The Secret to 5-Star Dealership Experiences with Jean Reitelbach

Speaker A: If you aren't getting that connection point between what's said and what's executed, I always say that brand is brand and it is only as good as the connection point where it meets operations.

Speaker B: Welcome to the Sensei Playbook, the ultimate podcast for the automotive industry. Each week we dive into the success stories and best practices from industry leaders who put customer experience first. From driving repeat business to earning coveted referrals. Discover the tools and tactics that set the best apart. Get ready to hit the road to success. This is the Sensei Playbook.

Speaker C: Hello and welcome to the Sensei Playbook podcast. I'm Chris Nelgrove. Today I'm, um, super excited to welcome a guest with over 12 years of automotive marketing experience. She's worked on the executive leadership team at Scott Auto Group, leading brand strategy for dealership acquisitions, digital launches, and award winning franchise presentations. She's a brand marketing strategist, voice of the customer specialist, and customer experience marketing consultant who believes that in the dealership business, success is truly a team sport. So without further ado, please welcome Jeanne. Did I get that right?

Speaker A: Reidalbach. So I know that was a gift from my husband. It's a hard one.

Speaker C: To the show. Jeannie, thank you for being here.

Speaker A: Thank you.

Speaker C: So let's dive right in. So tell us about your current role and then we'll go into the past a little bit. What's going on right now?

Speaker A: Right now I am offering myself as an independent who can come alongside an organization who needs bandwidth. They may be working on an initiative or they may have brought on someone to be in that brand role, that marketing and advertising role, but that person may need a little bit of assistance in a higher level because we are being pushed into a more technologically savvy kind of modern dealership role. So that person could bring the right skills, but maybe not all of what they need. So I could be alongside them. Almost like through my years as the professor, the hands, when I need to jump in and move things forward. I decided that I wanted to transition out of my executive role and to move back into the work that I was doing prior to joining Retail Automotive, which was that independent person who was a subject matter expert and could bring that to a team when they needed it, shake hands and move on when we're good to go.

Speaker C: And I want to learn more about your transition because you transitioned what, 12 or 13 years ago from a traditional marketing role. What was the biggest differences that you saw in the automotive marketing?

Speaker A: There was some lag, and I think that lag was from the Perspective of understanding how to leverage technology in such a way so that it was useful to the team but it wasn't dependent on producing the results without recognizing it's the people using the tools. And so there was a lot more understanding of uh, technology as tools versus that heavy reliance on it to move that needle. And that was some learning on my part because uh, there's not too many places where it's a 30 day month to month. So that creates this kind of almost anxiety, almost like you have to find this secret sauce or this hidden thing to help you rather than understanding. Like it really is an incremental build of a really good strategy and understanding that growth happens on a trajectory and so each month should build on the other. And it takes really great leadership, really strong team leads to keep that 30 day cycle in perspective. Whereas I know that a lot of the industries I worked in which I can in healthcare and in trucking, actually heavy hauling in, I was with an, a subcontractor with an agency for a while. Like there weren't those 30 day cycles that brought almost reactive versus proactive.

Speaker C: Sure.

Speaker A: Uh, so I found that there was a lot of corrective and reactive work whereas the proactive project planning that wasn't as established. In a dealership. There's so many hats to be worn particularly in a smaller auto group that you need to go out and then educate yourself on top of those heavy retail hours. That's a big ask. Sure. Uh, sometimes it is wise to recognize where a subject matter expert can be brought in to create the bandwidth or be alongside those experts in their own subject matter within the dealership and get that strong foundation put into place. And so that was the opportunity that was presented to me when at the time, my husband by the way works at Scott auto Group for 25 years.

Speaker C: Okay.

Speaker A: So actually I've been in retail auto for 25 years as long. So I had really good relationships there. They knew what I did for a living. They knew that I was highly qualified. When their marketing director gave their two weeks, I was then asked to just step in and to help them. So what was supposed to be temporary ended up being 12, um, delightful, challenging and sometimes really hard learning years.

Speaker C: You certainly knew about how fast paced the automotive industry was from your husband. But once you got into it, were you surprised at that race that began every single month? You described it almost as, because as

Speaker A: a wife I would pack the kids up even in their onesies and bring dinner and uh, know that he wanted to stay for his teammates at the end of the month or that he was going in on the one Saturday where he planned to take off, or that we were going to move our family vacation. As the spouse and the family of someone in that heavy, it's intense retail space, you. You have to be a true partner. So I always say this. I say the wives or the partners and the family in general. We're the teammates that just aren't found on the team page. Because when he worked bell to bell, I did too.

Speaker C: So you were well prepared for it walking in?

Speaker A: I was well prepared for it, and I was among them enough to understand it. Uh, for me, it was energizing, and I wanted to add a little bit of control to some of the chaos. So that was where the excitement came from, and it sure did prove to be exciting.

Speaker C: So you certainly had many different strategies that you deployed as the marketing director. What were some specific things that you did in terms of reputation for the store when you first started?

Speaker A: So the first thing I knew that I needed to do for them was to show them through an exercise what was really their market positioning. One of the ways to do that was not just to look at the reports, but also to look at what we learned through reviews. Even at that time, was the perception of who we are. So we knew who we wanted to be, we knew who we were. But were we effective at actually putting that out there, delivering on the promise and then receiving it back as, oh, yes, this was exactly like that was promised. This was thoughtful, this was professional, this was easy, this felt transparent, this felt straightforward. They were helpful. So all those things that you put out there, then how do you really give an analysis of yourself about how you are actually doing, performing what you put out there and knowing it's coming back at you as feedback that says, yes, you're doing it, compared to those who are also trying to do the same, that are within a radius of you, that could really take away your market share if you aren't getting that connection point between what's said and what's executed. I always say that brand is brand, and it is only as good as the connection point where it meets operations.

Speaker C: So you were using the reviews as a barometer of how well you were communicating the brand message.

Speaker A: As one data point, you have to have multiple data points. Otherwise your data points can just tell a kind of myopic story. But it was a big data point. So you have surveys, which you know that's done all the time. You have your reviews in multiple different platforms. Even 12 years ago, as a matter of Fact, one of the things that upset me was, was that we were not for as many years as we were in business. How did we have so few reviews? Like how did we, how do, how are we at 123 Google reviews for our headquarters Honda store? Whereas some of the other competitors were doing much better. And so I could have done the exercise and demonstrated the results, but my decision was to bring them into the exercises. So each one of our team leads in sales and service took a, uh, competitor and I created a worksheet and then we got together and we discussed the results and then we learned what their strengths were, what the patterns that revealed. And we also knew pretty much from our reports where we stood in comparison to them as well. So again, I always emphasize you can't just use one data point. You have to use multiple data points to really check yourself and your own biases or what you want to see. That helped us learn where they were strong, where we were strong, where they were weak, where we were weak. So then we could very much pinpoint where we wanted to go with our operations and then say what we were doing and then see if it comes back to us as, yeah, that's exactly how it felt. It's a feedback loop. And that's what voice of the customer is to me. Whereas a lot of folks may think voice of the customer is just like being a good listener and hearing the voice and responding and dealing with a problem and putting out a fire and resolving it, for me that is a starting point. But you actually have to have an infrastructure for measuring and benchmarking, learning where to go, learning where to focus, and actually creating, uh, operational steps for incremental improvement. I think I learned about you that you believe in. Is it Kaizen?

Speaker C: Kaizen, Yep.

Speaker A: Yeah, Kaizen. So for me that's a huge part of what is the whole voice of the customer. Actionable items that we could put inside the dealership. Now how do you do that? Because each dealership's different and each dealership is sophisticated. And so far as its technology or its person or who's going to take ownership of it, I just think on

Speaker C: that a little bit, pulling the, your team leads into the process, they really did take ownership because if you had just done it for them and showed it to them, they wouldn't have owned it. But that's, I, uh, like your method of getting them involved.

Speaker A: And we teamed up, so they took ownership, I took ownership, we teamed up. And that's where I often talk about trust based cultures. Knowing each other well. Enough knowing your strengths well, enough deferring to one another when you don't know, sharing when you do know in confidence so that you can build relationships and trust and team up. So that a, uh, trust based culture means you look, you've got each other's backs, especially during busy times. And you also learn from one another so that when you have to step in and help, you're able to, when you need someone to step in and help, you have several people to ask. And so in that sense you become a team.

Speaker C: Sure. Do you believe that good CX begins with employee culture?

Speaker A: It's the foundation, it can't exist without it. And that's why I always say, say from the very moment that you're meeting someone and you're considering, will this person extend the culture or will they bring negativity onto it? And that's nuance because even someone who presents well can then become problematic. So how do you figure that out? So from the moment of team building and then even having a measurement and structure in place for that, like we had a, uh, way that we would get together and we had a three interview process and they wouldn't just meet those that they would work under, they would work alongside. And then we had a specific grading system. Like we had 1, 2, 3, 4 and 1, 2, 3, 4 meant something. 4 was like, this is an absolute yes. 3 is benchmark, they can do the job. 2 is there's some deficiencies but you know, the person themselves is a good fit. There's a skills gap maybe that would need to be filled. One is a no. And when you come together and you are each grading people on that and you're asking different folks in. If a service advisor is being brought onto the team, shouldn't one of the service advisor teammates be able to also meet them for the team to make sure that team energy continues and be able to give one of those one through four grades from their perspective. So that is foundation to customer experience. Because you and I know this turnover and team dynamics literally changes the energy of the room. And when that changes for a customer, particularly in fixed operations, when you're walking into the service drive, you're nervous. You don't want to be spending money on repairs or maintenance costs when these cars are so sophisticated. And yet. So you bring that anxiety along with you if there's a constant turnover in a team and there's not that kind of calm sense of confidence and service that you just feel when you walk into just a real connected human, like a human connected place you can feel the difference. You can feel their anxiety amongst themselves, you can feel their tensions amongst themselves. And that brings in then anxiety and tension into the space. So that's why when you are able to reduce turnover, when you are able to do team building so that you trust one another, you want to do things for one another. That's why customer experience goes through the roof. Because I believe that if you had a magic. If I was a customer and I had a magic little window and I could take a peek into how a dealership worked while they didn't know I was peaking, the way they treat one another is exactly the way I know I'm going to be treated as the

Speaker C: Richard Branson treat your employees like you want your customers to be treated. Right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: I had a car dealer ask me the other day how he could reduce his turnover. And I wanted to say go look in the mirror because it really takes an inward look. Right. If you've got turnover, there's some issues that are going on with your culture. So what would you say to a car dealer that asks you that question, how they should reduce their turnover?

Speaker A: I would say to help the teammates get to know each other and particularly in an auto group where you have multiple stores at multiple locations and you would do that by really I just, I just was talking about this morning spotlighting the individuals, allowing them to tell their stories, allowing them to be part. What is a uh, spokesperson for the organization because they are now your customer is your strongest spokesperson. They're the most believable. In my opinion, your second most believable spokesperson would be your team members, spokespersons. So I would say in order for him to improve his turnover that he would start to bring them into the business in a greater degree than maybe their typical role would expect them to perform in a, uh, day to day. And that would mean ask them to participate in campaigns where we're putting spotlights on our teammates. Make sure that celebrations are shared everywhere on all platforms. Make sure that even the work that they're doing for charities outside of an organization is brought to light within the organization. Make sure that when customers go there, they are so used to seeing faces and names and smiles that we all feel familiar to them. Familiarity is a comfort building strategy. So I'd say my friend says inside out the company, inside out the company. And when he says inside out the company is open the curtains and show all those moments, all those extraordinary things that happen between teammates and that happen with customers. How do you figure out the way whether it's video Storytelling, whether it's a picture and a review and putting that everywhere. How do you highlight those moments so that the people that work there every day feel seen and they are seen by the community of potential customers and there's that alignment and they say yes, that's where I want to choose to do business. And that's why you and I are pretty crazy about reviews. Because this is a really good opportunity to do exactly that. If you don't know where you would go with storytelling, you could simply find a review that say I'm a service advisor and I find a review that's written about me by name. So I could make my video about responding to them, putting their spotlight on me, how much it meant to me and made my day meaningful. And I could do it in a way that is still respective of the necessity to keep their full name private.

Speaker C: Sure.

Speaker A: But yet you see how you can do that even if it was just a picture of me and it had a uh, uh, pull quote from a review and then I got to respond to them.

Speaker C: I love that idea.

Speaker A: You know, just get them involved.

Speaker C: I think the video though is so powerful. I'm gonna borrow that by the way, if you don't mind.

Speaker A: Go for it.

Speaker C: Who loves that is awesome. What about conflict resolution? When you had an unhappy customer responding publicly on a public forum like Google is one thing, but going deeper to recover that customer, what are some good strategies on how to recover someone that might have had a less than perfect experience at the store?

Speaker A: I'm going to go there and I'm going to go beyond there. The first step is collecting it. So what we used was when we had a project management system, it was called Asana. And so yes, so what I would do is I would have the alerts come in as emails. So you could take the email and you could email it right to Asana and it could go right into. So I set up a folder system so per store, per department. So now I'm taking everything that's below a two star and below and I'm documenting it per store and per department. And then I'm also looking for patterns. Okay, so that's the first thing I'm going to do. I'm also going to use that to then document every time we've reached out and had touched the customer, whether we touched them in a text, whether we did it through a phone call. So that before I go to do it again, I'm looking and I'm never going to act as if I'm starting all over. I'M going to say, I know that Willie, our service manager, spoke to you. I know that you returned his phone call, that you weren't able to reach him. I'm actually going to follow up for him. And if it's possible, what's the best time today for me to talk with you so that I can listen and learn more? I'm able to do that and have a continuation of care. Because when we're putting it somewhere, we're creating like a case file. And then from that also becomes the actionable items and the patterns reveal where. Then we bring that to advisor meetings, to the variable sales meetings, and we could start to see where are some of our friction points and what can we do about them because they repeated. So for us, we had. I'd call it an infrastructure. You have to have some sort of infrastructure to collect, to analyze, to respond appropriately, to never call them up as if you're the first person calling when someone else has called as well. You want that continue. It's like healthcare, the continuation of care, right? The beautiful handoff. And then to document the outcomes so that you could say what did work and what didn't work, lessons learned, or when it didn't work, what do we have to change operationally so that this doesn't happen again? So that is more sophisticated, I think, than most people approach it.

Speaker C: Yes, I would say so.

Speaker A: Not only that, but we also had something that we called the reset voice. So we had a strategy where we knew that certain personalities didn't always match. That happens with customers. If I missed the mark, perhaps I would know one of my team because remember, trust based culture, you team up one of my teammates that I could say, I didn't de escalate. I think I wasn't able to hit the mark or I might have even escalated. I need you to be my reset voice. And so we team up with each other. Or one of the performance managers would say, I think I pissed someone off. I made a joke and I tried to be lighthearted. It did not go over well. Could reset the conversation for me. And so I jump in as well. So that's another probably good example of teaming up to handle customers.

Speaker C: I think there's a great opportunity that most dealers miss negative reviews and negative experiences. Jay Baer is one of my favorite CX speakers. In his book Hug your haters, he talks about if you turn someone around and embrace them, just sometimes hear them on, um, what went wrong, listen to them and offer some empathy that you can recover them. Sometimes it's a Bigger ask than that. But he says there's a massive opportunity in that and some of those detractors can become your biggest advocates.

Speaker A: Yes, I found that particularly because for the last three years I had as our dealer principal, traveled quite a bit. He was heavily involved in the industry, and so he had a lot of different things to go to as board member or 20 groups and such. And when they wanted to speak with the owner, I was the one. So I took those calls. So I spoke on his behalf. That was like a PhD level in both de escalation and also just really learning like the language of the entire dealership and even auto group, uh, almost learning it as, so what is a dealership business versus what is auto group business?

Speaker C: Sure.

Speaker A: Those opportunities gave me the ability to really learn de escalation. My first suggestion is let a person talk, listen, be very quiet. Sometimes I would be so quiet. As a matter of fact, often this happened. It was like a joke. They'd say, are you there? And I'd say, yes, I'm taking notes. And the other.

Speaker C: You're being heard.

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, and not only are you being heard, I'm, um, taking notes and I'm going to share this with everyone in our next meeting. They understood I was making a promise. Oftentimes I'd invite someone in. So when I got real comfortable with those phone calls by, by the time I was, by the time it was like my second year, I. It was almost like exciting to do. A lot of people avoided them. I looked forward to them to see, like, how can I learn and make myself better? And so I invited a lot of colleagues in to listen as I did it, so that if they heard something that they wanted to try, that was pretty cool too. I did that when advisors wanted to say, hey, can I give it a shot first? And call them. But would you mind if I listen and hear how you do it? Yeah, absolutely. Like, the more people who were our, uh, brand experience teammates, as a brand director, when you're talking about experience, you aren't the thing. The thing is the brand experience. You're just the one trying to figure out how to push it into all the corners and how to keep it alive, give it a seat at the table. So the more people who want to see sign on to managing that process with you and teaming up to do that, answering their own complaints, handling their own one stars in appropriate ways.

Speaker C: Yeah. And there's so many stores that will just put the public facing apology up, but not go into the depth that you just went into and I can only imagine what happened to your CSI scores as you deployed this.

Speaker A: It was exciting, I bet. Yeah, it was great. We had a lot of celebrations because we hit some high numbers that we had never hit ever. And as a team, we were all just really proud of one another. This thing is heavy lifting. You have to commit. Here's the commitment has to be made by team leads, but the execution is typically done by our hardest working customer facing teammates. So we also have to learn how to communicate with one another and uh, get rid of some of that hierarchical attitude that really can screw up what I call the teaming up.

Speaker C: Yeah, it takes the right, yeah, it takes the right team to deploy the strategy that you're talking about. If the management team leadership team isn't bought into what you're describing, it doesn't work.

Speaker A: I used to always say my goal is to reduce marketing dollars. I don't want to pay for advertising.

Speaker C: Word of mouth.

Speaker A: Yeah. This is what I want to do.

Speaker C: Have your customers promote your business.

Speaker A: Yeah, I'm sure. Because the way that in a typical dealership, their pay structure would be, that would benefit them. So like, you also have to use those. I learned it's healthy. I used to hate the word politics and then I learned their healthy politics. Like it that. But there is healthy politics and that means figuring out what is the win, what is the third alternative to a win lose. So when I recognized and shared with them, hey, if you guys could do some of this heavy lifting with me, let's try to take our budgets down for the paid search. Let's try to, let's a B test and turn this off for a couple months. Let's see if it's really making a difference. Because I also, while I was there, brought all of our Google paid advertising in house. So I did that as a practitioner because I had done that for years. So that's another thing that was easy to do because again, your brand experience also informs your market strategies and your advertising campaigns and that also helps you save money.

Speaker C: Sure. Wow, that's awesome. Um, I'm loving the strategies that you're sharing. They're brilliant.

Speaker A: We went one step further and we used Dealer On. For the years that I was there, Dealer on was our partner. They invited me to be part of their customer advisory committee and they had us come to them and demonstrate where we had some friction and talk about some of our wants and they acted upon it too.

Speaker C: Wow.

Speaker A: And so when it came to even advertising campaigns where you wanted it, uh, to land, having instant access and being able to create those landing pages myself and having trust with them was amazing. So I didn't have to put a ticket in. I could get access, go in and do what I needed to do. And that could include it. That could include things like pull quotes and reviews and all of those other things so that I could give a really nice experience. Once they went from a well branded and it wasn't deals oriented. Right. It talked about the experience, um, what they would experience, and then they'd come to a webpage that would offer them the opportunity to see transparently what they were going to be shopping as far as inventory. And then they would see why they should do business with us. And then they'd also see words from other people who did business with us. So that was a benefit.

Speaker C: How did you communicate trust on those landing pages? Using the voice of the customer.

Speaker A: So we really talked about thoughtful and professional as our two guiding lights. And we would take reviews where those words came back at us and we would put them on the landing page.

Speaker C: Nice. Yeah, yeah. I think too often dealers do not go deep enough on the review request. If you look at a lot of reviews, they're very vanilla, in my opinion. Oh, they did a great job. John did a wonderful job. But we like to, in our training, get the team members involved to solicit the why. If you can get customers to explain the why they chose that dealership, why they did business with them, there's gold there.

Speaker A: And you know how you do that real simply, you give them a moment. That's my big thing. That's what I'm all about, creating moments. I talk about all the moments that are created in a dealership. There's so many opportunities to create a moment. When you give a person a moment, they want to tell the story about the moment. They want to use a name, they want to say why it really struck them as different. And then they wanted to say, yeah, that was thoughtful, that was professional, that was amazing. I didn't expect that. Again, it comes down to who you choose to be on your team. Are they capable of that human connection and creating moments?

Speaker C: Yes. And Jay Baer talks about that. And trust talk triggers. He said, don't expect people to have conversations about your company for doing the expected. And I believe the same is true. Don't expect people to leave you review for doing the expected. You have to do something above and beyond, something memorable. When you create a memorable experience for a customer, they're happy to write you a review. But every company expects you to write them a review. Because you did business with them. And we've got to do better. We've got to. Everyone's asking for reviews. I want to ask you about video testimonials, because most dealers don't have them. They're hard to get. There's no disputing that. Were y' all able to get video testimonials from your customers?

Speaker A: There were certain salespersons who could do it.

Speaker C: Okay.

Speaker A: Now, in fixed. That is moving along. That's like a logistics game where. And it's loud, so I have to say no. But there were certain salespersons, certain men and women, who just had the right way of connecting so that ask could be received. And that person, in gratitude for the moment of their exciting car purchase, wanted to do it. And that's why I keep coming back to this. Learn to create the moment. You inherently produce gratitude. And when a human being's in gratitude, they're typically generous.

Speaker C: Yeah. And you have to make people feel comfortable. Like, you stick a camera on those people, they instantly get nervous. Yeah. So we don't advocate sticking a camera in someone's face and going, hey, Jeannie, I need you to open up with your name, the name of the store, what you like best about the experience, and mention my name at some point. Go. Because. That's right. But instead, we recommend interviewing the person about the experience first. How long were you in the market to buy a car? How many stores did you consider? And what ultimately led you to us? And why did you choose us? And get them talking about that experience, Uncover the why, and then say, would you mind doing a testimonial?

Speaker A: Uh. Or who's the first person you're gonna go drive to now? What's the first thing you're gonna do? Where are you going now with this new adventure vehicle?

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: Yeah. The trick is storytelling.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: And so to them, to make it individual to them so that they're almost gushing, they can't help themselves. It's skills training, though, isn't it?

Speaker C: Yes, absolutely. I think it is a trainable skill. Um, without the training, it's very difficult to get. But I love what you just said, because it's about raising that customer's energy. And if you raise their energy, they're more likely to get in front of that camera.

Speaker A: How do you do this skills training?

Speaker C: We go on site.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker C: Yes. We go on site, and we really work with the team. We share the benefit of getting your customers to promote your business, your experience, and we really sell them on the fact that if you do a Great job. It always starts with the customer experience. If you don't do that part right, forget about getting a testimonial. So you better be executing a memorable customer experience that delights the customer. First step in the process is delight. And then once you've delighted the customer and help them get the car, you can ask them for a testimonial. But again, it's that way you ask them, get them excited about the vehicle and then show shift into maybe interviewing them instead of asking them to perform in front of the camera. I like the interview process. Getting in front of the camera and just asking them a few questions. That way they only have to answer. But getting them to share that on their social media. If you do a good job and they like the interview, then they're very likely to share that video testimonial with their friends and family. And when they do, who are they exposing? Who are they marketing for that salesperson?

Speaker A: Big memory to purchase a vehicle. It is a very big moment to feel helpless also if something goes wrong with it and to go into a service drive and to have someone solve your problem. Like I always say, what happens in a dealership is so meaningful because cars make people's lives work.

Speaker C: Yes. And sometimes car salesmen, because they're around and I used to sell cars. If you're around them all day, you forget how exciting of a time it is for that customer. So you got to make sure you raise your energy as they're excited about the purchase.

Speaker A: Yeah. And learn what it is about this particular one that's special because there's, there's a purchase I made when I wanted to celebrate myself and I sent the first one off to college and everyone's older. I don't need that SUV now. That was a totally different purchase experience. And then there's also the one where you're starting a new family. Like when you really get to that art of connection, when you really understand. I love the word alongside. I use it all the time. Whether I'm working with someone, whether I'm presenting, whether I am, um, selling. I am alongside. And so you get to be alongside that person as they're moving through the decision making process for something very big in their lives. That's a privilege. If you do it right again, it produces an extraordinary amount of gratitude, which is high motivate. Huh? Gratitude is a high motivator.

Speaker C: Yeah. You're aligning with them.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Across from them. I love that.

Speaker A: Apple does that. Right. You, they even stand next to you at the counter. They're not sitting, they're standing right next to you. I learned that's for a reason.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: Don't put them at a desk soon.

Speaker C: Nobody knows marketing better than Apple.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Uh, so where do you see the industry heading in the next five years?

Speaker A: It's a wild journey and I think that's because of the shift for digital reach as we're coming into understanding that discovering where you're going to go has changed and the way that you go about searching has changed. And how a company can present themselves is changed. Because large language model, with the help of other technology that can grab fresh content and bring it into the AI summary is really giving the consumers the opportunity to really skip a lot of work and get to where they want to go quickly. So we know that video, we know that reviews, we know that social platforms now are taking on greater meaning, almost in an organic, natural way, and that a person can actually come to their decision without even visiting a website. So now what does that tell you and I? It tells you and I that all the focus is really on the voice of the customer. They're asking, we need to give them. They ask the questions, we give the answers. How we go about that is going to be where there are some winners and there are some that lag behind. So the more videos are done, the more they're posted everywhere. Optimization is this term, I've heard. Um, and the more we create spokespersons out of our internal people, the more we create spokespersons through our review process out of our customers, I think those folks are going to find it much easier to move into this new space, this new landscape where they need that digital visibility in order to get a phone call, a text, the chat started, or just a visit to the dealership. That's my personal opinion. That's what I'm watching. And that's why I'm also learning a lot about search. Is generative experience a, uh, hot button right now?

Speaker C: And I think that the dealers who embrace it and really study it and form a strategy around it are the ones who are going to win.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker C: We're in a post Covid era. Covid was a dream to the dealers, and now they're having to figure out how to sell again. And it's become more competitive.

Speaker A: That's true. Now, you and I know this also. It requires those that are not just enthusiasts, but actual experts. And there's a differentiator there right now. I'm an enthusiast. I'm learning. I think a lot of us are learning. There are some that are becoming Experts. This is where I do believe you may need to start to consider bringing some experts from the outside into your dealership for the short term to very taxed with what is their bandwidth. Right. To learn how to use this to their advantage and also to learn quickly because it is really going. It's here and it's going forward so fast. But you also need the right people who demystify rather than create like too much mystery around it. Because I'm not a big fan of like fear. I don't like fear. Fear is fear, obligation, guilt, all that stuff. Oh, you got to do this, you got to do. That's not the way to go about this. And I wouldn't want them to feel that way because they're already doing some heavy lifting with customer experience. Experience. They need to stay focused on their guest. And they do need some subject matter experts to help them to learn what to do and what not to do without taking the focus off the gas. So this is going to be a balancing act. Do you agree?

Speaker C: Absolutely. And you mentioned before you're studying AI as a tool to assist in this effort.

Speaker A: I am. Yeah.

Speaker C: Talk about that.

Speaker A: Okay, so one really neat thing you can do is you can, you can help to extend the amount of personalized responses that you will give by going and creating, um, you need a paid subscription, but you could take and upload it into a large language model of your choice and you could create a Persona that falls within your brand language. And then what you can do is you can also create through the right prompting, you can create exercises so that someone who's not used to answering reviews can go in there as a tool and learn how to really efficiently and effectively answer reviews in a beautiful and personal way within brand guidelines. In the old days, I'd have to sit next to somebody. Now, if I'm able to build that out, the tool can teach someone who's not as doing something else with someone else. So that's a good example of an actionable thing that you could do where you turn it into a training tool by teaching it and then handing it over and having it ask clarifying questions. That's a really cool prompt, is take me step by step through this process and ask me clarifying questions. The large language model, making the person who's there think deeper, slow down, and think smarter. But if you load it up with really good examples, that's one way to be actionable about writing responses. You can also create templates there that are not templates. That sounds silly. Formats. Formats that will Serve the person who needs to write it again. Remember, you already developed the Persona and teach them how to do it really well, rather than some of these canned responses, which is just a terrible misuse. I would never outsource the voice, the Persona. You could teach someone how to do it, but somebody's got to do the teaching. You have to learn the brand of every dealership you represent, Right?

Speaker C: Yep.

Speaker A: Yeah. So imagine if someone handed you over their Persona.

Speaker C: That's brilliant. What is the. What's your language in our family?

Speaker A: Um, Gemini is.

Speaker C: Huh.

Speaker A: My. One of my kids uses it through a student account, but it's still the paid version. And then for myself, I also have Claude. I love Claude too. Sometimes I will use them to a B test against one another. Sometimes I'll take something like, I'll ask the one to help me build a prompt. I taught the one to be a prompt instructor. I said, you're a prompt instructor. You ask me the questions as I'm writing prompts to help me learn to engineer prompts better. And then as I get better at it, I take that prompt and I'll use it in Claude to do the task I know I need to do. See how it's super fun. I'm a little geeky.

Speaker C: That is cool. Um, that is really interesting.

Speaker A: Yeah. And there's a lot of applications for turning it into a teammate, you know, rather than eliminating a person. I don't see it that way. Say, turn it into a teammate. That makes us all more efficient first.

Speaker C: Sure.

Speaker A: That's really where we need to be, because the magic's in the human to human connection. So if we start to rely too heavily on the tools we're already breaking where the magic happens.

Speaker C: I think some people are afraid of AI uh, replacing their jobs, but they should be afraid of the person that is learning to harness AI as replacing them. Yeah.

Speaker A: All skill ourselves up like a new chemistry project.

Speaker C: It is amazing. So what gets you excited to come to work every day?

Speaker A: Learning. Can you tell? I really enjoy teaching young marketers some of the things that I've learned the hard way so that they can avoid that. I really like to be part of think tanks with teams. That's why I think I really enjoy being involved in project work where I'm not out of place for a long term, where I go in, I serve a need they have, I help them, and then I get to move on to the next thing. And again, as I explained to you earlier, I'm. I'm learning AI very. I spend about. I say two to three hours a day on it since February.

Speaker C: That's committed.

Speaker A: Um, yeah, that, that's important so that I could go from enthusiast to someone who actually delivers value through it, rather than just like a talking head. I see myself doing that. At the same time, I also see myself exploring what's next. As, as AI does change the digital landscape, there are going to be roles, jobs, all kinds of exciting things that are created as a result of this. In the same way that I went through the, the, uh, birth of Google and then the birth of AD. Remember when it was AdWords? Okay. And then Google, which became Google Profile. Now in my experience, technology taking away the need for humans, it created really unique opportunities for cool roles. I want to be positive and see it in that way and say to people, keep learning, start learning. If you're not, just go for it, jump in. Because there's going to be new things. Don't worry about not having a job so long as you're learning and so long as you're committed to the right things. And that is really serving the needs of your family by serving an organization well.

Speaker C: Nice. I saw a post recently on LinkedIn where you spoke about setting a quarterly review for yourself. You call it benchmarking session, is that correct?

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker C: Tell me about that.

Speaker A: So I knew that a lot of times I will learn what I'm doing well, but not necessarily where I need to grow. So it is important for me to learn, uh, on a more regular basis where my focus should be. So long as I'm doing my work, I'm hitting deadlines, I am making things function well. But where can I excel in other areas from a perspective of another person? And so I think if I'm going to be a voice of the customer specialist, I also have to expect that Voice of the customer applies to me too, when it comes to whomever I'm working for, because they're my customer, whether I'm an employee or whether I'm an, uh, independent subject matter expert, a 1099, whatever. So they're my customer. And so Voice of the Customer was about me setting a reoccurring time in my phone. The alarm goes off, I have questions, I answer the questions, they answer the questions, we bring them together and then we talk about them.

Speaker C: Nice.

Speaker A: That's my own voice of the customer feedback loop.

Speaker C: That's awesome. That's awesome. Love it. So I always ask this question and I want to know what Jeanne wants to be known for. What do you want to be known for?

Speaker A: Creating extraordinary moments. And you Know what? A lot of them are small and they're private and they're really meaningful. Whether they're in your home, with a neighbor, with your child, you know, just at night, whether they're big in an organization, creating moments. But some of my most extraordinary moments, they've even happened with no audience at all. I like to say just me even going and pushing through a difficulty, a circumstance, something that you didn't choose but you have to deal with and learning how to approach life and be adaptable and really make sure that at the end of it, you know that you fulfilled your purpose. Because that's the job performance review I really want to knock out of the park.

Speaker C: That's beautiful. Yeah, that's awesome. So where can listeners connect with you and learn more about your work?

Speaker A: I am typically putting out things on LinkedIn. I schedule posts. I tried to stay active and part of the community. I use it to engage because I really enjoy engaging in conversation, in differences of opinions. So someone can always find me on LinkedIn and direct message me. And as I'm very willing to hop on a phone and just even take it into a real old fashioned introduction, I'm all about people.

Speaker C: Awesome. We'll include a link to your in below.

Speaker A: Say it again.

Speaker C: We'll include your link to LinkedIn.

Speaker A: It would be wonderful. And I just want to also express my gratitude and just say you are very generous to offer this opportunity to meet you. I love what you're doing and I'm just really excited for the alignment in what I know is very important so that others can be successful. And I know that's why you do it. I hear that from you.

Speaker C: Yeah. I'm so grateful that you shared your experience, your expertise and your knowledge with us today. Thank you so much.

Speaker A: Thank you.

Speaker C: All right, take care.

Speaker A: Bye.

Speaker C: Thank you.