AI-powered technology aims to help dealerships avoid missed calls

McKenna Auto Group, which has eight dealerships in California, activated Brooke in September 2021 after the group’s BDC experienced turnover and dropped to two full-time employees. That first month, Brooke set about 400 appointments, though that has stabilized at about 12 appointments per day, or roughly 360 per month, now that the BDC has been staffed up to six full-time employees.

Employees initially were concerned that Brooke would replace humans and thought they had to prioritize incoming calls for fear of missing them, said Alexandra Issacharoff, McKenna’s BDC operations director.

Brooke “allows BDC people to spend more time doing outbound calls,” CFO Greg Stolrow said. “They can do that and not worry about calls not being answered. The phone doesn’t keep ringing behind their back.”

Numa also can serve as a supplement to dealership employees, CEO Tasso Roumeliotis said, adding that “the human should answer first, as long as it’s kind of appropriate to do so.”

Numa was founded in 2017 as a messaging tool serving multiple industries, from restaurants to salons. Yet the company noticed that its most avid users were auto dealership service departments, even though Numa didn’t actively market to them.

So early in 2021, the company pivoted to solely focus on automotive, Roumeliotis said. Numa picks up missed calls and can message customers a link to an appointment scheduling tool or answers to basic questions, such as dealership hours. If a consumer leaves a voicemail, Numa will transcribe it and send the message to an employee.

As of March, Numa was in 100 to 250 dealerships after its relaunch in automotive a year ago, Roumeliotis said, adding that the company had raised $14 million so far from investors that include Google’s Gradient Ventures.

For BMW of Bayside, Stella has helped reduce call times for setting appointments to two and a half minutes on average — a full minute less than when the BDC handled calls, Foss said. Monthly BDC costs also are lower — roughly $3,500 to $4,500 on average, compared with nearly $10,000 before the dealership introduced Stella, he said.

“The customer experience demands that we reinvent ourselves, and realize that we’ll never want to pay the freight in the training and the turnover,” Foss said. “It doesn’t pencil anymore.”