Customer Experience From Chipoltle to Baseball, A Streaming First, Ditching the Old Indicators for Nimble Insights

SPEAKERS

Kyle Mountsier, Paul Daly

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Paul Daly  00:21

Yo, what is up? It is Monday. I got the day, right March 28. There's snow in Syracuse, people are getting slapped all over. About a few things before we talk about a few things they stopped.

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Kyle Mountsier  00:39

Okay. Okay, wait, you good? No, okay, we weren't gonna do it, but you just made it sound like everybody in the world is getting slapped. Like a whole new thing. You walk up to someone,

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Paul Daly  00:50

this, this right here, this is gonna be the one place on the internet where we don't talk about it. So today, we're actually talking about a lot of things that have been going on, we got a story about you. And some Chipotle, we're kind of going like broad scale, the landscape is shifting everywhere. We're gonna draw a little attention to a lot of different little indicators today. What to talk about first, the fact we mentioned on Friday that we have some new team members in ASOTU. Can't wait for you to meet him. We're also hiring a few new team members for ASOTU. So I mean, we need some partner development help. That means somebody that can really bring our sponsors and our partners tons of value. We're looking for the best event planner, ever, someone that can handle in person live stream, the whole nine, we're looking for a designer, a lead designer, some of that's really going to kind of like take all the design skills sets and all that and like get them all corralled up and take this thing to the next level. So if you haven't noticed, we're rolling. And I just want to mention Steve Greenfield, thank you so much for including us in this morning's auto. Oh man, automotive ventures kind of Intel report, the weekly one, give us a little shout out for you know, get it raising the round of dealer investors. did some work. Gotta release some work on the ASOTU brand tenants. There's just a lot going on this morning.

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Kyle Mountsier  02:04

It's just a lot. Um, it's like every Monday is just we normally get on the phone first thing on Monday, and it's like, you got a lot on your brain. Yep. Got a lot on your brain. Yep. Okay, let's get it going. Let's roll. Let's make every moment count this week. I think that that's that's typical of most business owners. It's like, you know, I used to think back in, you know, high school and college Mondays are like, oh, man, here we come to Monday. But now, as you know, being in business and a business owner, and just the energy around Monday is actually palpable to me, I I love getting up coming to work on Mondays, getting after interfacing with other people. And I feel it today. Like,

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Paul Daly  02:44

I feel big time today. Big time today. Let's start and talk about the most important thing, Kyle, you had an interaction with Chipotle, which is kind of like a horror moment turned into apparently a good moment. I haven't heard the story yet. Tell me about it. Let's wait until the show. So the first time I'm hearing it, too.

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Kyle Mountsier  03:01

All right. So set the stage. You know, we have the baby. And so it's like we got it, you know, a lot of meals right now our order in Chipotle, just so everyone knows is four and a half minutes from my house. But because we had a gift card, I was like, You know what, just gonna have that thing delivered. No big deal. They deliver all the time. It's really good. Well, we deliver we get the normal order. We've got the kids meals and the chips and the gwoc and the whole nine yards, right? And it one takes a little bit longer, which I get it they're they're dealing with DoorDash but that the DoorDash person went a really weird way back to the house. I was like, Where is this? There was a person going so we get the food and here's here's the element. I mean, online ordering, super easy. Not a big deal. I get the food. Everything is cold. I'm talking you know, if you if you order delivery from Chipotle, you kind of expect everything to be kind of not on the like piping hot range. But everything is freezing cold like they made it immediately instead of waiting for the driver to get there. All of that so I was like, okay, I can get over that. Right. Got to have a microwave. Yeah, let's go next. I'm looking around I'm like, we ordered a ton of chips. What is happening here? Why why are our chips not here? The kids chips

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Paul Daly  04:19

or dash guy took the long way. Right? Like oh boy. No, he was eat the chips.

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Kyle Mountsier  04:26

No, these are so good. Right. But what's even more interesting is we ordered chips and guac right? We got the guac we need so I'm like I'm fumbling through everything. Amanda comes downstairs for feeding the baby and she's like, did you see this? You ready? This is the part of the story that is just this is magical. And for those that are listening on the podcast I'm holding up now to the screen. I got a note

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Paul Daly  04:55

that says we all out of chips out great chips. Sorry.

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Kyle Mountsier  05:02

What's my my daughter with her divine wisdom at eight?

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Paul Daly  05:08

Yes driver,

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Kyle Mountsier  05:09

they put on the back aim frame. It's on a receipt that says if you'd like the chance of free Chipotle, you should take our survey. Nuff said. I was like, oh

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Paul Daly  05:22

I still think the door dashes the guy has his handwriting. That's the note.

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Kyle Mountsier  05:28

Yeah, we did some Forensic Files. So here's here's what happened. So being being the the man that I am that once a little bit of freak walk every once in a while, I make the call to customer service I got held on hold. Luckily, Chipotle has this thing where they can call you back when an agent gets when an agent gets ready. So I go national customer service, it's not your local stores. But national I didn't call the local store because that always goes like oh, there's door dashes, right. So I know call national service 800 Number, well, I call them they do the whole agents gonna ring you back great technology. So I don't have to sit there and wait on hold because they're obviously busy. Because probably more people don't have chips, I get it supply chain issues. They call me back. This was when everything about the chips, everything about the cold food kind of like goes to the wayside. Because the young lady that calls was just so onpoint. So dialed in, able to handle my request, immediately express empathy, not totally trashed the store, but understand that they did, you know, mess up, and then fix the problem in the absolute best way. See, my brain actually would have said, hey, just refund the whole order, we know you'll come back. But instead, this is what she did. She looks at my history says to me like this, Hey, looks like you order quite often from Chipotle. And not just that. But when you do order, you know that when you get rewards, you have to do the $10 if you if you order delivery, or if you go in, you can actually save that and get a free meal. This is what I'm going to do. I'm going to refund your kids meals, throw your free chips and walk on your referral rewards, and throw your entrees back on your board. So I still paid for some stuff yesterday. But she threw all the rewards back in meaning I've got to go back to Chipotle to earn it. But I'm okay with that. Because you are anyway, I'm going back anyway, it was absolutely incredible. But this is what was this is the kicker at the very end of the call. She goes you know what's really funny about this whole thing, it feels to me, like they went back to the Stone Age to write on paper when all they needed to do was pick up the telephone similar to how you're talking with me. And I was like, at that moment I go. Have you ever thought about being an automotive?

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Paul Daly  07:53

Yes, that's a great call.

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Kyle Mountsier  07:55

It was absolutely amazing. So I mean, there was a whole lot there. She did. She's in Rochester, New York, a real close to you, right down the road, right down the road. And you know, obviously we go in there too, when she took the call, right? We know a couple groups up there. And so I told her I'm really hoping I didn't want to be like the instigator. I said, Look, I want you to find me on LinkedIn. I'm the only kyle mountsier in the world. Please find me. And then I will connect you and make sure that you have a life changing career. So I'm hoping we'll continue the story and see if this young lady has the initiative. Oh man me on LinkedIn

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Paul Daly  08:31

a great story of the making the great story in the making, you know, that really brings it back to we were talking about Damon Lester, one of the soda investors dealer, president of nomad, bringing in lube Tech's from Quick Change, Quick Change, lube places, and giving them an amazing opportunity to grow and accelerate. Now granted, still in the same industry, but when we met some of those, we were like, Oh, my gosh, these individuals are everywhere. They're everywhere. We just need to get them into our stores because things are happening and changing different. They're happening, like in ways and velocities that they've never happened before. I mean, we have we have so many examples of this day, we'll get through as many as we can, you know, one of the first one's you know, to talk about the Academy Award for a second. You know, we're not talking about Will Smith, but we're talking about the fact that CODA won Best Picture coda of being the first streaming service produced film, to win the award. It used to be dominated by Hollywood dominated by, you know, picture studios, that era is completely over. And everyone's saying is this the final nail in the coffin? But I mean, you look at you look at the power and in viewership and the power of the production power that the streaming services have and the dollars are coming from different places. They're coming from more places than typical. And guess what? They've disrupted now, every single norm in the industry, like it's,

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Kyle Mountsier  09:57

it's okay, you know what you see One of the first of all, I haven't seen it, but I've heard absolutely incredible things about it. I've watched the trailer a couple of times, but just haven't had the time to read it. Also coupled with that Google drops their commercial about Coda which is Children of Death. Deaf adults. Drop that this weekend. And it was absolutely incredible. And jerk. I mean, just absolutely like a a jerk of emotions, but also super human. And even if you aren't, have had no relationship with someone that is deaf, or has parents that are deaf, you understand the reality of the human element of a brand's ability to connect. And I think Apple did that as well. But this is the one that's this is what's kicking me because now I go back, and I'm thinking Uber and taxi, which was the announcement last week, yep. I'm thinking streaming and Oscars, making Carvana and automotive industry. Yep. Right. It seems like the links back to the industries that these things are a part of, are all kind of happening in real time at the same time. And it's the opportunity of the legacy service, to capture the audience in the same way and shift and adjust. And so I would, I'm encouraged, I would say that Hollywood shouldn't be dead, but they should be renewed with vigor to be alive to go, Hey, there's Apple TV, doing something new, interesting, exciting, capturing audience, an audience that we have had the ability to, and go after that. Yeah,

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Paul Daly  11:32

I mean, that's it's just, I mean, it's the mindset of the troublemaker, how to perceive and absorb the exact same things as everyone else has the opportunity to perceive and absorb. You can play defense, you can play offense, and how long is it going to take you to shift because what are the indicators? really telling us around there? Speaking of indicators, segue. I got some good comments coming in about change, and indicator. So there's award's article, awards automotive article I want to talk about this morning. And basically, this is written by Morgan Hanson, the VP of data science at JD Power valuation services. And David Parris, the Senior Manager of marketing insights, also at JD, power of valuation services. And basically they say, all the indicators that we've used for years, we just have to let them go. We've been talking about this for a few years, where it's just like, well, year over year doesn't really make sense anymore, when last year was a mess. And now we're like the third cycle in where it's like you, we can't go back two years and look, because it wasn't normal, like two January's ago, we weren't really normal. So they basically said as a result, reading from the article, conventional indicators and benchmarks that once guided automotive decision making will no longer be as effective, engaging key market trends to assess use vehicle prices and valuations really

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Kyle Mountsier  12:55

can't even month to month, you know, you said not

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Paul Daly  12:57

here, there's another quote from the article, pandemic variants, supply chain challenges and economic via volatility have created a warped market for new and used vehicles and will continue to disrupt the automotive sector for the foreseeable future, according to recent analysis, so in short, we can't look back anymore to see what the future is going to be. Like, we're just we're just in this limbo state, where you just have to be hyper aware at a micro level of what's happening now. It's like, we can't

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Kyle Mountsier  13:27

I would argue that these cycles have probably happened before in history, but they aren't well documented. Oh, I right.

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Paul Daly  13:33

Oh, I don't know. I probably push back on that a little bit. Like, maybe things like, I mean, can you think of one other thing that has been as disruptive for as long as this? Like, I

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Kyle Mountsier  13:43

mean, think about the 1910s 20s and 30s. They just aren't documented? Like we're documenting and say they're not global, as global as they are today. But they their global economy shifts based on what was happening in in in culture?

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Paul Daly  13:56

Yeah. Oh, I mean, culture. Yeah. But I'm just gonna think of the state of the automotive industry in the 10s. And 20s. was like,

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Kyle Mountsier  14:02

well, in granted, yeah, the automotive industry wasn't around. But I think businesses have seen shifts like this. I mean, you think about Magna post world war three, right? That's, I mean, it's very, very cool to sorry. Post World War Two, I just think that we are we are seeing this and having to approach it from newness, but I think historians will look back on this and see the cyclical nature of history. But this will be the first time that it's documented in the way that it is. And so we're literally making history at this point, in my opinion.

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Paul Daly  14:35

Yeah, I mean, it Nathan Southwick makes a comment says the internet. Yes, the internet made us all say everything we thought about is never going to be the same again. And it took a lot of people a while to figure that out. And most of those people aren't in business anymore. Are they subs, you know, they suffered substantial substantial losses. You know, and so, like we needed somebody to tell us that but now it's coming from JD Power which is, you know, kind of the establishment? I guess? Yeah. Um, so like, how should we respond to this? And I think for the last one,

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Kyle Mountsier  15:06

I mean, data data is a trailing indicator, right? And so to understand whether the trailing indicator can tell you about the leading indicators, then you have to wait. And so now they're saying, Yep, the trailing indicators are mounted on what we all are

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Paul Daly  15:21

already trailing. Now they're like, just disappear, right? We, you know, like fading indicators, quickly fading indicators. And, you know, we look at the the troublemakers in the industry, and the people who have disproportionately succeeded, whether that's in sales or service, or tech, business, development, whatever they are, the people that are living in LinkedIn, clubhouse rooms, conversations like this, you know, things like we're putting out there just staying together and talking about these things in real time, yes, and making decisions based on what they're hearing in real time. And then when the trailing indicators catch up, they use that to inform their decision about the current leading indicator, like it really is a different mindset on like, it's like we're moving forward, and we'll make decisions while we're already moving. You know,

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Kyle Mountsier  16:07

this is interesting, when, when the pandemic first started, actually, we, I was still at a dealer group. And I remember because what what we historically did was able to look at V Auto, and our sales reports and service reports, to kind of look 30 over 30 Or a year over a year and understand that. But what we did is we built out this whole complex spreadsheet, that was able to give us 3015, seven and three day trends. And so I built this whole spreadsheet saying, we have to understand all these trends and how they're related to each other, whether or not they're positive or negative, whether or not things are going up or down what the indicators are on service, Oros, and sales, sales volume, or vehicles inventory, total, total, gross, all of that type of stuff. It was no longer 30 over 30, it was 3015 Seven, and then we looked at every single one every single day, to see the patterns on the way they moved. So I think that that's the way business has to be looked at and, and looking at those in opposition and directly in relationship to each other is going to be necessary for business leaders to succeed.

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Paul Daly  17:17

Yeah, it's a it's one of the things that we're trying to, you know, increase the conversation. So if you're listening to this, and if you're a service advisor, or if you're a GM, or dealer, Principal, whatever, talking about these indicators, talking about what's happening in business and culture and technology and automotive, right, not just automotive, because Automotive is going to be a trailing indicator, right? Like you have to take in all the other variables in order to understand your leading indicators. We have one more fun one to talk about. Let's end on a little bit of a fun note. So you know, that we're fans of the savannah bananas baseball team, Jesse Cole. They've known him for a few years now and you know, had him on my podcast a long time ago, like when they were just just fledgling, but now they're they're getting a lot of play these days. And it's because they're literally reinventing the game of baseball, you're like, how can you reinvent the game of baseball? Well, first, right, it's customer experience driven, say baseball games can take long and we need in this attention, intention, you know, add culture, we need something to keep it going. So they invented something called Banana ball. And they're playing all these exhibition games. And you can see if you're not watching, like in the video, there's a guy with sleeveless shirt on and he's a bat against the savannah bananas. It's almost like Harlem Globetrotters. He hits a fly ball. The flyball goes over the net behind the plate, a fan catches the ball. And guess what? In banana ball that counts as an out. So that letter is out. They walk the fan onto the field. He's looks like he just grand slam that one of the world's ear knees. They're lifting his arm in the air. And he's trying to keep that like baseball serious face, right? Like this is no big deal. Right? And so they've done that to change the rules. They have this other crazy rule. I don't know if we have a video for this. But if on ball for there are no walks in banana ball, right? Because walks right?

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Kyle Mountsier  19:01

Right? The guy throws it just down the first Yeah.

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Paul Daly  19:05

And in this it becomes a sprint, the second ball for is called. He can start running and as many bases as he can get before every member of the defense has to touch the ball. So you see the whole defense like get into this game where they start throwing it because every outfielder every infielder has the ball, and they all converge, right? And then when they hit the ball, everyone touches it, then it's a live ball and they can tag the runner out. So the runner sprinting because he can try to make it to second base. And they do this whole thing where they play this game. Oh yeah, we're gonna play the video. And so you can see that there's a catcher jumps up like he's trying to throw somebody out and they're just flipping the ball back and forth, back and forth, converging. And the guy gets the second base and just in time, they tag them out. Just

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Kyle Mountsier  19:46

so much fun, so much fun. And the clock counts down. It's it's, it's absolutely amazing. It's like oh, no, we don't have enough time left for the rest of this game.

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Paul Daly  19:54

It's great. Yeah. And so all of that to say everything from kyle's chipolte story. To the indicators to the indicator story of what JD Power saying about leading indicators, trailing indicators. We can't use metrics we've used to use coda winning the Academy Award. The Savannah bananas, reinventing baseball, if you haven't gotten the point yet, there is massive opportunity in this season one to redefine what the automotive industry experience is for consumers. Did you get that yet?

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Kyle Mountsier  20:26

There it is. Alright,

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Paul Daly  20:27

I know we went way long. So excited on a Monday we're gonna treat it. If you haven't got it yet, but you are listening to this or reading this, you are part of the troublemaking solution. So get back in there in trouble and let's bring it like we've never brought it before.

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