NCC’s hiring of Joe Kacala as chief product officer matters to dealers because it points to a larger push around credit, compliance, desking, CRM and fraud-prevention workflow.

NCC named Joe Kacala chief product officer. For dealers, the move may signal more focus on reducing handoffs, improving risk visibility and simplifying retail workflow.

NCC has named Joe Kacala chief product officer, adding a former AutoFi and Xtime executive during what Auto Remarketing described as an active 45-day stretch for the company. NCC’s public positioning centers on credit, compliance, desking, CRM and fraud-prevention tools for automotive retailers.

That combination makes the hire more than a personnel note.

For a GM, used car manager or F&I director, the operational question is not whether NCC has a new product leader. It is whether the company can make several high-friction parts of the store work more cleanly together: deal structure, customer communication, lender-ready information, compliance review and risk detection. Those are the places where margin gets protected, deals get delayed or customers quietly disappear.

The appointment follows two other May moves noted by Auto Remarketing: NCC’s launch of an Equifax-powered tool aimed at identifying chargeback risk and the hiring of a new chief financial officer. Taken together, the activity suggests NCC is trying to strengthen both its product direction and its business discipline at the same time.

The data does not fully prove this yet, but I’d argue the more important signal is workflow consolidation. Dealers have spent the last several years adding tools to handle online leads, digital retailing, remote credit activity, identity checks, follow-up, compliance and F&I documentation. Many stores now have capable systems that still require too much rekeying, too many status checks and too many “who has this deal?” conversations.

That is where a chief product officer can have real influence. A strong product leader does not just decide what features ship next. In a dealership software business, that role can shape how information moves from the first customer touch to the final funded deal, how exceptions are surfaced to managers and how much duplicate work gets pushed onto salespeople, BDC agents and F&I managers.

The handoff problem dealers know too well

A retail deal rarely breaks because one person forgot one thing. More often, it slows down because five people each have a slightly different version of the deal in front of them.

A salesperson may have one conversation logged in the CRM. A desk manager may structure the deal around a different assumption. F&I may discover a missing stipulation after the customer has already waited too long. Accounting may later flag a contract issue, and management may not see the pattern until chargebacks or unwind pressure start showing up.

If NCC’s recent activity leads to fewer of those handoffs, the dealer benefit is straightforward. Even saving a few minutes per deal can matter in a busy store, especially when the time saved belongs to managers who are also appraising trades, working lenders, solving heat cases and trying to keep the showroom moving. The larger win is not just speed. It is fewer avoidable surprises after the customer has mentally moved on.

Fraud and chargeback visibility are becoming manager issues

The Equifax-powered chargeback-risk product mentioned in the Auto Remarketing report is also relevant because fraud prevention and chargeback exposure are no longer back-office-only concerns. They affect gross, lender relationships, CIT timing, CSI and staff confidence. A store that finds risk late is usually left choosing between a bad customer experience, a delayed delivery or a deal that should have been structured differently from the start.

Earlier visibility is the practical goal. Dealers do not need more noise on every deal; they need clearer signals on the deals that deserve a second look before delivery, before funding and before the store’s leverage is gone. If NCC can help retailers spot potential chargeback or fraud concerns closer to the beginning of the process, managers get more room to adjust the structure, ask better questions or slow down a risky delivery.

That matters in used cars in particular. Inventory remains expensive, affordability is still pressuring buyers and many stores are working harder for each funded deal. A chargeback or preventable unwind can erase the profit from several cleaner transactions, especially when you add recon, sales compensation, floorplan time and management hours into the calculation.

Kacala’s background at AutoFi and Xtime ties him to two areas dealers continue to scrutinize: digital retailing and fixed operations software. That mix is notable because both categories have forced dealers to think about customer experience beyond a single department. Digital retailing exposed gaps between online intent and showroom execution. Fixed ops software put more pressure on stores to communicate clearly, schedule efficiently and keep customers informed after the sale.

For NCC, the test will be whether that experience turns into simpler daily work for dealership teams. Dealers should watch for product changes that reduce duplicate entry, make deal status easier to understand, tighten CRM follow-up after credit activity and give managers earlier warning when a transaction needs attention. Just as important, stores should ask whether any new product direction helps employees do their jobs faster without adding another screen to babysit.

Vendor consolidation will probably remain part of the conversation. Many dealers are not looking to replace every system at once, but they are increasingly impatient with tools that only solve one narrow problem while creating another handoff. A vendor that can help connect credit, compliance, desking, follow-up and fraud awareness in a usable way has a stronger story than one selling another disconnected dashboard.

NCC’s leadership move should be read as a workflow story, not just an executive announcement. The company is active in categories that sit directly in the path of profit protection: credit, compliance, desking, CRM and fraud prevention. If the new product leadership brings those pieces closer together in a practical way, dealers could see less friction between sales and F&I, better risk visibility and cleaner follow-up with customers.

For now, the smart approach is to watch the next few releases and ask operational questions. Will this reduce manager touches? Will it catch risk earlier? Will it make the next step obvious to the employee handling the deal? Those answers will matter more to dealers than the title change itself.

NCC continues busy stretch by hiring former AutoFi, Xtime exec as chief product officer

NCC names Joe Kacala chief product officer

NCC product chief hire puts dealer workflow in focus

Ford's national mobile service campaign could help dealers capture recall traffic, protect service-lane capacity and move used inventory faster, but execution will depend on scheduling discipline, parts readiness and clear customer communication.

Ford is expanding mobile service as recall work returns customers to dealers. See what fixed ops and used-car managers should watch next.

Ford is expanding its mobile service effort with a national marketing campaign intended to push more service and parts revenue back to dealerships, CBT News reported in June. The campaign arrives as a new Ford recall is expected to send affected customers back into dealer service departments, though the CBT News summary did not include a recall population or campaign spending figure.

For Ford retailers, this is more than a branding exercise.

Ford mobile service turns recall pressure into a capacity test

The practical opportunity is straightforward: use mobile service to capture work that might otherwise be delayed, declined or handled outside the dealership network. Recalls are a natural fit when the repair is clearly defined, parts are available and the vehicle does not need a lift, major diagnosis or extended shop time. Maintenance and light service can ride alongside that same customer habit if the store makes the experience easy enough.

The harder part is deciding what belongs on the road and what belongs in the shop. A mobile van that spends half its day driving to jobs that should have been lane appointments is not a profit center; it is a rolling bottleneck. A route that absorbs several clean recall completions, simple maintenance visits and customer-pay add-ons, on the other hand, can free advisors and technicians for higher-complexity work back at the store.

I'd argue the best dealers will not treat Ford's campaign as a separate program. They will fold it into their existing recall process, service scheduling, parts stocking and used-car reconditioning meetings. The marketing may create the phone call or online request, but the dealership still has to turn that demand into completed repair orders.

What fixed ops should tighten before demand rises

A national message can create local pressure fast. If owners hear that mobile service is available, they will expect the store to know whether their vehicle qualifies, when a technician can come out, how long the visit will take and what happens if the repair cannot be completed off-site. That requires more than a van and a technician. It requires a shared operating rhythm between advisors, dispatchers, parts, technicians and managers.

The data does not fully prove this yet, but mobile service may become one of the cleaner ways for dealers to defend customer-pay retention around recall events. A recall brings the owner back into the orbit of the franchise store. If that experience is convenient, professional and well-communicated, the next oil change, tire rotation or inspection is easier to win.

Used-car departments have a separate stake in this. Open recalls can slow retail readiness, complicate auction decisions and create awkward delivery conversations. When a Ford store can complete eligible recall work faster, especially on vehicles already on the lot or held in recon, the benefit shows up in speed-to-market as much as service absorption.

A practical move is to review Ford inventory with open recalls during the same cadence as recon aging. Vehicles waiting on parts, waiting on technician time or waiting on customer authorization should not sit in a vague status bucket. Managers need to know whether the unit is retail-ready, mobile-service eligible, shop-only, parts-constrained or better suited for wholesale.

That kind of discipline matters because recall completion is not just a compliance task. It can affect merchandising, pricing confidence and the handoff to the buyer. A salesperson who can say the recall has been addressed is in a stronger position than one explaining why the vehicle still needs a return visit.

Parts planning may decide how well the campaign works

Parts departments should be involved early, not after the appointment calendar fills. A mobile-service push tied to recall activity can create uneven demand: some repair parts may move quickly, while unrelated maintenance parts rise more gradually as owners accept additional work. Stores that wait for the first wave of appointments before checking availability will be more likely to reschedule customers and lose momentum.

The better play is a short weekly review between service and parts: which recall repairs are being booked, which jobs are being completed on the road, which parts are constrained, and which appointments should be redirected to the shop. It does not need to be complicated. It does need to happen before customers are promised convenience the store cannot deliver.

Dealer takeaway: Ford's mobile service campaign can create valuable recall and customer-pay opportunities, but only if the store treats mobile capacity as a managed resource rather than an overflow valve.

For the next several months, Ford dealers should watch four signals closely: customer response to the national campaign, recall appointment completion rates, parts-related reschedules and the effect on technician capacity. If those measures improve together, mobile service can become a real fixed-ops advantage. If they move in opposite directions, managers will need to adjust routing, job eligibility and lane handoffs before the program strains the department.

Ford expands mobile service push as new recall sends customers back to dealerships

Vehicle Safety Recalls and Manufacturer Campaign Information

Ford Broadens Mobile Service Push Amid Recall Work

Lokam.ai’s U.S. launch gives dealers another reason to examine where voice AI can help sales and service follow-up, and what managers should demand before piloting it.

Lokam.ai has launched a U.S. voice AI platform for dealerships. Here are the questions dealers should ask before testing AI for sales and service follow-up.

Dealer group-backed Lokam.ai has launched a voice-first artificial intelligence platform in the U.S. aimed at automating sales and service follow-up for car dealerships, Auto Remarketing reported. The claims are company-reported through Auto Remarketing; the article did not disclose pricing, dealership counts, adoption timelines or verified performance results.

That missing detail matters because dealers are no longer short on AI pitches.

What they are short on is consistent follow-up capacity. A Used Car Manager may care about aged leads, missed trade-in opportunities and shoppers who went cold after the first contact. A fixed ops director may be looking at declined service, overdue maintenance and customers drifting to independents. A BDC manager may simply be trying to keep a team focused when call volume, lead volume and appointment confirmations all hit at once. Voice AI sits directly in that pressure zone, which is why launches like Lokam.ai’s deserve attention beyond the usual product announcement.

The dealer question is not whether AI can make calls

The better question is whether automated voice outreach can improve the parts of dealership follow-up that are usually inconsistent: speed, persistence, documentation and clean handoff to a person when the conversation gets complicated. In theory, those are good use cases. Routine outreach is often repetitive, time-sensitive and easy to lose when a store is busy. A customer asking to confirm a service appointment, reschedule a visit or reconnect with a sales consultant should not have to wait because the desk is buried.

The use case is not glamorous, but it is real.

Still, dealers have reason to be cautious. A voice tool that sounds polished in a demo can create problems if it reaches the wrong customers, fails to record activity in the systems managers use, keeps pushing when a shopper has opted out, or cannot recognize when a live employee should take over. The customer may not blame the vendor. They will blame the store.

Questions managers should ask before a pilot

For a GM, the risk is usually not the existence of automation. It is unmanaged automation. If the tool contacts customers without clear guardrails, the store can end up with duplicated outreach, inconsistent messaging or staff who do not trust the record of what happened. If the BDC does not understand when the AI is working a lead, agents may call over it or ignore a customer who actually needs human help. If service advisors are not included, an appointment may be set without enough context for the lane to handle it smoothly.

Compliance is another practical concern. Dealers do not need every manager to become a telecom attorney, but they do need a repeatable process for consent, opt-outs, recording notifications and customer complaints. That process should be owned by the store or group, not assumed to be solved because a provider says the system is compliant. The more outbound activity a store automates, the more important it becomes to prove who was contacted, why they were contacted and what happened next.

Tone may be the softer issue, but it is not minor. Car buyers and service customers will tolerate automation when it is useful, brief and accurate. They are less forgiving when it feels evasive, pushy or disconnected from the last conversation they had with the store. That is where managers should listen closely. A technically completed call is not the same as a good customer experience.

What would separate a serious deployment from another AI pitch

Dealers should look for evidence tied to store outcomes, not broad AI language. Contact rate is useful, but only if it leads to better appointments, kept appointments, repair orders, sold units or retained customers. Appointment volume is useful, but only if the store can handle those appointments and the show rate holds. A pile of completed calls may look impressive and still create little value if customers do not move to the next step.

I’d argue the most credible proof will come from controlled, ordinary dealership deployments rather than big promises. A vendor should be able to show what changed from the store’s baseline, which department benefited, how many calls required staff intervention, how many customers opted out or complained, and whether managers kept using the tool after the initial test. The data does not fully prove this category yet, but the right pilot can tell a store a lot.

A serious rollout should also respect store culture. Some rooftops will want AI to support the BDC, not replace it. Others may use it after hours, for service reminders, for orphan-owner outreach or for long-tail leads that rarely receive enough attention. The best starting point is usually the area where follow-up is valuable but inconsistent, and where the store can measure the result without disrupting the whole operation.

Lokam.ai’s U.S. launch is another sign that voice AI is moving from novelty to a more serious dealership operations discussion. For managers, the right response is neither automatic enthusiasm nor blanket skepticism. Treat it like any other process change that touches customers: define the use case, protect the store’s compliance posture, make the handoff to staff clear and measure results against the numbers that matter.

If voice AI can help a dealership reach more customers without creating confusion, it may earn a place in sales and fixed ops follow-up. If it cannot show clean documentation, controlled outreach and measurable appointment or retention gains, it is just another tool competing for a manager’s attention.

Dealer group-backed Lokam.ai launches AI platform for service & sales follow-up in US

Lokam.ai’s U.S. launch puts dealer voice AI under the microscope

Dealership M&A is not just a buy-sell story. Here is what private-buyer activity means for trades, F&I, pricing and local competition.

Private buyers are leading dealership M&A. See what rising buy-sell activity means for trades, F&I, valuations and store-level competition.

Private buyers accounted for 96% of dealership acquisitions in the first quarter, according to Haig Partners’ Q1 2026 Haig Report, as summarized by Digital Dealer. Multi-store transactions rose 54% in the quarter, another sign that well-capitalized dealer groups are still willing to buy even as store-level profits continue to normalize.

For a dealer principal, general manager or used car manager, consolidation changes the competitive math in the market. A nearby store that gets folded into a larger private group may suddenly have more appetite for trades, more centralized used-car discipline, sharper F&I expectations and a stronger stomach for acquisition costs. The rooftops may look the same from the road, but the decision-making behind them can change quickly.

Why dealership M&A matters at the store level

Dealership M&A can feel distant until it shows up in the lane, at the auction, or in the next pay-plan meeting. When larger private groups buy stores, they often bring new benchmarks for inventory turn, appraisal close rates, product penetration, lender performance, reconditioning speed and expense control. Some groups improve a store quietly over several months. Others move fast, especially if they believe the acquired dealership was underperforming its market.

The first pressure point is usually used vehicles. A newly acquired store may get more aggressive on trade values if the buyer believes the prior operator was missing acquisitions. That does not always mean reckless overallowing. More often, it means the new owner has a clearer view of which vehicles it wants, which units it can retail, and where it can afford to stretch because its downstream process is stronger.

Used car managers should pay attention to that distinction. If a competitor is simply paying too much, patience usually wins. If that competitor is paying more because it can recondition faster, price better and retail cleaner units with less waste, the store has a real operating problem to solve.

Private buyers are still finding reasons to pay

The same Haig data points to a market that is cooling from pandemic-era profit levels without freezing. Average profits at publicly owned dealerships fell 16% year over year to $824,000, according to Digital Dealer’s summary of the Haig Report. Front-end vehicle margins have tightened, floorplan costs remain a factor, and buyers are being more selective than they were during the peak-profit period.

Even so, acquisition interest remains alive because many stores are still healthy by historical standards. Buyers are not just purchasing trailing earnings; they are buying brand representation, local share, service retention, real estate position, management talent and the chance to improve operations. In stronger markets, those levers can support a deal even when the income statement is less flattering than it was two or three years ago.

I'd argue the most important takeaway is not that private buyers are dominating the transaction count. It is that disciplined operators still believe there is money to be made by running stores better, not merely by waiting for the market to lift everyone.

F&I is carrying more of the valuation conversation

The profit mix is also changing. Finance and insurance gross profit per vehicle reached $2,627, according to Digital Dealer’s coverage of the Haig Report, helping offset pressure on vehicle margins. That puts F&I execution near the center of both day-to-day performance and buy-sell underwriting.

For operators, that does not mean chasing every dollar at the expense of compliance or customer trust. It means making sure the basics are tight: menu discipline, lender relationships, product fit, chargeback awareness, documentation quality and manager consistency. A store with mediocre front-end grosses and inconsistent F&I performance will look very different to a buyer than a store with the same sales volume but cleaner process and steadier per-copy performance.

This matters for non-sellers, too. If consolidators in your market lift F&I expectations, they may also be able to bid more aggressively for inventory, spend more to capture customers, or tolerate thinner front-end deals. That can make a traditional gross-first desk feel boxed in unless the rest of the store is producing at a high level.

What managers should watch in their own market

A buy-sell announcement across town should trigger more than curiosity. It should prompt a quick review of where the store is most vulnerable. The data does not fully prove this yet, but in many markets the next phase of consolidation may be less about headline transaction volume and more about local execution gaps that stronger groups believe they can exploit.

The practical step is to build a local M&A file, even if the store has no intention of selling. Note who is buying, which brands they favor, how quickly they change pricing, whether their used-car mix shifts, and whether they become more visible in service marketing. A simple monthly review can keep managers from being surprised by a competitor that was quietly rebuilt under new ownership.

For dealers considering a sale, the profit normalization in the Haig data is a reminder to keep valuation expectations grounded. Buyers may still pay for quality, but they are likely to scrutinize add-backs, facility needs, staffing costs, real estate assumptions and the sustainability of recent F&I results. A store that was priced off peak earnings may need a more careful story now.

That does not mean sellers have lost leverage.

Strong brands in good markets, especially with healthy fixed operations and a credible management bench, remain attractive. The difference is that buyers have more reason to separate durable performance from temporary profit. Sellers who can show clean trend lines, explain margin pressure honestly and document operational strengths will usually have a better conversation than those leaning on old peak-year numbers.

Treat dealership M&A as a competitive signal, not just an ownership event. If private groups are buying in or around your market, assume they see upside somewhere: used-car sourcing, fixed absorption, F&I execution, brand share, expense control or management quality. Then ask the uncomfortable question: would they see the same upside in your store?

If the answer is yes, fix the gap before a consolidated competitor uses the same playbook against you.

Q1 2026 Haig Report

Dealership M&A Up Big in Q1 2026 as Profits Normalize: Haig Report

Private Buyers Push Dealership M&A Into Store-Level Focus

Klarna and Tekion are bringing flexible payment options to dealership service departments, giving fixed ops leaders a new tool to address declined repairs, customer-pay retention and high-ticket RO approvals.

Klarna and Tekion add flexible service-lane payments. See what dealers should ask, which KPIs to track and where fixed ops teams should be cautious.

Klarna is partnering with Tekion to bring flexible-payment options to dealership service departments across the U.S., Auto Remarketing reported. The collaboration will make Klarna available through Tekion Pay, giving service customers another way to handle repair bills that may be too large to comfortably absorb at pickup.

For dealers, this is less about a new checkout button and more about a familiar fixed ops problem: needed work gets declined because the customer is not ready for the bill.

That pressure has not gone away. Vehicle affordability remains tight for many households, and more consumers are trying to keep older vehicles on the road longer rather than trade into a higher payment. When a customer comes in for routine maintenance and leaves with a higher-ticket recommendation, the service advisor is often balancing safety, trust, timing and household budget in the same conversation. A credible payment option can give the advisor one more way to keep the repair in the store without turning the interaction into a hard sell.

What service-lane payment plans change for dealers

Service-lane payment plans can matter most on the repair orders that sit in the uncomfortable middle: too expensive for the customer to approve casually, but not so catastrophic that the vehicle is immediately out of service. Brake work, suspension repairs, tires, cooling-system repairs and other common maintenance items often fall into that zone.

I'd argue the bigger opportunity is not simply capturing one repair today. It is keeping the customer conditioned to see the dealership as a practical place to service an aging vehicle. If a customer declines work because the bill is too heavy, the next stop may be an independent shop, a tire chain or a friend-of-a-friend repair. Once that habit changes, the dealer may lose future maintenance, inspection opportunities, trade-in conversations and used-car acquisition visibility.

The data does not fully prove this yet, but payment behavior in the service lane is becoming a useful signal for retention. Customers who approve recommended work, return for follow-up maintenance and keep their vehicles in the dealer’s orbit are more likely to remain visible to the store. That visibility matters for service gross, but it also matters to variable operations. A high-mileage customer-pay vehicle with a known maintenance history can become a future trade, appraisal lead or private-party acquisition conversation before the customer shops elsewhere.

Dealers using Tekion, or evaluating any service-lane financing option, should treat the launch as an operating decision rather than a passive vendor update. The right questions are practical.

The advisor talk track deserves special attention. A payment plan should not become a substitute for a clear inspection, a prioritized estimate or a safety-based recommendation. Customers still need to understand what is urgent, what can wait and what the consequences are if they defer the work. The payment option should support that conversation, not blur it.

A store will not know whether flexible payments are helping unless it measures behavior before and after rollout. The cleanest view is usually at the RO and recommendation level, not just total payment-plan volume.

A handful of recovered approvals can look good on a weekly report, but the real test is whether the store is gaining profitable work it would have otherwise lost. If customers are simply shifting repairs they already planned to approve onto a different payment method, the value is more limited. If the option helps turn legitimate declines into completed work while preserving trust, it becomes much more meaningful.

There are also places for dealers to be careful. Fees can eat into the benefit if managers only look at top-line sales. Refund handling can create friction if parts are returned, jobs change after teardown or a customer approves part of an estimate but not all of it. Compliance also matters, particularly in how employees describe payment terms, eligibility and responsibility for repayment.

Training should be simple and repeatable.

The best use case is likely not every oil change customer. It is the customer who trusts the diagnosis but hesitates because the timing is bad, the repair is larger than expected or several maintenance items hit at once. For that customer, a flexible payment choice can preserve momentum and reduce the awkward back-and-forth that often ends with, “I’ll think about it.”

Service retention has always been connected to sales retention, but the connection is easier to overlook when departments are measured separately. A customer who keeps servicing at the dealership gives the store cleaner ownership history, better equity timing and more natural reasons to communicate. That can help with trade-cycle management and used-car sourcing, especially when late-model inventory remains competitive and acquisition costs still matter.

For Tekion dealers, the near-term move is to watch availability, understand the store-level economics and pilot the process with enough discipline to see what changes. For everyone else, the Klarna-Tekion announcement is another sign that payment flexibility is moving deeper into the service experience. Fixed ops leaders do not need to chase every new option, but they should know where affordability is costing them approved work — and whether a better checkout choice could keep more of those repairs in-house.

Klarna and Tekion collaborate to deliver flexible-payment options in the service lane

Klarna, Tekion bring flexible payments to the service lane

AI can help dealers, but only after the store fixes its data, workflows, and accountability gaps.

AI at dealerships works only when the data and process underneath it are clean. Start with crawl, walk, run.

$1,700 in missed gross doesn’t usually look like an AI problem. It looks like a service customer with 91,000 miles, $4,800 in equity, two declined maintenance lines, and a trade your used car manager would have paid up for — except nobody saw it until the customer sold it to somebody else on Saturday.

That’s where most dealership AI conversations get off track. Operators hear “AI” and picture some black-box closer that fixes response times, mines equity, writes emails, books appointments, predicts defections, and maybe makes the coffee. Then the demo ends, the contract gets signed, and six weeks later the GM is asking why the tool is sending lease-end messages to cash buyers and service offers to customers who traded out two years ago.

Todd Smith, founder and CEO of QuoreAI, put it plainly in an Auto Remarketing interview around the J.D. Power Auto Summit: dealers need a crawl, walk, run evolution with data as the foundation. He’s right. And frankly, I’d argue a lot of stores are trying to sprint on a sprained ankle.

There’s no plug in AI and it’s magic.

I’ve watched stores blame vendors for things that were really process rot. Duplicate customers in the CRM. Dead email addresses marked as active. Service op codes used five different ways across advisors. Equity tools nobody trusts because payoff data is stale. BDC notes that say “left message” 11 times and nothing else.

AI does not make that cleaner. It makes it faster.

That is the part dealers need to respect. A mediocre employee with messy data can only create so much damage in a day. An automated system with messy data can touch 3,000 customers before lunch. If the targeting is wrong, the offer is wrong, or the handoff is unclear, you didn’t modernize the store. You industrialized the same old leakage.

Before you ask what AI can automate, ask which customer records, triggers, and handoffs you would trust if they ran unattended for 30 days.

Crawl, Walk, Run Means Different Things in a Store

The phrase “crawl, walk, run” gets thrown around in software meetings until it loses meaning. On the retail floor, it should mean something very specific: don’t automate judgment until you’ve cleaned up observation. Don’t personalize until you can segment. Don’t optimize until the basic follow-up actually happens.

Most stores want to buy “run.” Most are operationally ready for “crawl” or maybe early “walk.” That is not an insult. Crawl done well can put real money on the board, especially in used-car acquisition and service retention.

Your Data Foundation Is Not an IT Project

Clean data sounds like something the controller, CRM admin, or vendor should handle. That thinking is why it stays broken.

The data that matters for dealership AI is operational data. It is created by salespeople, advisors, BDC reps, porters, F&I managers, and service cashiers. If the process rewards speed over accuracy, the database will show it. If advisors write vague notes to keep the lane moving, AI will inherit vague signals. If sales managers desk deals outside the system and update later, the machine is learning from leftovers.

Look at a simple service-lane acquisition case. The AI needs to know whether the customer still owns the car, whether the mileage is current, whether there is equity or at least a buyable payoff position, whether the vehicle fits your stocking plan, whether the customer has opted into SMS, and whether someone at the store will handle the reply within minutes instead of “when things slow down.”

Miss any two of those and the campaign gets noisy. Miss four and you teach the staff to ignore it.

The Back-of-Napkin Test: AI Readiness Per Dollar Touched

Here’s a simple way I’d score AI projects before signing anything: rank them by dollars touched and data confidence. Not excitement. Not demo quality. Not whether the OEM field rep liked it.

This is also why customer communication is one of the more practical early AI lanes. The store already has the customer, the vehicle, the visit history, and a reason to reach out. Dealers using tools like AutoRelay in the service drive are not trying to replace the used car manager’s eye. They are trying to surface the right customer at the right moment, get a clean SMS conversation started, and make sure the opportunity does not disappear between the advisor’s screen and the sales tower.

That is a sane use case. It is narrow enough to manage, close enough to revenue to matter, and measurable without a 40-slide dashboard.

Pull 50 closed ROs from the last 30 days on vehicles you would have liked to own. Not all ROs. The ones that fit your used-car stocking profile.

If you cannot answer those questions from the DMS, CRM, and service records without a scavenger hunt, you are not ready to “run.” That’s fine. Crawl with discipline. Clean the fields. Assign ownership. Measure appointments, appraisals, purchases, and gross — not just messages sent.

AI is not a strategy. It is an amplifier. Make sure you like what it is about to amplify.

See how AutoRelay helps dealers acquire inventory from their own service drive → getautorelay.com

AI at car dealerships: a ‘crawl, walk, run’ evolution with data at foundation

AI at Dealerships Needs Clean Data Before Big Promises

ADAS calibration is moving from collision sublet to dealership profit center. Here’s how operators should size the opportunity.

ADAS calibration is becoming a dealership fixed ops opportunity. Learn facility, training, workflow, and ROI questions to ask first.

A windshield job that used to be a $375 glass replacement is now a $375 glass replacement plus a calibration decision, a liability decision, a scheduling problem, and sometimes a pissed-off customer who thought the car would be done by lunch. That is the ADAS calibration business in plain English. It is not shiny. It is not simple. But it is already running through your service drive whether you’ve built a process for it or not.

I’ve seen stores treat calibration like an annoying sublet line for years. That made sense when only the high-trim stuff had cameras, radar, lane systems, adaptive cruise, and all the little sensors hiding behind plastic. That world is gone. More late-model mainstream inventory is carrying ADAS hardware, and the work shows up after alignments, suspension repairs, bumper work, windshield replacement, collision repair, and sometimes just a diagnostic rabbit hole that starts with a warning light.

Why this is landing on the dealer’s desk now

Collision centers have been living with this longer than most franchise stores. CCC’s recent Crash Course reporting keeps pointing to the same broad issue: vehicle complexity is pushing repair cost, cycle time, and procedure discipline into new territory. Calibration sits right in the middle of that. If the vehicle needs a camera aimed, a radar unit initialized, or a static target procedure after a repair, someone has to own it.

The dealer advantage is obvious, at least on paper. You have the OEM procedures. You have scan tools. You have brand-specific technical training access. You have customers coming through the lane every day with vehicles that already trust your badge. And in many markets, you have independent collision shops and glass installers looking for someone reliable who can handle the calibration without turning a one-day job into a three-day mess.

The dealer disadvantage is just as real. Most stores were not designed for this work. Your shop is packed. Your alignment rack is booked. Your dispatch process already has too many exceptions. Your advisors are not always comfortable explaining why a customer needs a calibration after a windshield or alignment. And your technicians may be very good at mechanical diagnosis while still having limited experience with the exact calibration routine the vehicle requires.

The opportunity is not just the calibration ticket. It is the retained repair order, the avoided sublet delay, and the ability to say yes when outside shops need a procedure done correctly.

The trap: buying equipment before building the work path

I’d argue the first mistake dealers make is treating ADAS calibration like a tool purchase. It is not. It is a workflow business. The target boards, scan equipment, alignment requirements, lighting, floor space, and OEM service information matter. But if you cannot identify the job, quote it, schedule it, document it, and get paid for it, the equipment becomes an expensive conversation piece.

Static calibration can require a clean, level bay with specific space around the vehicle. Dynamic calibration may require a controlled road test under certain speed, lane marking, traffic, and weather conditions. Some procedures require both. That means your process needs to answer ugly operational questions before the first invoice is written.

That last one is not a joke. Calibration failures are where margin goes to die. A sensor bracket is bent. The windshield is aftermarket and the camera does not like the distortion. The bumper cover was replaced and the radar aim is off. Tire size is wrong. Alignment is out. The vehicle battery is weak. Now your clean $325 calibration becomes two hours of diagnosis, an advisor explanation, and a customer who thinks you are inventing labor.

Before you call an equipment rep, run what I call the ADAS leakage math. It is not perfect, but it gets the conversation out of fantasy land.

Here’s a rough example. Say a store finds 80 monthly repair orders tied to operations that commonly trigger ADAS review. After sampling, 25 of those should have had some calibration-related action: procedure lookup, scan, static calibration, dynamic calibration, or documentation. If the store is only capturing 10, there are 15 units leaking each month. At $250 to $450 in gross opportunity per captured job, that is not life-changing money by itself. But add reduced sublet friction, tighter cycle time, outside wholesale work from collision partners, and fewer comebacks, and the business starts to pencil.

Notice I said “starts.” Not every rooftop should build a full calibration center. A single-point store with limited space, low collision exposure, and a packed shop may be better off creating a disciplined identify-and-sublet process with one accountable vendor. A larger group, especially one with body shop volume or multiple same-brand rooftops nearby, has a much stronger case for bringing the work in-house.

Training is the limiter, not the target board

The operators I trust are not asking, “Which equipment can do everything?” They are asking, “Which vehicles do we actually touch, which procedures do we see weekly, and which technicians can become boringly consistent at documenting them?” That mindset matters.

ADAS work punishes cowboy habits. A tech who skips setup details because he has done “a bunch of these” is a problem. An advisor who sells calibration as optional when the OEM procedure says otherwise is a problem. A dispatcher who jams a dynamic calibration into a bad weather window is a problem. This is fixed ops process discipline, not magic.

Start narrow. Pick the highest-volume brand and the most common trigger operations. Build written steps. Require pre- and post-scan documentation where appropriate. Save the OEM procedure with the RO. Track failed calibrations separately from completed ones, because the failures tell you where your process or upstream repair quality is breaking.

Where the service lane and customer communication matter

The service lane is where a lot of this revenue is won or lost. Customers do not understand why a camera behind the windshield affects lane keep assist. They definitely do not understand why an alignment or bumper repair can trigger more labor. If the first explanation comes after the car is already torn down, your advisor is starting from a defensive position.

Dealers using tools like AutoRelay for service-lane messaging can build cleaner customer communication around these moments: inspection found a calibration requirement, why it matters, what the procedure does, and what happens if it is declined. The tool is not the strategy. The strategy is making the requirement understandable before the customer decides you are padding the RO.

Pull 90 days of repair orders involving glass, alignments, steering, suspension, bumper covers, ADAS warning lights, and collision-related sublets. For a sample of 50, check the OEM procedure and answer four questions: Was calibration required or at least required to be checked? Was it identified? Was it completed or declined with documentation? How many hours or days did sublet add?

If you cannot answer those four questions, you are not ready to buy your way into ADAS calibration. You are ready to find the leakage. That is where the money is hiding.

Launching ADAS Calibration in Your Dealership

Crash Course 2025

ADAS Calibration: The Fixed Ops Bet Dealers Keep Dodging

A new garage-data study shows why brand loyalty is now a household problem, not just a sales funnel problem.

Garage and shopping data reveal how dealers lose loyalty before the customer ever submits a lead.

A customer spends $1,487 in your service department over 18 months, smiles at the advisor, gives you a decent survey, then buys the next vehicle across town. Everybody in the store acts surprised. They shouldn’t be.

The more interesting loyalty fight is not happening on the showroom floor. It is happening in the garage. Literally. A new LexisNexis Risk Solutions study, reported by Automotive News, looked at garage and shopping data across 1,000 U.S. garages and surfaced something dealers should care about: brand loyalty is getting harder to understand if you only look at the single VIN sitting in your DMS.

That matters because most stores still run loyalty like it is 2016. We send equity emails to the VIN. We chase lease maturity by the VIN. We mine service by the VIN. But households do not behave like clean CRM records. They have a truck, a commuter car, a kid’s hand-me-down, maybe a hybrid crossover, and one spouse who refuses to buy the same brand twice. The household is messy. That mess is where loyalty leaks out.

The garage is a better loyalty signal than the lead

Dealers love lead-source reports because they are easy to measure. Shared lead provider, OEM site, organic, phone, walk-in. Fine. But by the time a customer becomes a lead, a lot of the decision is already made. They have talked to a neighbor, priced insurance, watched too many videos, checked payment ranges, and decided whether your brand even makes the short list.

Garage composition tells you what the household has already accepted. If there are three brands parked at one address, that customer is not a loyalist in the way your OEM deck wants them to be. If the household owns your brand plus an off-brand SUV, you may not have one customer relationship. You may have half of one.

LexisNexis Risk Solutions analyzed garage and shopping patterns across 1,000 U.S. garages, including how many brands are parked in a household and whether an existing brand in the garage influences the next purchase.

That sounds like an OEM strategy problem, and it is. But it is also a store-level problem. The dealer sees the ROs, the declined work, the payment objection, the mileage jump, the warranty expiration, the spouse asking about loaners, the customer who suddenly wants Saturday appointments. Those are shopping signals hiding in fixed ops clothing.

I’ve seen this play out at stores from Phoenix to Pittsburgh. A service customer looks loyal because they keep coming in for maintenance. Then the used car manager finds out, usually too late, that the replacement vehicle was never going to be the serviced vehicle. It was the other car in the garage. The one nobody at the store was tracking.

Alternative powertrains are not just an EV issue

The LexisNexis study also points to alternative powertrains as a factor in brand defection. That should not surprise anybody who has worked a desk lately. Customers do not usually wake up loyal or disloyal. They wake up with a problem: gas spend, commute change, HOV access, charging access, towing needs, tax credit confusion, or a teenager taking the old sedan.

If your brand does not have the right hybrid, plug-in, EV, or even efficient ICE product at the right price point, loyalty gets soft fast. I’d argue that alternative powertrain interest is less about ideology than availability. The customer may love your store and your service advisor. But if the product gap is real, affection will not overcome a $180 monthly fuel swing or a better-equipped crossover somewhere else.

This is where a lot of dealers misread the room. They treat EV and hybrid questions as niche until the deal is gone. The data does not fully support this yet at every rooftop, but the pattern is clear enough: powertrain curiosity is an early-warning light for defection. Not always. Often enough to measure.

A simple framework: garage share beats mind share

Forget the brand loyalty score from the OEM for a minute. Build a store-level view I’d call Garage Share. It is not perfect, but it gives operators a cleaner way to think about retention and acquisition than staring at sold-customer lists.

Notice what is not on that list: “customer clicked a third-party lead form.” That lead is expensive and late. The service lane signal is cheaper and earlier, but only if somebody actually catches it.

The money problem: dealers overpay for strangers and underwork customers

Look, I bought auction cars for years. Sometimes you need them. But every operator reading this knows the pain: transport, buy fee, arbitration risk, recon surprise, and the joy of discovering the photos were generous. A clean unit from a known service customer is usually a better swing if you can get to it before the customer shops it to five places.

Run the napkin math. Take 1,000 active customer-pay ROs from the last 60 days. Pull vehicles that are 5 to 9 years old, under 110,000 miles, with no open total-loss history in your process, and at least one meaningful maintenance visit in the last year. If 8% are realistic acquisition targets, that is 80 conversations. If you buy 10 of them, compare that cost to 10 comparable auction units after fees, transport, and recon variance.

Do not measure service-lane acquisition against zero cost. Measure it against your true auction landed cost: buy fee, transport, floorplan time, recon miss, and days-to-sale.

The other upside is retention. Even when you do not buy the car, the right conversation can keep the household close. A customer with a $2,400 repair estimate may not be offended by an appraisal offer. They may be relieved somebody gave them a number before they dumped money into a vehicle they were already tired of.

Where automation helps, and where it does not

This is the part where stores usually say, “Our advisors already do that.” Some do. Most do it when they remember, when the lane is not slammed, when the customer is pleasant, and when the used car manager happens to be available. That is not a process. That is luck with a name tag.

Dealers using platforms like AutoRelay are trying to make the first touch consistent: identify likely buyable service vehicles, send a timely SMS, ask the customer if they would consider selling or trading, and route the warm replies to a human who can actually make a decision. The software should not appraise the car in a vacuum or replace the manager. It should keep the store from missing the 72-hour window when the customer is already thinking about repair cost, payment, and replacement.

That window is shorter than dealers think. Once a customer leaves with a big estimate, they start shopping in fragments. They check values on their phone. They ask a coworker. They look at payments. By the time your BDC calls two weeks later with a “we’re interested in your vehicle” script, the conversation feels stale because it is stale.

Pull this report before changing anything

Do one useful audit. From your DMS, pull the last 90 days of customer-pay ROs for 5- to 9-year-old vehicles. Add repair order amount, declined work, mileage, last visit date, and whether the customer has purchased from you before. Then have your used car manager mark which units they would actually want at the right number.

Your target metric is simple: buyable service vehicles per 100 customer-pay ROs. Track how many received outreach, how many replied, how many got appraised, and how many you bought. If that funnel is blank today, you do not have a loyalty problem. You have a visibility problem.

Dealership Vehicle Acquisition Insights