Car Sales, CX and AI with Javuan Banks, Car Sales Agent, 42M+ Likes on TikTok

(upbeat music) You're listening to Practically Tomorrow, a podcast produced by GoTo that digs into practical, ready to use strategies for making the next big idea work for you today. Each episode breaks down an emerging tech trend in AI, customer experience, security, and more to help your entire organization navigate this fast evolving world. With that, let's jump into Practically Tomorrow right now. Welcome to Practically Tomorrow. Today we're really excited to have our first automotive specific podcast. We're gonna be talking about cars and the impact that that has on customer experience. Our guest today, you've almost certainly seen him online. He has over 700,000 followers on TikTok, 250,000 followers on Instagram, a massive YouTube audience, Facebook followers, but more than the numbers, he's someone who actually lives this stuff day and day out. He's a car guy. He's a sales agent with the mere autos of Dallas. Welcome to the show, John. Thank you so much for having me. That was an awesome intro. No, we're excited to have you here. And we're both here in Dallas, Fort Worth area. I got to meet you briefly at the NAD show. Why don't you give us a little bit of your background before we kind of get into what CX and what that means to the automotive industry? Of course, man, of course, thank you. I am from St. Louis, Missouri, moved out here to Dallas. I want to say about four years ago and I started out selling Nissan's, I believe it or not. It kind of just built my way up and one day, I just told my friend his name is Bellamy. Let's go viral today. And when I was outside and made a skit, and we told our manager to get in the skit, we're like, come on, man, like we're gonna go viral. He's like, no, I'm not gonna get in it. And it goes viral. It blows up, so we actually call our shot like Babe Ruth, you know? And from then on, we just kept making videos about the buying experience and like different scenarios. We've experienced in the dealership and it kind of just took a name for itself. So I sell cars and I bring the fine and comedy inside of the automotive industry 'cause it was neat in that at that time and kind of just trying to change that narrative. Now that's awesome and it's refreshing because, you know, so much of the people always try to do things the way that they were always done previously. And in today's world, you know, A, people wanna have fun, they wanna learn, they wanna get the content and understanding, but they want it in their own ways. And it's actually kind of similar to some of the things that we've built with GoTo, maybe we'll get to them here in a little bit, but letting the end user choose the channel that they want to engage is super powerful. And you see it, I mean, if you combine your total, a follow account, it's well over a million followers today. And this is a niche that you're focused on the automotive space. You're not just creating broad content out there. And so what this is really exciting about is that, you know, when people are looking for cars, they're finding you, the dealers, they're finding you, the employees, the service agents, and everyone's there. And so, you know, it's just fascinating to see how it's changed. And, you know, as we kind of get into the buyer experience and what's changed for them in auto, you know, we were talking about this earlier, is that I've been talking about this idea quite a bit lately that, you know, today we're finding that buyers, patients, people looking for new cars, whatever, they don't compare the auto dealer or the dentist office to the auto dealer or dentist office looks more close to them. They've been working these experiences around the best experience they've ever had. We were talking with someone earlier to drove, you know, flew and drove 500 miles back and said he would go back to that dealer again, just because of how good that experience was. And so I'm not gonna just, you know, I'm not gonna go to a new dentist just because one opened up. I'm gonna be loyal and stick around. The challenge that we see over and over again is that creating those experiences in today's world is very, very difficult. And when you think about, you know, some people experience anxiety when they're looking for a new car because heaven forbid, you know, someone's calling me 15 times a day when I would rather text or email or chat or others, you know, they'll make the decision and where they want to buy it from based on those types of experiences. And then on the other side, once they buy the car, people don't realize they know it's self evident that, you know, I'm only gonna buy a car between every four and seven years on average in the United States, but I have to get that car service, oil changes, tires, accidents happen. And so when it comes to that, you know, my question for you is like, what does the truly connected customer journey look like for you? From the first online search, all the way through the service appointments, what does that look like? And how far away are you seeing dealers from being really good at this today? - Yeah, that's a great question, man. So from the start of it, it all starts online, it all starts online. I'm a huge advocate for dealerships and like the people inside the dealerships to try to build a brand online. And it kind of co-exist. So the dealerships should have their brand online and then you should have your sales people and your service advisors should have their brand, but also still attach with the main brand of the dealership, right? Because that's where it starts. They start going online and then they start doing reviews on certain dealerships. They kind of already have in mind what type of car they want or what certain brands that they want. So then they start the shopping and they're looking, but literally they know and they're looking, they're kind of like leaving little chips for the internet to get retargeted, right? And so you'll stumble upon a dealership that is in your area and then you'll go down that role of looking at reviews and then you'll reach out to them. Eventually, once you're closer to that at time, you'll reach out. And I think it's important that dealerships that are winning, they have AI in place to where when they reach out to the dealership, they're immediately given the answers that they're looking for or the information that they're looking for within seconds because they're already shopping other dealerships or competitors. So the one who gets to them first with what they ask for and the information, you'll see them a little step ahead and closer to the sale. Now during that journey, it's now time to go into the dealership. Sometimes you see a lot of times people are buying nationwide. I do a lot of my business nationwide as well, but you'll have the people who come into the dealership and from that moment, that's a whole experience of, you know, trying to meet people inside the dealerships, show them service if you have a service department. I was being a pre-owned store. That's one of the things that I do when I get a customer. I walked around the whole dealership, show them where I watch their car as show them the service advisor that they meet someone who, all right, he changed the brakes on this car. Outside of that, these are good cars. So even if you have to come into the dealership after you purchase the car, I'm not here. There's other familiar faces and you so like you're a part of this system, this team. That's what separates the dealerships that are thriving and using AI to the ones that aren't because it comes down to that customer experience even after you purchase the car. Last thing I'll note is AI has things in place to where it can reach out to these clients and let them know, "Hey, you have positive equity in your vehicle. Hey, it's been three months. Do you want an old change? Hey, happy birthday." You know, those small things that they already felt good once they left and purchased the car, but now it's like, look at ABC autos giving me another text just to say happy birthday. That's crazy. I'm actually, my friends looking for a car. Well, let me see if he want, you know, let me look at their website and send this to them. So I think what AI is doing right now is changing the game and combining that would build on the brand on social media. You'll see those dealerships moving out of faster rate on top of being able to survive like they're coming up years and going forward compared to the ones that aren't. Now, that's your spot on. I think you really hit the nail in the head there with the brand component. It's really interesting 'cause that's what you're really trying to convey. How do I maintain that brand experience? Whether it's the service culture that you just mentioned or how do I convey that when they're not in the dealership with me, how do I make them feel the way that they did during that first experience? And we weren't even planning on talking about this, but what's interesting is, for example, oftentimes the auto, even within the dealership, the sales people will be texting the end user from their cell phone. And that creates a different experience because if that person leaves whatever, reads them, a, that information was insights get lost. To the, they don't go into the DMS, they don't go into the CRMs or any of the tools that exist. But with one of the solutions with this on-me channel platform for our CX for automotive, let's them have that experience where they can be texting and that A, that data stays visible so I don't understand this that can be used in other parts, but B, it maintains that brand quality of experience that a lot of people need to focus on because what we found with our dealers and we're in a big percentage of the rooftops is that, you know, it's everything that happens between the big sales is what matters and how do they feel in between them? A, it's a revenue driver for the business. Many dealers are focusing more on service because it drives them out. drives additional income for them. But if they screw up in that middle time period, that really, they're gonna go buy their car from someone else. And that is a big ticket item that a lot of people have to think about. So I'm curious kind of what your thoughts are in terms of how, what other things should people be thinking about in terms of the brand and how technology can play a part in that? - Yeah, so I think one thing that these, what you should be thinking about when you're building a brand is one, what image am I trying to portray, right? Like if it's Mercedes or if it's Porsche, obviously like that's luxury. So you'll be catering to a different type of audience and what you're putting out will show that compared to if it's, you know, you're everyday like a Toyota or a Honda, that's a different, that's a reliability. That's a comfort type of brand to wear. That's more so, it's two different type of outlooks, but the key is social media and AI because one, social media, what then allows you to do is get in front of way more people at way less costs. Just plain, plain as simple. Two, you have full control over this. So a lot of people, they run ads, well brands and dealerships, they'll run ads on these platforms. You'll see, let's just say ABC Motors comes across you're watching YouTube and then you got to add to come check out their dealership. I think that's amazing, but I also think a step further if someone who's interested, let's say a Nissan, you saw a Nissan ad watching YouTube, if you're able to click on that dealership's YouTube channel and see a salesperson that, hey, I think I want to work with him. Oh, they speak Spanish. My mom only speaks Spanish. Let me go to that dealership and I'm asked for him because I was watching him on YouTube. Mind you, social media isn't going anywhere. So I'm a huge advocate for this. And then AI isn't going anywhere. Like now that it's been introduced, it's only going to get better like come 20 30. You know what I mean? So it's like getting in now because it's such the, it's still the sweet ages. It's like the best way I could put it is like when email first came out, people thought it was dumb. Now email is amazing. When the internet first came out, people thought it was dumb. Now they think it's amazing. Live streaming, nobody understood it. Now you see some of the biggest live streamers ever. Right. So AI is in that space right now. So where if you know how to utilize it and you have a business and you implement it correctly and it fits within your brand. And the next coming of years, it'll be 10 times like a head compared to the dealership who's now trying to get into AI. And it's already going to be, it's going to be another thing. It's going to be another new thing that you got to adapt to, you know? No, I completely completely agree with you. It was fascinating. You know, you came by our booth this year and then a DA. We had a little speakeasy going. And it was really interesting because we've been going for a while. But this was one of our bigger presences for where we've been in some time. And a few years ago, if you go there, there was, there's nothing about AI whatsoever. And now, you know, you go, you go and an ADA felt like an AI conference. That's all they had. That's all they thought there was AI. There are different AI software. Is this great? It's only getting bigger, man. It's such a untapped space that has so much more room. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's, it is. And I mean, obviously, I'm selfish with go to, but it was interesting to see, you know, how much that shift has happened just over a couple, a couple of years. And you know, one of the things that I like to talk about is, you know, we can say, there's a lot of things, you know, there's a certain team doubt is, they are going to come take my job. And you shouldn't be worried about that. If you are like upskill, learn, go and, and, and the more focused on other areas. But I think what's important is the real thing that AI is doing is allowing people to focus on more important tasks. Right. You alluded to the positive experience and the proactive outreach from AI in terms of, hey, you've got positive equity. You've been ions to new car. Maybe you should do this. You know, one of the most important things that I think is important is, you know, we alluded to before every principle knows exactly how much the call is. So they can very easily understand how much a missed call is. And unfortunately, we, we aren't robots. We can't work 24 hours a day. So when we think about after hour calls, surfacing, you know, customer sentiment, after an interaction, you know, flag service opportunities before customer realizes they need something, you know, we're seeing this shift for AI's act. It's not only getting rid of the media tasks, but it's upstilling, you know, the labor force daring call to help them with those things. So we're using, you know, some areas that AI is really helping move the needle and in dealership communications right now. And what's separating the dealers that you're talking to from getting real ROI versus the ones that are just kind of stuck in pilot mode trying to figure this all out? Yeah. And so like one of the biggest things that I see that I've seen like make a huge difference with AI is what what I talked about a little earlier is the response time. It's gotten a couple like it literally feels like you're talking to someone. And I've also seen that a lot of things go down now. You'll have your outliners, but a lot of things go down in text message. Text message email, but me being a guy on the ground selling cars, a lot more deals are being closed through text message. That's just where people are comfortable. They don't have to go on the phone. It's just easier for them to send that text. And what AI has done that I've seen is when a lead comes in, they're automatically reaching out to that client, even no matter what time it is, by the way, no matter what time it is, they're automatically reaching out to that client. And there are some tools that allows you to even send like it'll send over listings of certain inventory or they're inquired on a certain vehicle can send that listing to them. Like it's it's got absolutely insane. And so what that moves the needle on top of that. Everyone in the car dealership has like a bunch of things, especially car salespeople, but so what's text and managers and GM's have so many things that they need to do. And then there's your day to day to task that you have to do to keep the whole thing running. So those things is just calls from a salesperson's perspective, sending out calls, text and emails. Every dealership for the most part has a quota for their salespeople. You need to hit 30 calls, certain amount of text, certain amount of emails for your day to be considered a good working day as a salesperson to keep generating leads. So with AI, you can send out, you know, 30, 40, 50 text messages or you let's say you've got 20 people coming into your service department and you can send out 20 text messages to those people with their names saying, Hey, I saw your, your bringing this car in for service. Will you be interested to stop in and taking a look at some new cars like we are offering top dollar for for trade-ins right now? You just reach 20 people in the minute and you're probably actively selling a car right than in there, but you had AI do that for you and generate it the business for you while you're getting dealt with business right in front of you. So I've seen that be insane and then you can usually track that like that customer came from from this and then how much did that deal make? And, you know, I sell, I'm in a sprinter man right now as you're, because I'm literally at the dealership right now. I thought so I'm in the sprinter man. These sprinter man are huge. So it's like, if AI was able to get someone interested into this sprinter man and they purchased it and I didn't reach out to them, the AI did it. That would make, that would pay for the AI for like three months if I was to sell this sprinter man, you know, right now off of AI. So the ROI would be insane, but depending on what cars you're selling and what inventory it is, that'll all kind of fluctuate. But with AI, and if you're tracking it correctly, you'll absolutely be born the other dealerships out of the water who aren't using AI. It'd be a clear day. Yeah, I mean, you're spot on. I think one of the things that I talked about quite a bit and I love that, you know, sometimes I even just get like dial in to just go to AI tools and AI receptionist. But even the things that you're talking about with the DMS and the other AI solutions that can, you know, go into that are built into some of those like techion and others. Like when one of the big things that's really exciting for us is because of the channels that we service, right? We have the voice we have, you know, the text we have all of the typical channels you look at, what's happening? The goal there is to make the dealership the sales agents time as effective as possible. So not it's not just the AI. And I think one of the big things, you know, we've talked about is like you don't want to bolt it on. You want to built in. And so when you look at the capabilities and into the lost data, the unstructured data of SMS, right? There's a lot of insights that could come from that. So you want that data being fed to your DMS and then you want it to be bubbled up so that whatever channel I might, you know, I might have called the first time, but I'm on a phone call all day long. So if it's easier for me to text you while I'm doing that, but it doesn't matter which channel we've engaged with, you have a complete view of the entire customer journey with those solutions. It becomes incredibly powerful. And I think that the key kind of change from AI being perpetual pilot mode with the unstructured data was those purpose built integrations because you don't want to have to log into five different things. You just want to go into your solution. let the backend handle all of it. Use the right channel and make it as seamless for the customer as possible. - Right, it's that. I mean, you guys have gone as an absolute game changer, honestly. - All right, you know, it's really exciting. And the numbers do speak for themselves, I won't go into too much detail, but we have a greater than a coin slip win rate right now. And what really excites me about that is it means we're building solutions and products that are resonating in this industry. And we're not, when we say we're vertically focused, you can go look at our integrations. I'm not gonna say them all now, but we've been purpose built to really solve the challenges that the auto industry is facing. So, you know, when we think about, you know, we've covered a lot of this AI conversation today. And it's really exciting to see how everything's coming together in terms of all the functional areas to provide these seamless customer experiences into end and what AI that actually works versus kind of just being presented for a lot of dealerships. For a lot of dealerships, the challenges and vision, I think they get it. People are seeing you alluded to it very, very well. The ones who get out and start first or the ones who are going to maintain that leading continue to accelerate. The challenge isn't do I need to do this. The challenge is where to start. And there's a lot of people that are feeling overwhelmed. So, if someone is, you know, listening right now and thinking we need to modernize, I don't know where to begin. What's the one thing that you tell them to do this quarter to start getting down this path? Reach out to go to. That's what I, that's definitely why. But I would say like, anyone just looking to get started down this path is one just seeing where you are falling short. Like try to plug in that area of, where are you missing the most business? And then it usually stems to one or two different things. Like, I think with us, we brought it all the way down to response time and video. And so those are two things that, you know, AI could help with video being one of them. Because one thing I like to do, like I said, nationwide business. So a lot of my people aren't physically in the store. So a lot of video has been taken, you know, from my out of state customers. So I'll do video. I have a video walk around of the entire dealership. One that I can send to, you know, a reroute, I don't have to remake that one. And another one would be of the vehicle. So sometimes I'll go out there and I'll shoot it myself. There are other times where we have a video person that, you know, records all of our videos that has it on the website. So with AI, one is just being able to respond the fastest because I mean, Dallas is just one of those markets to where like it's not like, I'm the only dealership around, you know what I mean? Like you can find 10 different esastor, send different Toyota stores 10 minutes from each other in Dallas. So it literally comes down to response time. I knew that's where we were losing and that's where AI helped us. And then being able to send video as well of myself, of the vehicle, or at least grabbing the link to the video and getting that sent over to them as quickly as possible. And so there's a multiple different platforms, you know, out there that she can, that I'm sure people will go down the rabbit hole when they're starting to search. But we're here at GoTo, so. (laughing) I say reach out to GoTo. - No, I appreciate that. I think you did the big thing that I kind of want to end with is there's been a lot of conversation out there about AI making us less human and AI kind of being negative. But just talking to you and getting to know you a little bit, AI makes you scale. It gives you the ability to do what you do so well, at a much different level than you could do it before, because you're now able to help on a national stage, you can use the tools that are in front of you. And it's just, it's so cool. Even if anyone who's just listening, when a more horizontal and not just from auto, I think that there are a lot of lessons that anyone in industry, any industry could learn from you is kind of how you've taken the approach of, hey, I'm in this industry, I know this well, I'm gonna go try it. And now you're building out social media. And it's having this massive impact on everything that you're doing. - Right. - So, you know, I just, I think that, you know, what you're saying is simple, it's actionable, but it's real. And so, you know, I just wanna say thank you for joining us today in Javan. Where can everyone find you? I know I said it at the beginning, but why don't you tell everyone? - Yeah. Thank you so much. Now, it was a pleasure being here. Everyone can find me at Javan Banks on all platforms. That's J-A-V-U-A-N and Banks on all platforms. So I know everyone has their different platforms, but I'm on YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, all of them. - You need to go, you just say it's content is genuinely worth your time. It's funny, it's educational, it's insightful, and it's powerful. And it just shows the power of what can be done if people aren't afraid they just lean in and go. And I just wanna say thank you for spending some time with us today, practically tomorrow. And if this episode did resonate with you, please share it with someone who you think could benefit from it, not even in the auto industry, just to think differently and think outside the box of how these tools can really help us do things better, faster, stronger. So I just wanna say thank you so much. And everyone else will see you next time. - Thank you. - The power is produced by GoTo. Cloud Communications and IT solutions that power a world of work without limits. To learn more about GoTo, visit us at GoTo.com.