"There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all."

—Peter Drucker, Management Consultant & Author

Your AI answers leads at 11 p.m. A person picks up the next morning. CBT News pointed out this month that the handoff is where many appointments fall apart.

And there are fewer handoffs to get right. Bain found younger U.S. buyers lean on AI more and visit dealers less, so each conversation that does happen carries more weight.

Pull three to five real conversations where your AI passed a lead to a person. Strip out names, phone numbers, and anything personal. Then run this.

The benchmark built into the prompt comes from Durran Cage of Cage Automotive, who says to aim for a lead-to-set rate of 30% to 40% or higher.

Apollo Global Management's chief economist, Torsten Slok, has a blunt answer to whether AI is paying off outside the tech industry.

Not yet.

In a note Friday, Slok argued AI has delivered zero financial payoff to U.S. companies outside tech. Revenue per worker and profit margins are rising for the “Magnificent 7” tech giants but flat for the rest of the S&P 500. He says mainstream companies are starting to see AI spending as a cost that weighs on margins.

That's a fair question for any store. CDK found 87% of dealership leaders use AI. Far fewer could tell you what it's returned.

Not everyone buys it.

Slok makes one more point worth holding onto: “AI may be a great calculator, but in business, intelligence is mostly judgment.”

That’s where a dealership’s payoff hides. At most stores, AI’s return doesn’t land in one place. It’s a few minutes here and there, spread across the whole team, and it only counts when people spend those minutes on the judgment calls a calculator can’t make. Nobody notices until someone adds it up.

That last row is the one most stores miss.

This week, ask each department head one question: "Where did AI save your team time?" Write down the answers and add them up.

If the total is small, Slok has a point about your store. If nobody can answer, that's the first thing to fix.

Reply with your store’s answer. We’ll share what readers found (anonymously) in a future issue.

The average American drives past 16 independent shops to reach a franchise service drive. That creates 16 opportunities for dealers to lose that customer to a competitor. With mobile service, dealers offer customers the convenience of not having to come into the shop. Not only does this help keep the customers they already have, but they can draw “lost” customers back – by offering convenience.   

Curbee’s platform helps dealerships operationalize their mobile service by sending the right van to the right job, using the right route with the right parts, at the right time. 

But, before you rush to invest in a mobile service van, here are four questions worth asking any platform, Curbee included.

1. “Can my customers book a mobile appointment without calling us?”

Around 37% of all services can be done outside of a bay, which makes the booking menu the first thing to check. Curbee’s Smart Booking lets your BDC or the customer schedule appointments for one vehicle or several, so a household with two cars due for service can book both in one go. Pull a month of your own ROs and count the lines that could happen in a driveway, then ask any vendor whether those jobs are bookable on day one.

2. “How do you optimize routing to reduce technician drive time?” 

A van that does three jobs on one street has a good day, and a van that crosses town between each one has a long commute. Curbee’s smart routing groups jobs and works traffic data into the plan to cut drive time. Curbee can walk you through a sample day on a real map.

3. “How does my tech run a job from the driveway?”

There’s no service advisor or parts counter out there, so the tech’s app has to carry the process. Curbee’s app uses customizable workflows with swipe-to-continue prompts to keep the tech on schedule, and live map views show the office where every van is. A van that drives back to the store for a part is an expensive courier, so ask how the app handles parts before the job starts.

4. “What does launch look like, and who helps when things get tricky?”

Curbee’s success team coaches stores hands-on through the rollout, its automated customer messages set expectations before the van shows up, and its reporting tracks utilization and outcomes so you can see what’s working. It also plugs into Tekion, Reynolds, CDK, and Dealertrack so integrating into your existing tech stack is a cinch. 

Got more questions? Bring them to ASOTU CON West on November 18th, where Curbee CEO Amit Chandarana joins Ed Roberts and Amir Alahwal to cover the real metrics that prove a van is profitable and how to dodge the “efficiency trap.”

(Speaking of mobility…if you’re already in town, might as well grab your ticket to AutoMobility LA, too! Use code MTC149 to re-active their early bird pricing.)

Remember the last row in this week’s table, “Everyone’s day”? It matters whose day it is.

Luxury Presence CEO Malte Kramer argues AI is rewarding two kinds of workers: deep specialists who can tell when AI is wrong, and high-agency generalists who use it to cover several jobs. Everyone in between is getting squeezed.

Paul and Michael dug into what that means for dealership teams on Automotive State of the Union.

Then map your own team with our breakdown and a prompt any employee can run.

Thanks for reading, Friend!