What is the Real Mission? with Steven Apicella

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SPEAKERS

Kyle Mountsier, Paul Daly, Michael Cirillo, Steven Apicella

Paul Daly  00:00

Are we rolling? 

00:07

This is Auto Collabs.

Paul Daly  00:09

There are some people that you just know are very sincere when you meet them in the first place. And Steven is absolutely that person. I remember just the way he talks to you very intentionally, and makes like very distinct eye contact, I walked away from them. The first thing I'm like, That guy is just very sincere about what he believes and what he does, through and through. Yeah,

Kyle Mountsier  00:29

extremely sincere, very passionate, obviously, about what he believes what they're what he's doing with his company and what he's done before. And I'm extremely interested in in just hearing from him, because I think a lot of people kind of like maybe see him on LinkedIn or see him around with product, but understanding people's story sometimes gives you some perspective. So I'm gonna make sure and dig in on that. Yeah, throughout the interview for sure.

Michael Cirillo  00:55

I've certainly heard a lot of the same sentiment from others throughout the industry. Admittedly, I had not I don't think I've ever met him in person and if I have Sorry, just announced my douchebaggery on the air. But you know, I've been able to listen to him on some other podcasts and you're right there is a genuine just a genuine belief and passion in what he is doing. And so I'm excited for us to be able to dig in more and unpack whatever it is that he wants to talk about right here on Auto Collabs our conversation with Steve Apicella.

Kyle Mountsier  01:36

Steven Apicella, the man, the myth, the legend, the guy that is heralding and carrying the torch, customer lifecycle in automotive, man, thank you so much for joining us on I think today,

Paul Daly  01:51

I think you need to update your LinkedIn profile right now.

Steven Apicella  01:58

Well, it's like your exit to this. This podcast. I love what you guys did. It's so funny when you guys like sing a little jingle. And

Paul Daly  02:07

I don't think we ever told the story of that. Like, we need an exit and and literally, somebody went 123. And we just did that, that. Fortunately, somebody was recording.

Steven Apicella  02:20

I love that.

Paul Daly  02:21

I'm glad that you made it to that. Lose at around 30 seconds in and they're like, man,

Kyle Mountsier  02:28

not not that great. So good to be here with Yeah, exactly. We were really happy to have you on today. And it's been good to get to know you over the past whatever year year and a half that we've just been interacting online and in person. And we've met you now at conferences and and you know what I'm really intrigued, because the one conversation that I haven't had with you at this point is what led you to what might people might see as kind of like the current face of Steven Apicella Strategic DX, Your Dealer Experience, which is very driven by hey, look, we need to look as an industry at the whole of the customer experience, not just the retail transaction. And so I want to go back before that, because I'm guessing there's something about your history in automotive or history in retail or history and consumer experience that has told you like, that has to be a thing that we looked at. Where did that come from? Where has that been drawn out?

Steven Apicella  03:30

Yeah. And I love that, you know, they're the rarely in people's descriptions of this is a straight line from beginning to here. It's a squiggly line. Yeah, Paul, I Think you. And I share this I was a vendor for PDR and I think you were LA Wheel write

Paul Daly  03:44

no Image Auto. I started a company and I got acquired by Dent Wizard.

Steven Apicella  03:48

Oh, it did. Okay. Well, okay. So again, similarities there.

Paul Daly  03:51

How did I not know this about you? Like all of a sudden, cuz I know a lot of PDR guys, right? And they're like, you know, several categories of PDR. Guys, and then the category that really does good are kind of like the patient, right? The patient not like you get to actually it's probably only two types. It's like the one type that just is a PDR Tech because they like living on a pirate ship and they travel around and they chase hail and you know, the whoever is managing the account has to bail them out every morning probably. And then you have the other type that's very patient and discerning and does a good job. So I'm excited to know that about you. I didn't

Steven Apicella  04:27

know you know, it's art really, when you

Paul Daly  04:31

let's bring it down for a second that is PDR stands for paintless dent repair. And in reconditioning used cars. These magicians have a a toolbox of like if you could imagine like, anywhere between like a six inch long to like a four foot long stainless steel rod that they can put in door jams and manipulate dents out of vehicles so everybody can

Steven Apicella  04:53

massage a mile without the bodywork, you know it something I still I love the discipline of Built a Company over a number of years very successfully originated in Chicago, but then spread out throughout the United States. And my journey led me to 2001, where these third party administrators for f&i product started to create what we now call ancillary products. The first one was a PDR, service contractor warranty, really, and when, again, because they had this nationwide footprint, I became really popular really fast in that segment, because when third party administrators started to deploy them, this is not like a mechanical service contract, we just send it back to the dealer and as a roomful of mechanics ready to face somebody that can fulfill it. Yeah, it needs somebody that can fulfill it. And even more. So a lot of times we were actually adjudicating the claim, like, Is this even qualified before it goes to the servicing side of and I was really intrigued by and I thought, gosh, what could possibly go wrong here, more people are going to learn about what I do. I assume I'm going to get paid for it. This sounds like a good endeavor. And I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Again, I honor third party administrators every day. They're very valuable to our industry and providing this important financial work center, which is really critical. But when I started to get these claims, via fax back in 2001, on a thermal paper or roll up the thermo weightless. It's Unbeliev. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, we would receive those even though I had a team of people, I really wanted to process these myself understand how it work understood the process before I deployed it to everybody. And when we would call customers that had filed claims, and we had received this authorized claim to fix a dent, a lot of times customers were pissed off right out of the gate. They're like, Jesus, where have you been? I found this claim four days ago, or five days ago. And I'm like, I'm just the guy to fix your car. I just got it today. So let me let me work with you. And then there were moments where there's one in particular that I remember, just outside of O'Hare Airport in Chicago in January, where I was going to handle a claim for a customer that was upset it took so long, so it's kind of the overflow guys, the owner and I went there to go do it. And when I pulled up into the driveway, there was two gentlemen in lawn chairs and, you know, their their bears gear on waiting to see how I was going to fix this dent in their driveway.

Paul Daly  07:34

Their tailgate, did repair right? into his tool belt, right? It sounds like a Saturday Night Live skit.

07:42

And as I walked out of My stepped out of my truck, the guy enthusiastically jumps up and says, I can't wait to see how you're gonna fix this. In my driveway in Nashville. I'm thinking, Oh,

Steven Apicella  07:42

I'm sitting there watching you as the worst. And they invited their neighbor

07:59

over, you know, like, oh, like, you're gonna come over and check this out. Yeah, bringing the lawn chairs. It's January in Chicago, Chicago. I look at the car. And this is pretty typical. It was the car was sideswiped by a snowplow. And but somehow, some way this customer through his interaction and f&i, his attempt to file a claim with the administrator scheduling an appointment with me and me showing up. He's like he was under the impression that I was going to fix this right there. And he actually his demeanor changed when I told them that this wasn't covered and covered a little bit, instead of being jolly and can't wait to see how this goes. He's like, wait a minute, let me understand this. So the f&i guy said, If I get a dent, you'll fix it. Yeah, I have a dent. I called and filed a claim it got approved. Schedule an appointment with you, here you are. And now you're telling me you're not going to fix it? And again, without being too graphic. Yeah, he's like, What the f are you doing here? And honestly, I was thinking the same thing at the moment. What am I doing here?

Paul Daly  09:10

That's a good question.

09:11

But what I you know, at that point, there's a couple of things that that raced through my mind like a this is really it's a great discipline. It's a great process. It's a great service. It's great for f&i, but why is there so much disconnect between what the what's being sold, how it's being administered? And me showing up to service? What happened in that press process or lack of a process? And I was shocked again, I want to I don't want to be negative towards third party administrators. But I was shocked when I went back and they said, hey, you know, I've seen what the customer experience looks like at the end of this. And more times than not, it's not pretty. I'd like to help resolve it. And the answer I got was, you know, Steve, you're the dent guy. We're the administrator. You Fix dents let us do our job. It wasn't very kind and it wasn't very, you know, it almost felt like for an f&i administrator servicing the claim was a necessary evil, rather than what it really is, is a contractual obligation. So I started down this journey of trying to decipher and figure out okay, what were the disconnected parts. And the further I dug in the further I saw that this wasn't just a PDR topic, this resonated way beyond that throughout f&i and and also within the dealership. So then, you know, I, for years, I was a consultant, people wanted to hear what I had to say. And I was inspired by it, and then finally decided about six years ago to solve the problem myself, and I couldn't get anybody else to do it. I love and that's what led led to where we're at today with developing this technology to connect the disconnected parts that ownership journey.

Kyle Mountsier  10:55

Well, geez, what's this is what's really interesting to me, right? Is my man hanging out in Chicago, Jersey in December, right? He's looking at you going, You've now made me mad. He's mad at the administrator company. Right.

Steven Apicella  11:14

But at his dealer, but ultimately,

Kyle Mountsier  11:17

I don't think ever, like probably three days removed from that. He stopped thinking about you as the PDR. Guy, and, and the and the warranty administrator, and all have his energy and attention was probably focused on the dealer at that, right,

Paul Daly  11:35

where I who I gave my money to,

Steven Apicella  11:37

right, there's no doubt there's no doubt you know, what I saw this, as we begin to peel back, if you think about, you know how critically valuable f&i revenue is to a dealer and it is and it's and to everybody in the food chain, you know that whether it's the agent that brought the products in or the third party administrators, it's valuable to a customer's ownership journey when done right. And is valuable. And there's linkage back to the dealer with loyalty from the customer when it's done. Right. So there's a lot at stake here. And there's a lot of reasons why this is important. And when I look at that, there's a couple of things that jump right out at me and I saw this half a dozen years ago. One is if F&I revenue is so critically valuable and all the associated customer experience, portions of it are valuable to a dealer. Why the hell do we leave all that value to just the micro moment of the f&i menu presentation? That's ridiculous, right. But then even worse, when you have a customer that never read their service, contract or warranty, they'll intuitively come back to their dealer to the Service Drive, when they need service support, they're greeted by a service advisor very enthusiastically. And the customer will say, Hey, I bought my car, hear about some protection products, I need service support. And the service advisor today has to say, what products did you buy from us? It's because they don't know the connected

Kyle Mountsier  13:02

technology. Like it's like and you are,

Paul Daly  13:06

your name is and

Steven Apicella  13:08

it goes through a series of questions. Anybody watching this that understands it or knows it will relate to it and have a copy of your service contract with you didn't know what it's called? Do you have your?

Paul Daly  13:18

Oh, yeah, I think we used to sell that. Did Bob? Did we used to sell this company? Oh, yeah, we did. We did. But but they went to another one. That's way better. So pull the file, right.

Steven Apicella  13:33

Then you see what should have been a golden retention moment, the customer came back on their own right. And it's turned into this frustration. And again, you know, we talk about employee experience and customer experience. This is one of those examples, practical ones. It's bad for the customer, we put our service advisors in a shitty position, that they're not that they're not equipped with the ability to handle that and to be a champion in that moment. When that occurs, it occurs every single day in every single dealership. And the customer when they go through that battery is thinking timeout I bought this shit from you don't you know? And it shouldn't be that way. And that's what again, this lifecycle post sales. We're touching a lot of it right now, which is extending f&i revenue beyond that micro moment. And the way you do that is put it into the customers hands in an app, a dealer branded app that says here's all the products you did buy even through multiple administrators in one digital view so you can see what you have engaged service when you need it. But then by direct extension, also show the customer or the service advisor on behalf of the customer. Here's all the products you didn't buy and give them an ability to look at it understand it and God forbid in 2022 to buy it right on their smartphone. And that's just a piece of what we're doing. But the thing that I see you guys that because I you know I said this before I say it often which is I don't think everything's broken our industry. I'm not that guy. I think there's a lot of great things happening in our industry. Amen. But there are disconnected parts. And one of the disconnected parts is a really critical critical vacancy, which is, the distance between sales and service is, as an industry, we can refine the hell out of all the sales processes. And we do and we should, and we can refine the hell out of all the service processes. And we do and we should, but until you could correct that gap in between, we're always going to get what we get. Yeah. And that's what we're focused on is how do you take a one time transaction and turn it into a lifetime relationship, everybody desires it, but the industry has lacked processes to be able to fulfill it. And that's,

Kyle Mountsier  15:45

dams have been asking for this. This isn't like it's not something new from them, right. They measure return, they measure first year retention, they measure overall retention, they measure CPO are new retention, all of them have those capacities, but really what they're doing is measuring it and leaving it to the dealer to do it. Or they're saying like, Oh, you got to sign up for this mailer campaign. And hopefully, the people will come back in on the service offers, right? Instead of really creating a relationship with that customer. You know, we talk about relationships, from the sales perspective, a lot, like you said, similar, it's like, the salesperson in the sales team has to have a relationship with the customer, the server team has to have a relationship with the customer. But when does the dealer actually have that like long term bridge,

Steven Apicella  16:28

the bridge in between the two, it's actually a structural problem in our industry to that every dealership run sales and service like two separate companies under one roof. And they basically many times don't even like each other. And what happens is, when the sales process is completed to the customer, it feels like the transaction and therefore the relationship is over. Because they did their job, you sold me a car, I bought a car. And that's it. And then somewhere along the way, somebody tries to pick the pieces up. But it's not only if we communicate with a customer, and there's a big if they're, you know, I've purchased three cars during the pandemic, from three different dealerships and three different processes. And the one thing that unifies all three is nobody's ever contacted me after the sale ever. And that's just real, you know. But then somewhere along the way, you know, whether it's an attempt with a postcard in 2022, or phone

Kyle Mountsier  17:25

pause, paused for dramatic effect.

Paul Daly  17:29

If you could just see his face right now, these guys are squinting, it

Steven Apicella  17:33

is a matter of fact, you know, when I asked this is my challenge to our great industry, to every dealer, to every person in the support community or calls vendors or whatever you want to call us. Is that, you know, is it our mission, to only sell a car and maybe an f&i product or to or to also earn a recurring customer? And there's not a person in our industry that wouldn't say the latter is desired. But that's not what we're earning right now. We're really good at selling cars, whether we have inventory or not. But we're not really great at retaining customers thereafter. And I believe part of it is every single dealership has a Why buy here proposition every single one? How many executed? Why return here proposition? Dang, that's, that's part of the vacancy that exists right now.

Kyle Mountsier  18:25

It's like, Why Why am I here? Why service here? Why return here? Why? Why is it valuable for you to come back? And

Steven Apicella  18:32

I mean, you gotta be able to communicate in a way that people appreciate, you know, somebody has given me this as a reference. I've never read the book, but I understand it's popular, the language of love. It's a relationship book, right. And it's that if you're communicating with your significant other, but how that makes the difference? Well, the same is true between a business and your customer. You know, we can't be sending out postcards and phone solicitations and hope that customers returned to our website that has one page on it related to anything other than selling you a car and hope.

Paul Daly  19:03

And even that page has pop ups.

Steven Apicella  19:05

Yeah. That's gonna inspire something.

Kyle Mountsier  19:14

Don't come back, we just want your car.

Paul Daly  19:18

So you're saying even even that page, you're saying isn't is where you're going to say is inspired by what

Steven Apicella  19:26

it does. And we wonder why people don't come back. I mean, if those are the methods, if that's the language of commerce that we're doing with our customer, postcards and phone solicitations, and a one page on a website that's clearly designed to sell you a car and not to do anything thereafter. While we're speaking our language to those customers and telling them we don't want you back. So

Paul Daly  19:47

I think I think you've done a good job of really framing this problem up well, you know, even the story of how it started and how it came like you saw this problem you felt this problem from both ends. That's right. And you realize like this needs to be fixed. You've you've I think you've, you've painted it out well, what from your perspective? is the solution? Or at least what corner of the solution are you trying to take care of

Steven Apicella  20:13

process, really, you know, connected disconnected parts of the journey with process. So the ability to put into a customer's hand, a dealer branded tool where the dealer can speak to their customer using push notifications, and that random text messages and that junk mail and that phone solicitations, to have a digital rewards program that incentivizes loyalty back to the dealership, for our customer in this very, very critically important sector of f&i to be able to see all their f&i products state, we like to talk about transparency in the industry, but are we really delivering it?

Paul Daly  20:52

To be forced to deliver more of it very shortly, he's a big show

Steven Apicella  20:56

of customer what they bought, give them the digital pathway for service, they don't have to jump through rings of fire give that same thing to the service advisor to solve their engagement problem when the customer comes in on their own, and then create those next touchpoints. Whether that's buying another f&i product or coming back into the dealership by deploying a why return here campaign in a way that people appreciate. And that's that's what we're doing to unify that. So, you know, for f&i, for example, you guys, when I started this, I'm gonna be really honest, I had no goddamn idea what I was getting into, like I saw the problem clearly. I didn't jump on that one. I didn't understand how much of a spaghetti mess it was, you know, it was just, it was all the administrators couldn't solve the problem for themselves, let alone somebody solving it for them. And then the idea of you know, every single dealership, every single one has a digital tool to solve the presentation problem of multiple administrator f&i products. It's called a menu. But what happens after the menu, it's all disconnected. And if you look at today, these service contracts, which by simplest definition are contracts for service, there's no other way to say it. And you look at the service mechanisms that are out there, even by the Titan companies that again, are valuable to provide this this important profit center. Their methods are a one 800 Number phone queues called wait times and manual claim processing. Yeah, they're spending the most amount of money doing it the least desirable way. And that translates to customer engagement, customer experience and employee experience. Imagine being you said with Paul, it's not just a product we have today through multiple administrators, and every dealer has multiple f&i administrators powering their f&i environment, every one. So not just the ones we have today. What about the ones from last week or last month or last year? Right? That we spend that customer? Yeah, when that customer comes in and says, Hey, I need service support, and you're like, I have no idea where to begin. It's not in the DMS, you can't decipher it there. And I've actually seen because I spent a lot of time me and my team spent a lot of time in dealers, where they gotta go back to the finance office, pull a deal bag, believe it or not, and be like, Okay, what did we sell this customer? Who? That's ridiculous. It's terrible. So.

Paul Daly  23:23

So as we go into, as we go into ASOTU CON, we go into this environment where legislation actually may force a whole lot of requirement and keeping track of types of things and disclosing these types of things. And undoubtedly, will will push products like yours more to the forefront, because now it's solving a compliance requirement, actually. Where do you see the biggest opportunity to like the lowest hanging fruit? Right, because it's a big problem. And I think we're talking through a lot of facets of the problem, right? And it's just a big the disconnect is not just like one cord, we can plug in, look at all works. It's very complex. Where do you think is the lowest hanging fruit for

Steven Apicella  24:05

Direct Connection, direct connection to revenue as f&i they know it right, if you ask any dealership, how critically important is f&i revenue, they'll say, essential, and that what's great about that is it was essential when they had lots of inventory and when they don't, yeah, it's always been a critical cornerstone. And I think when we look at innovation, I think when we look at what we do is does it transcend the moment? Like we don't know what the future is going to bring? Are we in a recession or not? Like the experts don't even know, right? Are we gonna have inventory or not? We can debate about that. But this is the kind of best practice that will resonate, no matter what the economic or regulatory landscape is. It's just a smart, it's a missing piece. It's a vacancy. Let's fill it. And when we take a look at f&i, it's amazing, the segment does as well as it does think about this. as critical as that is when a customer enters whatever the f&i environment is For the first time, they're learning about these 6 7 8 products that they've never heard of before. And they have to make a decision right now. Yeah, they don't have any time to really dig into it. It's just they're going to make a gut decision about if this makes sense. And here's the worst part though is a customer may be interested. But after that three hours slugfest to buy a car.

Paul Daly  25:23

I just, I just want to go, just let me go,

Steven Apicella  25:25

like, get me out of here. So whether it's time constraints, fatigue constraints, T, funding constraints, whatever it is, customers walk out, and these products are never accessible to them, again, by the dealer, somebody else is promoting it. But the dealer loses their opportunity. If they don't get it in that micro moment. Why does that exist? And it doesn't exist because the dealers desire it to only reside there, the process has been missing. You can't have a service advisor do it, because a service advisor would first have to know what you bought.

Paul Daly  25:58

Yeah. That could be I mean, that could be years ago, that could be several administrators ago. Exactly right. It's not even the last one or the current one, that could be three because you know how it goes like new deals come up, good salespeople come in, right. And all of a sudden, you're switching packages,

Steven Apicella  26:14

and I'm gonna underscore underscore, it's only part of our platform, but it's a critical part of our platform is what we do in an instance, take that same customer that organically came back, hey, about my car here about some production practices need service support. With our platform, a service advisor can say no problems scan the VIN barcode, we hit all the API's related to their vendors to show the service advisor what products the customer purchased, and give them a digital pathway to execute that service without the phone call and the call hold wait time and all that stuff and a manual claim process.

Paul Daly  26:48

I think one of the most critical pieces of that is the confidence that the service advisor can exude because they know the answer is right there.

Steven Apicella  26:57

And the f&i manager that knows that this stuff is real, and it's not snake oil. And when he actually needs service, I'm not going to have a service advisor running in my office asking me what the hell did we sell this customer? That's right, it builds confidence with everybody, internally and externally, right. But then imagine if I can show a customer service advisor for the first time in the industry, which we do everything that customer did, by even through multiple vendors in one view, then we can uniquely and very powerfully also show both of them, everything that customer didn't buy, and give them that digital pathway. So click to purchase it. Yep, it's great. Most of these are that are occurring. One last thing is and this is what administrators should be aware of is administrators and dealers. Most of these sales that are happening after the customer leaves happened in the first couple of weeks. Customers want to protect their vehicles, they're just don't want to be forced to make a decision in their mind into it.

Paul Daly  27:54

Absolutely. Good. Look, we're out of time today for the show. But I am so excited to spend some time together in Philly. If you're just listening to the podcast, I'm wearing a full on authentic Eagles jersey that has a number 22 on it. And the back says ASOTU CON. Because Steven was like I think I know a gift that will be appreciated. So we're having the event in Philly, you're going to be there in person, you're going to be there to answer questions and also listen and learn. I can't wait to hang out in person. Thank you so much for contributing to this community and spending some time with us here today.

Steven Apicella  28:30

Thank you guys for creating the community. Glad glad to be a part of it. Thank you.

Paul Daly  28:38

The fact that he started in the same industry that I started in just blows my mind the fact that he built a PDR company, and then realize the customer experience problem through being a reconditioning technician and decided to change industries in order to help fix the broader problem. I was like,

Kyle Mountsier  28:58

It's my man, it's kind of ridiculous, actually, that you started a PDR company and recognize the content creation problem. He starts a PDR company and recognizes a warranty application problem, but they both serve customers. Absolutely. You're like the same person. Yeah.

Paul Daly  29:15

I didn't tell you he's my dad.

Kyle Mountsier  29:20

No, and not just that, but his care for the whole of the customer lifecycle is really important for our industry to pay attention to, because when you can go from i do paintless paintless dent repair to Whoa, look at what's happening across the spectrum, integrated partners, customer journeys, the way that people feel about our industry, that it all impacts and this is what I this is what I love is like, I don't care if you are a lot attendant or a receptionist or an accounting personnel or general manager or an owner of an industry partner tech company. Every single one of us is in acted by the customer journey in our industry. And so we all should be solving to that, even though we've got maybe this sliver that we're paying attention to that looking outwards and going, Oh, everything's connected. This

Paul Daly  30:14

is without a doubt. Yeah,

Michael Cirillo  30:16

let's not overcomplicate it, but let's not oversimplify it, either. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, and there's, and I'm not suggesting that's what you guys are saying. But you do see a lot of voices out in the industry that are like, Oh, well, all you got to do is train your people better, right? And, but maybe that, you know, like, there's just so much to unpack in that one thing. But I love to your point, how he's able to start from somewhere, see the bigger opening and move towards it. And that just shows the scope of how great the retail automotive motive industry is. There is so much opportunity here, which is one of the reasons why it makes I just am so passionate that the greatest people I've ever met are right here in this industry. And this is the greatest industry on planet Earth.

Kyle Mountsier  31:05

And that starts the next 30 minutes of our podcast because we all have comments about that. No, I just wanted to man, thank you so much for spending some time with us getting to know Steven Apicella for Michael Cirillo, Paul Daly and myself. This is Auto Collabs and we'll see you next time.

31:21

Sign up for our free and fun to read daily email for free shot of relevant news and automotive, retail media and pop culture. You can get it now at asotu.com that's ASOTu.com If you love this podcast, please leave us a review and share it with a friend. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you next time

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