Aug. 14, 2026 | The week’s top stories and Viova’s Benjamin Wenger on AI at the dealership

themYeah, you've seen everything in auto inside and out, online and off.

Um, what did you see at the dealership level that made you think, "There has to be better ways of doing some of this stuff at dealerships"?

To me, it's all about connecting with the customer where they want to be met.

So if a customer wants to start a conversation on your website, via email, via a social media platform, is the dealership ready to have that conversation with the customer? So when I started back in 2011, I mean, everybody had a cellphone, the meta platforms were quite popular but we didn't have TikTok, maybe Snapchat was just starting to come alive.

And you kinda laughed at, you know, I remember the first car dealership to open in the metaverse.

And we were still in this period, certainly from my perspective, of well, you can't give the customer any information over the phone because they're just shopping you.

So you really have to sell the appointment if you're not in front of the customer to bring the customer into the showroom, and then from there you can present them with their trade-in value or a lease price or more information about the vehicle.

And I thought that that wasn't gonna be a sustainable model going forward, and that potentially one day we're gonna see a real disruptor enter the automotive space.

So in my career we saw Tesla come in and take a substantial amount of market share with a very transparent pricing where, you know, when you go to a dealership, they're not using the tools that the customer has access to at home to price out a car.

They have their own dealer management system in place, their own software that quotes the customer.

Whereas at Tesla, the experience that the customer has at home and the c- experience that the customer has in the showroom is identical, and you're looking at the same numbers and the same configurators.

So I said, "Okay, this needs to change.

This needs to be more transparent.

We need to find a way to make it easier for our customers to have access to this information." If the customer is doing 17, on average 17 hours of research before they're coming into the dealership, why are they looking at third party sources for that information and not at a dealership for this information? And the short answer is the dealership isn't providing this information.

So you're looking at blogs, you're looking at YouTube, you're reading car reviews, you're looking at now social media influencers to do all your research.

And now when you're really at the bottom of the funnel, you're saying, "Okay, I'm ready to go to the dealership to go for that test drive." And we have the stats.

The customer goes to less than two dealerships on average before making that purchase.

So why aren't they going to the dealership in some capacity, either the website, the social media, the YouTube pages, to see more information and learn more about these cars? And the short answer is the dealerships aren't providing this information for the customer, so the customer is looking at other sources.

How important is that data, that information, that tracking, that sort of sense of what the customer is doing? How important is all of that to the dealership? What can they do with that, or what should they be doing with that?

I wish the dealership was a little bit more concerned with that type of information.

You know, a lot of dealerships that I talk to, they're, they're maybe at the top end or the group level they're obsessed with data, but I don't feel like that data capture is really permeating through the sales floor.

So even just some simple questions for the salespeople to ask and then put into a CRM or put into a DMS, "Hey, what brought you in today? You know, is it because your friend had this car? Is it because you saw it on the road? Is it because you saw an advertisement for it? Is it because you watched a video for it online?" So just figuring out, okay, what's the source of this customer, and then doubling down on that.

And then if the dealership can spot a trend and say, "Hey, all our customers are coming in 'cause they're watching YouTube videos.

How come we don't have our own YouTube channel?"

Right.

themYeah, you've seen everything in auto inside and out, online and off.

Um, what did you see at the dealership level that made you think, "There has to be better ways of doing some of this stuff at dealerships"?

To me, it's all about connecting with the customer where they want to be met.

So if a customer wants to start a conversation on your website, via email, via a social media platform, is the dealership ready to have that conversation with the customer? So when I started back in 2011, I mean, everybody had a cellphone, the meta platforms were quite popular but we didn't have TikTok, maybe Snapchat was just starting to come alive.

And you kinda laughed at, you know, I remember the first car dealership to open in the metaverse.

And we were still in this period, certainly from my perspective, of well, you can't give the customer any information over the phone because they're just shopping you.

So you really have to sell the appointment if you're not in front of the customer to bring the customer into the showroom, and then from there you can present them with their trade-in value or a lease price or more information about the vehicle.

And I thought that that wasn't gonna be a sustainable model going forward, and that potentially one day we're gonna see a real disruptor enter the automotive space.

So in my career we saw Tesla come in and take a substantial amount of market share with a very transparent pricing where, you know, when you go to a dealership, they're not using the tools that the customer has access to at home to price out a car.

They have their own dealer management system in place, their own software that quotes the customer.

Whereas at Tesla, the experience that the customer has at home and the c- experience that the customer has in the showroom is identical, and you're looking at the same numbers and the same configurators.

So I said, "Okay, this needs to change.

This needs to be more transparent.

We need to find a way to make it easier for our customers to have access to this information." If the customer is doing 17, on average 17 hours of research before they're coming into the dealership, why are they looking at third party sources for that information and not at a dealership for this information? And the short answer is the dealership isn't providing this information.

So you're looking at blogs, you're looking at YouTube, you're reading car reviews, you're looking at now social media influencers to do all your research.

And now when you're really at the bottom of the funnel, you're saying, "Okay, I'm ready to go to the dealership to go for that test drive." And we have the stats.

The customer goes to less than two dealerships on average before making that purchase.

So why aren't they going to the dealership in some capacity, either the website, the social media, the YouTube pages, to see more information and learn more about these cars? And the short answer is the dealerships aren't providing this information for the customer, so the customer is looking at other sources.

How important is that data, that information, that tracking, that sort of sense of what the customer is doing? How important is all of that to the dealership? What can they do with that, or what should they be doing with that?

I wish the dealership was a little bit more concerned with that type of information.

You know, a lot of dealerships that I talk to, they're, they're maybe at the top end or the group level they're obsessed with data, but I don't feel like that data capture is really permeating through the sales floor.

So even just some simple questions for the salespeople to ask and then put into a CRM or put into a DMS, "Hey, what brought you in today? You know, is it because your friend had this car? Is it because you saw it on the road? Is it because you saw an advertisement for it? Is it because you watched a video for it online?" So just figuring out, okay, what's the source of this customer, and then doubling down on that.

And then if the dealership can spot a trend and say, "Hey, all our customers are coming in 'cause they're watching YouTube videos.

How come we don't have our own YouTube channel?"

Right.