Sales and service processes have been modified and fine-tuned as long as sales and services have existed. Making a product or service accessible and appealing is what drives sales. These processes include many areas where repetition comes in to play and have been mostly managed manually. As technology has improved, the ability to automate repetitive elements of workflow processes has become easier. Take emailing internet customers for example. Most dealers use some form of automated internet process. A customer submits a lead and they immediately receive an auto-responder typically designed to let the user know that the dealership has received their request for information. The better auto-responders attempt to engage with that user by asking a question prompting personal contact with a salesperson or BDC Rep.

Email Automation takes over the mundane and repetitive task of writing a short email that usually answers the same questions from customers. When that salesperson or BDC agent is freed up, they can focus their energy on driving sales via phone or into the showroom. Good automation will take over a repetitive task. Great automation takes over a repetitive task and knows when to steer attention towards it or whether to rely on a Human intelligence for assistance. If you are looking to add automation to a workflow, you must first identify your repetitive tasks.

Even a small dealer can receive 10 to 30 internet leads over the course of one day. Consider what it would cost to employ a person to monitor the inbox for 12 to 15 hours a day and expect them to compose an individual and engaging response every time a lead comes in. That first response letting the customer know their form has been received doesn't have to be customized for every single customer. This is why the auto-responder has existed from the very first day a website could receive a form from a customer. The same goes for value building and re-engagement attempts. A dealer's value proposition stays the same for long periods of time, so it’s not necessary to compose lengthy emails explaining it to your potential customers. It can be written well once and set to go out to prospects at a key point. Automated emails improve upon internet lead workflow and simplify the process by automating repetitive tasks.

Now that the salesperson or BDC agent isn't expected to monitor and respond to every lead as it comes in, they can use their time engaging in email, phone and chat conversations with live customers. This is a step that has yet to be perfected via full automation. Customers don't like to talk to robots during their retail shopping journeys. The best automated Chat applications use canned response to gather contact information so a living person can engage with the customer personally.

Once you identify repetitive tasks, the next step is to define your goals using your current manual workflow as a benchmark. With email automation, the goal is customers visiting the dealership or engaging with salespeople or BDC agents via phone. It was easy to see the effect on showroom traffic automated emails produced versus ignoring internet leads altogether or having someone try to compose individual responses along the process. Ultimately you need to be able to justify how your sales goals will be achieved by automation and how you plan to measure them.

How do you decide that a workflow could benefit from automated elements? It’s simple. Examine your workflow and look for instances where people may be spending a lot of time doing or saying the same thing. Consider whether or not that person's time could be better spent performing more complex tasks; which is ultimately saving the dealership money. Finally look for a solution that will complement the task itself which will lead to more showroom traffic and lower funnel shoppers. It will allow the dealership to work with less manpower and still deliver products or services with the same or better quality.

Keep in mind that automation processes are not limited to lead responses. There is a plethora of repetitive tasks that exist in your dealership that can be automated and result in higher efficiency and performance – both in sales, service and dealership operations in general. 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 thus freeing up even more time for a staff member to focus his or her attention elsewhere. Automation combined with human intelligence produces greater efficiency resulting in increased productivity and higher sales.

With most of the country in quarantine, people are more reliant upon digital applications like Netflix and Amazon than ever before. Netflix reportedly had 16 million new subscribers in the first three months of 2020 due to the coronavirus. It’s no coincidence that platforms with a good user experience like Netflix thrive while others don’t fare as well. User experience drives everything from digital products to the hardware that keeps them running.

Let’s take a look at some reasons why a good user experience (UX) is important for consumers and businesses alike.

Working from home has forced people to become expert multitaskers - especially those with kids in the mix. That means people are looking for a digital experience that allows them to complete tasks as fast as possible. A good UX allows users to get things done faster. As soon as a user hits a roadblock on a website or application, they are quick to dismiss it and move on to a competitor. And your competitors are mere fractions of an inch away in the digital landscape. According to a study from web usability research group the Baymard Institute, the global average online shopping cart abandonment rate is a whopping 69.57%. You get one shot. If you aren't helping that consumer get answers quickly or complete tasks as fast as possible, you’re out. A good user experience will help people get where they need to go faster.

A good UX helps users see that products are purposeful. Consider the applications you are personally using right now. When you need something but don't have the time or the ability due to lockdowns to physically shop at multiple physical locations looking for the best value, you look for something that can help. The choice between paying a small fee for grocery pick-up or delivery services or standing in a long line with your face covered in July heat becomes an easy one. That small fee provides time, convenience and comfort. A good UX is what levels up your product. It doesn’t matter how much it costs if it’s easy to use.

There is no excuse now. User experience is something that is essential to consumers. Technology has changed so much in the last 10 years that we may view UX as a luxury, but now with the sudden widespread adoption of technology, there is so much competition that consumers have endless options and they know it.

In today’s rapidly changing environment, having good UX is the key to customer retention and loyalty. The right user experience will create emotional connections with products. When you establish a bond of trust between a dealership and its customers, you forge and secure a relationship. In this technological era, people use mobile apps, websites, and in-store kiosks to interact with companies. This can estrange a feeling of intimacy, as we don’t really need to line up in banks anymore if we want to pay bills, or go to physical stores to buy something, when we can do the same things online.

Digital retail solutions with the best user experience in mind will cater to the online customer. If it does not it will damage the relationship and dealers can lose customers indefinitely.

Online shoppers' perceptions have changed, and the experience itself is more important than calls to action that are screaming for attention with empty results. A bad user experience can impact your bottom line today and well into the future. A good user experience creates emotional connections with products and allows users to get things done faster. It makes users feel like a product or service has a purpose and can push the boundaries of what we believe is possible.

A good user experience will encompass every touchpoint and interaction that a consumer has with the dealership. The less friction that a dealer can introduce into a digital journey – or even a hybrid physical/online journey, the more likely the consumer will continue on the journey that you want them to and end up with more sales.

Before the Covid-19 pandemic and economic crisis, dealers have been struggling to adopt and perfect digital retailing and the need has accelerated at staggering speed. Data from McKinsey & Company show that consumers have no desire to ditch behaviors they’ve adopted amid stay-at-home orders, like more online shopping and fewer store visits.  Dealers can’t afford to remain in wait-and-see mode. It’s time to re-imagine baseline requirements and then turn attention to taking their customer experience beyond the next level.

Dealers that have been allowed to re-open physical locations have to adapt their operations to comply with health-and-safety regulations and meet new customer expectations. This includes mask wearing, ensuring physical distancing, and controlling the number of employees and customers in stores, instituting contactless transactions, improving speed of service, and using more self-service digital options.

Dealers also need to offer a simple and seamless e-commerce experience which includes browsing to research, selecting and purchasing. Customers will no longer tolerate sub-par digital shopping experiences like they may have before the crisis. Retailers have to make sure their sites are mobile-responsive, offer integrated services such as “buy online pick up in store” and out of store test drives while also delivering a consistent, reliable digital experience across all devices and channels.

For some retailers, such as fashion stores or pop-up restaurants, executing at a baseline level is sufficient. Waiting in hours-long lines to shop may eventually return as a super fan’s pastime. But that’s no longer a strategy to rely on – enhanced in-store operations and a well-functioning digital presence are the new normal.

It’s time to rethink experience. For years, dealers have been focusing as much, if not more, of their priority towards improving the in-store experience rather than on the products they sell. Many dealers think that investing in popcorn machines for the showroom, decking out the lot in balloons, holding events or offering special in store-experiences will attract customers and encourage them to linger longer. As a result of Covid-19, all dealers have to ensure that their in-store experiences are even more extraordinary for those who visit. They have to give people a reason that justifies their exposure to health risks and overcomes the new behaviors they adopted during the shutdown.

Think about how premium movie theater brands emerged back when Netflix and other home movie-viewing options threatened the movie theater industry. These new experiences didn’t simply improve what was already offered to customers They made visiting a theater better than watching at home — offering luxury reclining loungers, high quality food and beverages delivered seat-side. Retailers that offer an exclusive, superior experience like luxury cinemas once did will draw people out of their homes.

An emphasis on innovation and service needs to extend to the digital customer experience as well.  Dealers tend to rely on old school techniques online. Lauding that the only way to get exact information is by visiting the dealership and using gimmick calls to action that all result in demanding an in store visit but such efforts are fruitless and misguided.  Customers don’t expect a virtual experience to be like an in-person one — nor do they want it to be.

Investing in digital capabilities like real-time inventory management, payment calculators, trade-in evaluation tools, and personalization can create unique shopping experiences. A retailer can use new capabilities to create a social, interactive, immersive experience wherever customers may be which is something a physical outlet can’t provide.

To get inspiration and insights for designing an online shopping experience from the ground up, examine the evolution of other brick-and-mortar industries and institutions.  When Covid-19 forced churches to shut down their weekly services, most simply transferred their church services online via live-stream But Cincinnati-based Crossroads Church  has re-imagined its pastors’ weekly sermons. Now they film pastors delivering messages at different locations to reinforce that week’s message, for example, talking about the importance of a strong foundation at the site of a historic church. Take advantage of the greater flexibility and new contexts that digital affords like giving customers the shopping tools they seek on vehicle detail pages so they won't have to look for them on another site.

This isn’t the time to try to simply ‘ride out the storm’. With a more proactive, progressive approach to both digital transformation and a new era of customer experience and service, the future looks far less bleary.

With Covid-19 creating a ripple effect across the socio-economic fabric of America, life as most of us know it has been disrupted, especially that of the retail customer journey which has migrated into the digital landscape. As a new normal materializes, even the more technophobic consumers have taken to digital retail platforms and applications to meet even the most basic of needs. Many dealers had the choice of either providing the tools and platforms to consumers or board up the doors and wait. Dealers that focused on concentrating resources online, through new features, offers and technology-led innovations were doing more than keeping the lights on, they were building customer relationships that will last long after this virus fades.

We get a do-over. It’s time to turbocharge customer experience. In January, Tim Odom, president of the AAM Group, gave a presentation on what he considered some of the most disruptive trends we have seen in the past decade and how they have shaped customer experience. “The greatest disruptor of the last 10 years is Amazon,” Odom said. “How have you changed your business in the past decade? The customer at your door today is different – same person, but different expectations.” This rings even more true today as curbside test drives, online shopping and trade evaluation were sometimes the only options for dealers to sell during state shutdowns. Customers may not want to go back to past practices once this pandemic is over. It might be easy for your sales team to revert back to the days of waiting around in the lot for walk-ins, or demanding customers come to the dealership in order to have questions answered but customers know that dealers can accomplish these things... if they wanted to.

People can have food from their favorite restaurant delivered to their homes with almost no human contact and, as restaurants reopen, they certainly have not shut down their new drive through windows and curbside services. Consumers will be congregating online for the foreseeable future restricting visits to physical brick and mortar stores not only out of safety concerns but out of convenience as well. Dealers have the opportunity to create a memorable and engaging digital journey that will ultimately amplify their customer experience moving forward. It’s not time to go back to the past, but time to look forward and create personalized journeys and touch-points for consumers and adopt the digital shopping tools customers crave.

The Auto Industry has not been defeated by COVID-19. In fact, this pandemic has given dealers an opportunity to improve by embracing the digital experiences that consumers want. Contactless shopping and delivery have become the norm in almost every aspect of retail and brands need to curate specialized and memorable end-to-end digital experiences to attract lasting loyalty that extends far beyond this pandemic.

With the advancement of technology and sudden wave of consumer adoption, the automotive retail sector is experiencing a global revolution and that can only be attributed to digitization. Thanks to digital platforms and solutions, dealers have experienced many recent changes.

Total retail sales in the United States are projected to be upwards of $5.94 trillion by 2024 . Digital applications have reshaped the customer’s shopping experience. Consumers can now make decisions quickly and informatively online, while also enabling retailers the ability to interact with customers at key touch points while they are making shopping decisions.

The automotive industry has been improving operations and focusing on customer experience. Digital retailing strives to eliminate the friction in services by offering advanced technologies and tools to create more personalized customer experiences.

Digital transformation covers a more comprehensive and effective range of revenue opportunities for dealers. Retail has had to rapidly adopt digital retailing solutions in order to revolutionize the entire process. These new business models help retailers focus on an astute sales strategy rather than a single technique or approach.

Advances in technology, such as artificial intelligence, automation and analytics have made their way into even the most basic sales strategy. Thus, processes have become more streamlined and efficient, which will help deliver better results to the customers.

The digital transformation has started to compliment traditional technologies' limitations allowing dealers to be more responsive to the current online shopping trends and consumer demands.

One of the most important aspects of a digital retail solution is an attentive and engaging customer experience. Car shoppers want transparency. We have known this for over a decade and the digital shopper is no different. The consumer that chooses a digital path to a car purchase wants advanced tools and applications that can answer their questions before they ever set foot in a dealership. Operations have to become even more customer-centric in order to capture that sale.

Thanks to digital transformation, the retail industry is being completely revolutionized. The way consumers shop has changed for both in-person and online platforms. Far fewer consumers are deciding between the two and embracing at least some if not all digital functions along their shopping journey. The process of shopping has become more convenient, seamless and easy for the customers with the use of a multi-channel approach and advanced methodologies

Nowadays, the automotive Industry is moving beyond mobile and connecting more devices. Technological adoption has completely changed how people shop. Even the in-store shopping experience has transformed with as some dealerships now provide screens or iPads to view product specifications and provide sales information.

Retails changing nature makes it necessary to integrate advanced technologies into operations to maintain a competitive edge. The digital transformation is continuously evolving with the infusion of evolution of new technologies. These technologies have majorly contributed to changing the retail industry dynamics and simplifying operations to a great extent. Dealerships should strongly consider adopting more avenues within the online sales process to keep up with the experience that consumers are increasingly getting used to and demanding or they may find themselves scrambling to catch up when customers move on to another dealership.

Customers are becoming incredibly sophisticated, elusive, and empowered since the latest digital retail wave. As a result, the dynamics of the relationship between brands and customers is evolving. But even in this new digital era of online engagement and transparency, the reality is that the relationship dealers should hope to have with customers through these new digital channels, and their true state is not one in the same. Dealers can underestimate the significance of customer experience. Rather than examine the role new technologies and tools can play in improving customer relationships and experiences, many dealers focus on establishing a digital presence but not by defining meaningful experiences or outcomes.

A heavier reliance on shopping and purchasing online has changed how consumers discover and share information and has placed more importance on connecting with each other. Customers don’t look to dealer websites for “Why Buy From Us” info but instead they are looking at what others are saying about both the dealership and the vehicle. Technology aside, COVID - 19 has driven the rapid adoption of digital retailing technology based on both need and convenience.

As digital technology matures beyond a luxury into everyday life, consumer expectations only grow. As a result, functionality, human involvement, and experiences have become more important for shoppers than pricing and availability which can look the same to them from dealer to dealer. Staying ahead of the competition takes something greater than mere presence in the right channels. Customer experience has become a critical point in customer engagement in order to compete for attention now and in the future. Without a thoughtful and well-defined guided digital retailing customer experience, consumers will meander without direction, reward, or utility.

The crux of customer experience for dealers is intention and purpose. Some dealers are offering tools because they know customers want them but show little regard for their functionality. Customer experience is the new blueprint for most new media deployments. Digital experiential strategies form the bridge where intentions meet outcomes. By starting with the end in mind, customer experience technology adoptions provide efficiency and enchantment which delivers more meaningful, engaging, and rewarding customer journeys.

It’s easier said than done. Customer experience initiatives are a science and an art, and they should never be ignored in the development of digital channels that drive customer engagement. When an experience does not deliver value, customers can and will effortlessly move on. A dealer coming off as gimmicky without intent will drive customers away and ROI will escape their grasp.

Often, creative strategies are driven by clever ideas and not necessarily ones that are focused on engagement or experience. Experiences and outcomes should be looked at as a cohesive and symbiotic strategy. Sharks and Remoras are a great example. The shark can live without the Remora. The Remora helps the shark – and the shark doesn’t mind - because they both benefit. When ideas are deployed without direction, everything that results is almost entirely accidental while it is easier and more effective to be purposeful. Disney knows this which is why they operate under the theory of “intentional design,” something nature always has just by… well… it’s nature.

Some dealers are guilty of deploying technology without considering a holistic experience such as installing high funnel conversion CTAs for consumers with canned responses instead of real answers to pricing, financing and trade evaluation inquiries.

The goal of a great customer experience by dealers should be providing digital tools that create a delightful, emotional, and satisfying experience. This is why it’s critical to customer experiences and engagement. Customer experience is supposed to be experiential, informative, useful and productive, but most importantly, it’s deployed with an end in mind where the means to that end is engagement, conversion and, ultimately, a transaction. A successful customer experience strategy will evoke engagement with purpose, affect sentiment, and influence customer behavior.

COVID-19 has reformed and redefined the customer experience (CX), and now dealers need to think beyond short-term fixes and look forward into the new normal of an increased desire by consumers for digital retailing options, according to the Wall Street Journal. Some dealers have in fact been ahead of the curve in terms of adopting digital retailing solutions but what matters now is how to thrive in the digital landscape and that will only happen with a more pointed focus on customer experience. CX is the practice of supporting efforts to make customers satisfied and to keep people enjoying the experience of interacting with a brand along the entire customer journey to make each interaction with the brand as positive as possible. In fact, “companies that lead in customer experience outperform laggards by nearly 80 percent,” according to Forbes.

Good customer experience costs almost nothing and over time good customer experience will speak for itself allowing business to spread organically. This can keep sales and marketing costs low. No matter how much you splash the internet with pricey pointed marketing, consumers just won’t hear it. They listen to each other. Customers are the new marketers, and the only thing that matters is what they think and say about you. Reviews play a role in nearly every purchasing decision. Rideshares, food delivery, ecommerce, service, and vehicle purchases are all dominated by reviews. Even a small shift in consumer sentiment can make a big difference when it comes down to failure and success. An outspoken and engaged customer community can do the marketing for you allowing you to be lean in marketing investments. Buying that kind of advocacy would not only be expensive, it would be impossible to do sincerely.

Good customer experience will give you a competitive advantage that will be impossible for competitors to overcome. In this ever-competitive world, CX can set your company apart in a way that is very hard to duplicate. Vehicles are highly commoditized, with rapidly emerging competition. Manufacturers aren't releasing new models every year, so if it’s not possible to find new buyers by having a new product, how do you keep them interested? By focusing on the experience.

A thoughtful and engaging customer experience across each touchpoint of the customer journey is much more difficult for competitors to copy because an experience is personal. It encompasses pre-sale, sale, post-sale and delivery engagement.

Everyone learns in CX 101 that calls-to-action are an important part of generating leads. Two dealers can both have a button saying: “Get your E-Price Now” but a customer can have two very different experiences once they click that button. If one dealer calls up that customer and says “When can you come in?” and the other calls the customer with a detailed vehicle price, that customer is going to choose the dealer who followed through with the request. While it may be possible to replicate one or two of those aspects, when you do it right, competitors can’t replicate what makes your dealership unique without looking ridiculous and fully inauthentic.

A great customer experience can be the largest and most efficient growth opportunity a dealership can have and, over the years, the time invested in focusing on customer experience will be returned ten times over. A digital customer experience can make or break business in the long term in the same way that a poor physical customer experience can. Customer experience can shave marketing costs, solidify loyalty and increase referrals. If you’re not currently investing in CX in your online processes in order to make, hopefully this blog will convince you that it’s more than worth it.

The economic downturn the auto industry has faced beginning in early March was more devastating for those dealers who were not able to quickly and easily shift sales processes online if they didn’t have digital retailing channels already. Now as restrictions lift slowly across the country, we are waking up to a new digital era that could turn out to be more positive for the auto industry than previously anticipated.

Many industries have turned to digital retailing to keep revenue flowing as technophobia fades among businesses and consumers alike. Automotive remarketing needs to embrace digital solutions. Used car demand hasn’t evaporated into thin air for the past 3 months. that business has still existed in the digital landscape, the same place dealers find new and used car shoppers.

Supply chains in the auto industry are slowly returning to normal but restrictions on public gatherings have kept automotive auction business stuck in a standstill. Classic car events which usually draw large lucrative crowds have been canceled and have been reinvented into live video events. COVID-19 has almost rendered physical car auctions nonexistent for a portion of dealers in the short- to medium-term according to Cox Automotive’ s latest dealer sentiment survey. That is, unless we are able to find ways to shift more of the auto industry into the digital realm ASAP.

In questions focused on stock acquisition, some dealers said that they planned to either decrease or stop attending altogether. Two-fifths of the dealers surveyed told Cox that they have increased their use of digital solutions due to the lockdown, with 49% of those indicating this will be a long-term change with 7% insisting on avoiding buying digitally.

The majority of dealers are catching on to the inherent efficiency and convenience of digital channels and don’t see why they should go back to spending thousands of dollars and countless hours dragging inventory to and from auctions.

Customer and dealer to dealer trade-ins are an important part of the auto business and, luckily, there has been no need to stop as it is very easy to gather vehicle information from a customer and post vehicles online almost as soon as they are evaluated thanks to digital technology. Dealers can make confident bids on purchases with online tools and services because vehicle information can be laser accurate with the right photos and vehicle data.

Automotive dealerships will begin to adopt digital retailing channels quickly in order to be better prepared in the future. Socially distanced shopping will be a new normal for consumers. Dealerships have the option of turning to digital solutions surrounding vehicle sales and expect to see the more positive results. There are open opportunities for growth in digital trade-in appraisals, F & I, wholesale and dealer-to-dealer trades as the entire auto industry can see the long-term benefits of fully utilizing digital solutions in all operations as we all move forward into the ‘new normal’.

User Experience, by definition, addresses all aspects of an experience within automotive shopping, purchasing and owning of a vehicle from the customer's perspective. From interacting with an ad, to interacting with a website and to parking their new vehicle in their driveway, user experience guides the interaction of the customer throughout mobile apps and websites from both visual and functional perspectives. It encompasses the experiential, affective, meaningful and valuable aspects of human-business interaction and product ownership and use. Here are 5 reasons why User Experience is the foundation of a successful dealership.

1. Stronger Customer Loyalty

To put it simply, if users have a negative experience with a digital retailing feature on a dealership’s website or mobile application, they are not coming back. Dealerships really only get one shot. Not only do dealerships lose a potential customer, they are also sending them directly to a competitor. Almost every consumer chooses to do business with a competitor after a poor customer experience.

Loyal customers also make some of the best brand ambassadors. Referrals are the least expensive customer acquisition but also come with higher closing rates. A positive user experience will help dealerships get to that point. Loyal customers account for roughly 20% of a dealership’s customer base, but make up more than 65% percent of its sales.

2. Stronger ROI

With better user experience, dealers get enjoy a better return on investment across all operations. It guarantees that money invested into its software solutions and marketing efforts generates into a measurable value. This results in stronger customer retention and it costs 3 to 5 times more to acquire a new customer than to retain a returning customer.

3. Stronger Conversion

Measuring the effectiveness of your user experience efforts depends on how many users you turn into customers. Analyzing conversion rates is far more effective in measuring user experience than using sales figures alone. 74% of businesses believe User Experience is the key to increase the rate of conversion.

4. Stronger Productivity More Efficiency

By helping users get information and provide easy to use shopping tools, dealerships let them know that they respect the consumer’s time and appreciate their business. Every interaction between the customer and a dealer’s website should happen in the fewest possible steps with the least friction possible. Evaluating a trade has been historically time-consuming for both the customer and the dealership – especially when the interaction and transaction is occurring online in a digital retailing capacity. Finding every little scratch and dent to fill in a vehicle inspection form takes time and attention to detail. Dealerships are hesitant to give solid numbers on a sight-unseen trade-in while consumers want hard numbers before coming in. The faster, simpler and more accurate it is to use a digital retail feature, the more likely it is that consumers will complete the process and the more confident a dealership will be in giving a more accurate value.

5. Stronger Customer Experience and Satisfaction

A dealership’s customers are the users of digital retailing software and they are valuable. When the process is easy, pleasant and natural for customers to be able to complete the steps in a digital retailing process, they are more likely to complete a transaction with the dealership. These benefit both the consumer and the dealership and lead to a better customer experience for the consumer and an easier sale for the dealership.

It goes without saying that User Experience (UX) is heavily dependent on the design of an application, integration of a dealership’s brand, and being able to provide the tools and information consumers are looking for while shopping for a vehicle. When 62% of shoppers and consumers base future purchases dependent on past experience, the user experience circumscribes customer loyalty and retention.

To make a long story short, user experience should be more than just an afterthought and can affect revenue from many angles. A dealership’s customers expect to be able to engage with them on their terms. Making that process easier will only make the dealership stronger. And that is what leads to increased revenue, retention and loyalty.

Back in 2012, Apple executives attended a meeting in China where they watched a video of an experimental fully-automated assembly line for the iPads. They watched as iPad parts traveled along conveyor belts and were cut, polished and then partially assembled into a final product. This got Apple excited about creating their own fully automated assembly in an attempt to cut back on labor costs. This ended up being a huge expensive failure.

After seeing the video, the Apple executives were told the line needed very few humans to operate and the line would contain over 1 million robots within 2 years, but by 2019 the company responsible for the production line was only using 100,000 robots across all of their manufacturing. There was something missing.

Apple wanted to be able to cut 15,000 workers from the production line so they tasked their ‘secret’ team with reducing the amount of human labor needed by half. They launched their own robotics lab in 2012 quietly in an attempt to develop their own assembly automation techniques which housed a team of automation specialists and robotics engineers who tried to copy the iPad automatic production line.

But it failed. The problems that arose included basic lack of fine detail. Apple's use of glue required precision that the machinery just couldn’t match when compared to their human counterparts and small screws needed the automation to correctly pick and position them but that automation couldn't find problems as well as a human hand could.

It wasn't the only department working on the project nor was it their biggest failure. That title goes to the millions spent attempting to automate production of what would become the MacBook in 2015. That automated production line began in 2014, and its failures delayed the launch of the Macbook itself. There were problems with the conveyor belt that moved parts along the line but the greatest issue was that parts along the line kept breaking down requiring more and more human intervention.

"If things stop working, the automation can't detect that all the time and repair it," Bourne told The Information. “If any firm were capable of fixing a technology problem, it would surely be Apple, but alongside technical issues there were more fundamental ones.” Since Apple redesigns its major hardware in some small way every year, they would also have to redesign those automated factory lines. Training human workers on new designs is clearly easier and faster.

The most profitable tech company in the world, and - some would say - the most technologically advanced company in history, still relies on humans to build their products. Apple has spent many years and millions of dollars on automating production lines with technology, trying to get machines to build machines but they always revert to using human intelligence when those machines fail. Technical issues and wise business strategies will keep companies using human labor in line with machines if they have any interest in efficiency and low production costs. This Full Automation project was fully abandoned in 2018 and Apple has since adopted a blend of human intelligence and robotics that has solidified the company’s long term profitability based on the concept of evolving assembly much like Henry Ford in 1913.