Always‑On Engagement: How AI and CDPs Elevate Shopper Experience

[MUSIC] Hi, everyone. Welcome to For the Road Ford, brought to you by Auto Trader and Kelly Bluebook. I'm your host, J. Tira Berry, Senior Director of Strategic Planning at Cox Automotive. And it is that time for another relevant and timely conversation with one of my favorite and one of the funniest industry leaders to cover the automotive trends and hot topics that should be on every modern dealers or OEMs radar like yours for a smoother and more successful road forward. So today, I am joined by Yuri Demitco, Chief Information Officer at Fox Motors. And Yuri is not only brilliant as you will soon find out, but he recently shared the stage with a few of us at Cox Automotive at the Modern Retailing Conference in West Palm Beach that Brian Pash hosted. And I've asked Yuri on today so that we could dig a little deeper into the insight he shared from the panel, Retailing Reinvented, unlocking AI, CDP, and attribution in the shopper journey, just packing a bunch of the automotive buzzwords right into the topic of that panel we did together. But I couldn't think of a better guess to have on is we all closed out the year strong and planned for 2026. And so Yuri's here to dive into how intelligent engagement can aware data and AI and attribution converge and how that's empowering dealer groups and organizations like his to meet shoppers with precision and personalization and purpose. So welcome, Yuri. Thanks, Jade. That's a heck of an introduction. Funniest. So now not only do I have to say something smart, but at the same time, I have to be funny while I said you do have to be a comedian. And I will say I did not know that about you until we were together in Florida a couple of weeks ago. And not only are you as smart as they get in this business, but you also have a great sense of humor, which I'm sure is part of why you're such a great leader. But we're thrilled to have you today. So Yuri, as you know, one of the hot topics at the MRC conference was the shift from first and last touch attribution to getting the full picture now that technology truly allows for multi touch attribution and tracking of the full consumer journey. So I would love to hear your perspective, a dealer's perspective. How is Fox Motors approaching multi-tuck attribution? What have you learned about the real touch points that drive conversions? And how is that visibility changed your marketing strategy? Let me kind of take one step back. You know, everybody keeps talking about CDPs, but really I'm sure we'll go into this conversation in a minute, but everybody talked about CDPs, but the point of CDPs is to in fact capture data and provide those touch points. That's literally the whole goal of CDP. So the approach we take to like multi-point attribution, instead of just looking at the first and last. So the example I like to use is imagine somebody goes on a marketplace, as you I'm sure you are very familiar with a couple of market places, and then they go to a VDP, then they go to a trade-in tool, and then ultimately they submit a form. So in that particular situation, you started in the beginning, which is the marketplace, in the end, which is the form, which you didn't realize that if you just follow those two, you say, well, it looks like either the marketplace or my website form essentially produced the lead and we're in that's a conversion. Well, what really happened was maybe the trade-in tool had something to do with it. Maybe the maybe the linger done the VDP view for 30 plus seconds. Those are important factors taken to account, and if you don't take that into account, you could be literally allocating my needs for the wrong thing. And why did I just give that example, and that's a very simplistic example, because there could be like as we and I know we discuss a MRC like 62 touch points that one consumer can go through. So why did I just give that example? Well, what we like to do is treat our attribution as capital allocation. What I mean by that is we assign weights to different parts of the journey in different actions that are resulted in the journey. So for example, with Brian, the automotive standards counsel, ASC, all those little indicators, we put them into different buckets. And usually what we do is we divide them between awareness, consideration, intent, life contact, appointment, transaction, and ownership. And what we do is we assign different weights to those, but not just across your organization. Because again, if you have a large group, for example, obviously there's a big difference between a rural area, a suburban area, and a urban area. So what we do is change those weights depending on that area. And every quarter, we then revisit them and adjust depending on what worked and what didn't. And the goal of that is to drive your capital allocation. So a lot of people talk about spray and pray, like you just kind of hope the marketing dollars worked, you know, and then when they do, the best part is when they do work, you go, well, no, you know, it's just it's actually my guys, they took care of it this month, and that's why it worked. And then when they don't work, you go, well, you know, it's the toolset, we got to change everything around. But if you don't track each one of those touch points, you don't actually get the full picture. So instead of making data driven decisions, you're making emotional decisions, which sometimes drive you right, sometimes it's wrong, but you can never actually pinpoint what you did. So really just to summarize, the goal is to apply weights, revisit them every quarter, and make sure that different regions of your organization have different weights associated to them because some things may appeal to a certain client base versus another client base. So smart. I love it. Weighted engagement formula is the name of the game. It is the only way that you can truly allocate your entire spend based on return on investment. And you probably heard me say, if not once, probably 10 times at MRC, but I firmly believe that a sale that is attributed to dealership website, that is the new two week to ask. It's what a walk in was in our CRM system, two years ago, five years ago, ten years ago, nobody just shows up with no other spend to get them there at your website, submits a form and happens to buy a car from you. There are all those other factors. So I hope that all of our viewers and listeners are taking notes because if you want to gain market share and protect your spend next year, you're going to have to get the full picture of what drove the customer to you. And as Yuri just said, that recent study from Cox Automotive and proficient using clear void data over a million transactions process last year told us that the average consumer now has 62 touch points across their journey. So Yuri, next. >> If Southmore. >> That's right. That's exactly right. Some age segments exceed 200 close to 250 touch points online before they make a purchase. So let's talk about unlocking the power of CDPs, whether you use a native CDP, like what Cox Automotive offers or you have your own standalone, customer data platforms. I think we can all agree. It's become essential for personalization and operational efficiency. So because I know your organization does all of that very well. I'd love for you to share how your team has leveraged CDPs to streamline processes and then uncover new revenue opportunities. >> Well, to start, we just talked about attribution. That's number one. Having a CDP and a cleaned up data set really does give you attribution. You're also able to enhance the data because when you're talking about CDPs, it's not, you know, like traditionally, when I look at companies and they go, "We are a CDP and everybody is a CDP company now. There is no non-CDP company anymore. All the marketing companies are now somehow CDPs." Well, a lot of times, they start speaking from the term because CDPs hot. So they start talking from the side of, "Well, we'll help you activate." And then when you say, "Okay, how are you going to do that?" They say, "We connect to your DMS and your CRM and we activate off that data." And that's how you know that's not a real CDP. The thing the CDP brings to the game essentially is other things, not just your DMS and CRM data, but also your website data, your any kind of other, at any other attribution, the data and the enrichment of any kind, and be able to combine all that together and actually create a true customer profile. Because that's the custom or data platform is essentially giving you the ability to see what your customer base actually looks like and what each person actually is worth to your organization. What we have done with it, number one is extreme data hygiene. So that's de-duping, which is a pretty straight, you know, that's the lowest hanging fruit, but then vehicle ownership. Because when you're trying to avoid, and this is big and dealer world, if you are a customer of any automotive dealership and then you died, we still litter your grave with about like 40 pamphlets for the 30 vehicles that you didn't own even the time of death. Every person in a dealer's database, if you don't clean it up, officially owns between five and 15 vehicles at least. So that's part of it. The other thing is what I like to use this example, and this is really big, and this only a CDP can bring you this, is the ability to tell that just because somebody has finished, let's say, their sales journey, so they just purchased a vehicle that does not mean you just start doing the ownership journey. What if there is another sales journey to be had? So as just a quick example for this is imagine Jade, you just purchased a vehicle from us, right? And the way we did, we looked at all the attribution, we see Jade, this is what Jade did. Now she bought the vehicle, now we're going to send you the follow-up and yada yada, away you go. Well, all of a sudden, if you have a CDP and you're tracking real-time activity, all of a sudden we notice that Jade is back on VDP views, marketplaces, trade tools, doing all this stuff. Well, by traditional standards, you would be a complete, what kind of idiot would be like Jade? We need to engage you in the sales journey you bought a car yesterday, like that's foolish. But with a CDP, what you get is a true view of Jade's household, and then you realize that Jade has a daughter. And let's say, Jade's daughter is 15 years old. That will tell you a lot. Because now it says, well, wait a minute. Why is Jade looking at used vehicles? Obviously, you could start extrapolating that, hey, based on all this data that we have, we can say that not only is Jade joining the ownership journey, but Jade should also start another sales cycle, which would be impossible without proper hygiene data. - Yeah, subscribe advice. And we don't talk about examples like that, often enough. Car buying is contagious, that's for sure. But I love those points, data hygiene, vehicle ownership, real-time data, updating consumer profiles, and then the service layers that speak two way to the services out there like your website, and then from all of those different tools back in, so that you are communicating with the most relevant and personalized content to every consumer, and every household all the time, whether ownership or purchase journey or a combination or hybrid of both. So next, I think this should come as no surprise, but Yuri and I could safely say, they'll be on the hot topic for our industry right now, the buzzwords, AI. But not everyone's actually talking about how it's affecting them, how it's going into action. So Yuri, the question to you is, how's AI impacting your dealership operations, how are you putting it into action and to work for you? And then can you share some of the examples that you shared at MCRC or others on where AI has delivered measurable improvements in performance and customer experience lately? >> So there's a number of biggest facts. We use it for a number of things, which is actually quite effective. I mean, just to give you some examples, handling internet leads. So one of the things that a modern consumer really relies on today is, that relies on, expect, relies the wrong word, expects to have today, is for the business to meet them where and when they are, and I do mean where and when, that's important. So traditionally, if you're closed, you wait till the next day to start engaging with the customer, if the lead comes in the middle of the night. Well, once we started using AI to interact with internet leads as they come in, what we found is that 37% of our engagement happens after hours. So somebody at two in the morning starts asking questions about a vehicle, we would not have responded to this until the AI. And the other thing is, I think that the other low-hinge through this overflow and service. So when service calls come in, obviously service is one of the highest phone traffic areas in the dealership. We found that one of the big problems we had in our organization, this was only a fox thing, this doesn't happen any other dealership, but apparently, apparently it's difficult to reach people in service. Now, what we actually took a very like analytical approach to this because I'm a nerd, so I couldn't help myself. I actually integrated our entire phone system and was able to say, hey, here's how many calls come in. This is how many go to voicemail and this is how many voicemails don't actually get returned. So this was like a data driven, like a straight up report thing. And we found some really interesting insights and the boy interesting, I mean, horror, what was interesting is we had a location where 80% of calls went to voicemail and just in service during business hours and these were over four minute calls. Just FYI, this is not just everything. In over 50% were never returned. So then we started using AI to catch overflow and to drive accountability for responding as well. So the other, I think, more cool one, in my opinion, was I built a system to take all of our reviews, put them in, have AI conduct like a full consultant analysis, like let's say if you hired like McKinsey or something, some MBAs to come look at it, analyze the customer reviews, good and bad, and then come up with different trends that we're seeing in our reviews. Like what can we explore and try to attack low hanging fruit? Just low hanging fruit. So the one interesting one was a lot of customers were unhappy with warranty, with warranty coverage. And this is like, okay, well, in the normal meeting, you'd be like, well, I guess we need to educate our customers on warranty, like what's covered and what's not covered in warranty. Now, that's great. I think that's important, but it's also, you missed the whole point of this. The other end of this is it gives you a selling opportunity. So on one hand, yes, the fluffy side is, you explain to the customer what's covered and what's not covered by warranty. But what if I gave this information to my finance manager? And then now the finance manager knows that well, a lot of people are saying this particular thing they're upset about because it's not covered by warranty. Well, this is the ammunition. The finance manager can now say, hey, this vehicle you're getting, just so you know, we like to be transparent here at Fox, and we want to let you know that this vehicle tends to happen, this thing happens after X amount of time. And you know, a lot of people think it's covered by warranty, but it's not. So what we want to do is get you prepared for an extra $12 a month, we can get your service contract that will cover this particular issue. So think about what just happened there. On one hand, you provide education, you build rapport and you show transparency and you solve the problem before the problem happen. So the customer no longer feels like they're, you know, in the box as they call it in the auto space, they feel like, oh, wait, so this person's actually trying to help me to prevent a service bill later on. So now you're increasing your finance sales and at the same time, you're, you're making the customer happy. Love it. Incredible examples. And you have given us a lot to think about there. And so I want to shift gears just a little and talk about the operational impact and adoption aspect. And I know that that's the part that dealers and organizations could really use your advice on when it comes to implementing new technology. It can be a challenge. You know, I've heard many people say over the years, like it's hard to get dealers to change what's in the snack machine, much less these big operational processes or adoption of technology. So the question is, what did smarter retailing look like for Fox Motors during your initial adoption period and then how did you align the data, the technology, the processes, how did you get buy in? And what timeline did it take to start seeing real results? So that's a great question. I don't know what you're talking about. Dealers are great about change. Organizational change in car dealerships is the easiest thing on earth. I actually, a while back, I asked Judge G.P.T. His organizational change really that hard. It said yes. And I said, which industry do you think is the hardest? And it told me automotive. So it was a little point of pride for me personally because I think I spent most of my career trying to drive change in automotive. So I think to something you said right there, you used the term large processes, right? And that right there is the first step. I think you need to not attack a large process. I think you need to attack micro friction points, which then will build into macro change. So a lot of times people make a mistake with AI, CDP, whatever. They go, how can I revolutionize the service process? It's like, well, I mean, we're just going to put in the AI tool and it'll revolutionize the service process. That's not how you do it. You try to figure out those specific friction points and you attack them. So as an example, one of the examples I used was overflow. So that's exactly the point right there. The problem is not, I need an AI to answer the phone. What I actually need is for every customer to be followed up with when they have a question. One very, very specific thing that I'm trying to address. And you attack that first and then you build off of that. That being said, I know you've heard this probably a million times. You need a champion, but it's not just a champion. Somebody who is truly passionate, willing and able to explain the benefits of something. So just to give you a parallel to this, let's say you go to a sales team and you go, we're going to have AI do some outbound calling for us. Well, everybody, oh man, the AI will never be able to make outbound calling as good as me and my team here. Sounds good. That's not the point. Because not to beat you, the point is to be able to do outbound calling at scale. And everybody make, well, we already do it just fine. Cool. What if at 435 on a Friday, I say, hey, guys, before you go home, let's do 500 cold calls. Do you want to do that? It's like absolutely not. This is 435 on the front. I want to go home. Really? Well, what if I have an AI do that for you? You see what I'm like at that point? Yes, that's right. Get that buy-in. Great, great example. That's kind of my point is I think it's finding where the people are and be passionate about which-- it's just like selling. I mean, it's the same. You're just selling internally. You need a champion who is passionate and willing to work through these pain points and understands the business. That's the other piece. Yes. So well said. So here he is. We wrap up here. I'm going to ask you a final question that I love to ask. I'll leave my guests, especially experts like you on the ground in dealerships every day. For those looking to gain a competitive edge in 2026, what is your top piece of advice? And let's focus on head of out aligning AI, CDPs, attribution strategies, what should dealers do today to prepare for the future? I think we're at the time of prototyping. I think you've got to try and fail. You pretty much have to fail forward. Don't be afraid to put your foot in the water. I think that let's step one. If you want like a concrete actual thing you should do first, I think you need to get your data in order before you start doing anything else. Because putting AI on top of garbage data will produce complete garbage results. So I think if you don't have an internal resource and you are a large group, you should definitely get an internal resource that understands data technology that kind of stuff. Or if you're smaller or you don't want internal resources, you need to find a partner to do that. I think that's a fundamental thing in today's world. My last thing I would say if you don't start doing some of this stuff now, I think you're already a few years behind. You will be in an unrecoverable situation. So it's more like a doomsday scenario over here. But I think you really need to be willing to fail because we are in the time of technology evolving so fast. Don't be afraid to fail at something and try again and again and again until you find something that works. And then you build off of that. Yes, excellent advice. Don't be afraid to just get started and make sure that data is clean because that's what makes it all work. So Yuri, I cannot thank you enough for joining me today. We are in an era of introducing new ways and reeducation all with the goal of driving more ROI and protecting both our teams and our spend. And so I look forward to seeing you possibly, hopefully, on another cox automotive panel with me very soon at future industry events. And I encourage everyone listening to connect with Yuri on LinkedIn to see his brilliance in action. He always has great advice and great examples and is really active sharing it with our automotive community. So Yuri, thank you so much for being with us. Well, thank you for having me. It was a pleasure. And to all of you, whether you are listening on Spotify, Apple or watching on our Auto Trader homepage, we sure are glad that you're here. And if you'd like to be a subscriber and receive exclusive bonuses of which we will have many over the next few months leading up to NADA in 2026, be sure to visit v2b.auditrater.com/fortheroadforward. Subscribe and be the first to see new episodes, new cox automotive studies and so much more. And as always, I'm your host Jade Tera Berry and I'd like to thank you for joining us for unjaded discussions, aimed at helping you navigate what matters most. So be sure to tune in next time as we'll continue the open conversations with industry leaders, champions and disruptors on what they're currently seeing doing and forecasting is coming next on the road ahead for all of us in the automotive industry. We are always cutting through the noise to drive real results for you.