of a dealership taking advantage of shopstreaming. The analog version of a service experience involves a customer dropping off a vehicle and waiting at the dealership or by a phone for a diagnosis leaving the customer to mull over their next step. This allowed many opportunities for a customer to be lost to an independent repair shop or “handy” friend or relative. Using a form of shopstreaming to go over a vehicle diagnosis can be a powerful way to allow service advisors to explain and demonstrate repairs while the customer is at home or work keeping the customer engaged with the dealership during the decision-making process. Shopstreaming can eliminate hours of email, texts and phone calls back and forth by combining the video with live communication when a service advisor is trying to get service recommendation approvals.  

The more nuanced features of digital retail such as automation and digitization may seem daunting and complex, but shopstreaming is something that major retailers and dealers have been using for quite some time already. It allows your staff to use the personal sales skills they have honed for their entire careers within a media that consumers prefer in the digital realm. Simply put, it expands your audience and allows for personalized engagement.

Maybe it’s time to start focusing on how to take more old analogue processes, exploring how to digitize them and creating a more engaging customer experience.

In my last blog I discussed how dealers have been using automation to manage internet lead processes. In this blog, I will take it one step further and explain how dealers are using an even more effective method of automation by adding a human element.

In the earliest days of digital retail, dealers struggled with the idea of having an ecommerce site altogether and it wasn't uncommon to see vehicle detail pages void of photos altogether. Dealers learned that having a site for the sake of it and filling it with boring plain text was not yielding the intended results. Dealers quickly learned that a vehicle description alone wasn't enough to captivate users.

Once dealers saw the significance of images in vehicle listings, they purchased digital cameras and would task an employee as the “vehicle photographer.” Of course, at first, they only saw the importance of photographing their pre-owned vehicles, but over time some dealers were photographing each and every vehicle they had on their lot. In the beginning, they may have taken up to 10 pictures of each vehicle, but today’s online vehicle shopper expects anywhere from 30 to 50 shots of every possible angle. Even a small dealership with 100 cars could spend days just taking the pictures alone. Never mind all the time it would take to upload all of those pictures to their website.

As dealers began to look at third-party sites to list inventory, they faced the same problem: listing a vehicle without pictures just wasn’t cutting it so those third-party sites began to require at least one (and later several) pictures in order to list vehicles at all. Dealers saw the most leads generated when they listed those vehicles on multiple sites and all of those included pictures (the more the better.) At first, many third-party listing sites only allowed a few pictures rather than the 30+ pictures the dealership had taken so many dealers reverted to taking less pictures as they felt the time taking pictures was wasted.

A major problem arose when dealers would expect a salesperson to photograph and write descriptions and spec sheets for each and every vehicle in stock and get them listed on multiple sites as that salesperson was then unavailable to sell cars. All those repetitive tasks were also taking salespeople and BDC agents away from phones and email so customer inquiries were going not responded to or took longer than acceptable to inquiring customers.

And it wasn’t always “just” the salespeople and BDC agents. I know of a large dealer group – in fact one of the largest for its make in the world, that had an executive assistant who was making $75,000 (or so) per year who spent 8 hours of her day manually FTP’ing all of the inventory details – including pricing, pictures, comments, etc. – to every site that their inventory was listed on. That’s a lot of money for a service that “could” have cost them $150 per rooftop and freed up that executive assistant to perform other tasks. With nine rooftops and over 2,000 vehicles in stock between them, the cost would have dropped from the $75,000 per year to $16,200. That’s a huge savings to accomplish the same goal.

The solution, of course, was automation.

Lot service solutions then arose that could take those photos and fire them to multiple vehicle listing sites and the dealer’s website utilizing services like HomeNet. In addition, many syndication solutions started offering custom vehicle descriptions automatically utilizing AI rather than simply providing stock vehicle features bullet points that mimicked the window sticker. This way the process of listing a vehicle with a comprehensive VDP that included pictures and descriptions would only have to be done once through a combination of human and AI and the sales and BDC staff were left to do what they do best. Sell. And the executive assistant could focus on other tasks.

This vehicle listing process cannot be entirely automated. It isn't quite legal for a drone to fly around the country taking pictures of vehicles and if it was, a person would still have to control it and open all the doors and the trunk to get all the pictures needed. You still need a person to use the camera and ensure the vehicle details are accurate and correct.

Automation processes are not limited to lead responses. Dealers have been automating repetitive tasks for decades to ensure higher efficiency and performance – both in sales, service and dealership operations. This was a simple example of not only HOW automation has already been helping dealerships keep up with workloads in customer-to-sales communications but also WHY a dealership should be investigating all of the other roadblocks or stumbling stones that prevent them from performing repetitive tasks faster with accurate results. Automation combined with human intelligence produces the greatest efficiency. One of the best examples of this combination of AI and Human Intelligence is to look at how your dealership manages its vehicle listings.