Why Most ‘Guest Experience’ Programs Fail... and What Actually Works

Paul Daly: 0:00 You guys notice anything different about me today? Unknown: 0:08 This is auto Collabs. Michael Cirillo: 0:11 Did you? Did you comb your beard? I Paul Daly: 0:14 turned my beard. Turned your beard. The coolest part about this hat, I still can't remember the name of it, is that the two of you have a matching one, and we got these in Kazakhstan, not that this is made. Oh, yeah. Unknown: 0:27 Oh, didn't even know Paul Daly: 0:30 you have them handy. And the fox tail on the back. Well, this is a fox. Our friends in Kazakhstan bought us these on the way home. We'd made them home in one piece, and it's just a subtle reminder that I wear every day of the fun that we had together. My wife's getting a little sick of it, though, Michael Cirillo: 0:47 is she really? My wife loved it, and no, my wife, I'm gonna wear mine to the side like this, like the what's her name? From Napoleon Dynamite. Paul Daly: 0:55 Oh yeah, my goodness, yeah. She's like, I'm selling these boondoggles to go to college and kips. Like, your mom goes Michael Cirillo: 1:01 to college. I want to see Kyle segway out of this, into our guest today. No, well, Paul Daly: 1:07 try new things, meeting new people I've never met. Met today's guest. Kyle Kyle Mountsier: 1:11 did No, I met today's guest. And you know us, coos, we got to stick together, right? We're operational people, and so when we get on a on a Google meet together, we're like, I see you. I get it. I love that. And I just knew, like, we needed to have a deeper conversation, and even what he and I got to go into. So I can't wait to kind of like, dive into his story a bit more and understand where he comes from. So hey, we hope you have a wonderful time hanging out with us and Adam today, I can't wait for Paul Daly: 1:43 him to see my hat. I'm not gonna wear this. That's stupid. Unknown: 1:49 All right, Adam, thank you so much for joining us here on auto Collabs today. We're excited to get into the convo. Thanks for having me. Absolutely okay. So you and I, the story goes, we swiped right on LinkedIn. It was great. You can do that. We had a date over Google meet, and it was wonderful. But no, but Adam and I, like I immediately it was very clear that we we had so much similarity in our passion for the industry. I just want to thank you for reaching out and connecting. I think that in our industry, or in any industry like that first step of like, hey, look, there's someone else that I'm thinking. I don't know what we're doing together, but we need to chat. I think that's such a cool place. I've met so many incredible people because someone took the initiative to go. I think we need to just talk. So first of all, thanks for that. But roll back, because I'd love for people to get to know you just a little bit in our community, like, roll back to getting in the industry and where you kind of, like, cut your teeth. Yeah. Adam Gaedke: 2:54 So I started with the Van Horn Automotive Group 22 years ago, and before that, I was a I was a teacher. I taught middle school in high school, so went to college and decided that I didn't want to teach. Taught for six whole months, and then decided, good, huh? Yeah, it's not good. So through a connection, I ended up talking to the owner of the dealership at the time that I went to work for so he said, Hey, why don't you come work for me sell cars. And at the time, I thought, I'm going from this respected career of being a professional and a teacher, and I'm going to go into car sales. And I I really went back and forth on it. And then, you know, I looked at, kind of looked at my my checking account and decided I needed to do something. Paul Daly: 3:44 I think a lot of auto career started that way. I Unknown: 3:50 don't think this is right, my checking account and Adam Gaedke: 3:54 I make the leap. And I was in I started in June, work half a month. Worked in July, and in July, I sold, I set a record for the store. What made? Made more money than I've made in six months of teaching. Unknown: 4:11 And I was, you're like, I think I might actually be able to pay off this college debt, after all. Yeah. Adam Gaedke: 4:17 So I'm looking at it, I'm like, wow, this is actually could be something more than just a summer gig. So the guy that I work for, great guy, and at the time, he had one location, and I could see, though, that there was something, you know, maybe, in him, that he wanted to keep growing. And he he kind of included me in a lot of stuff that maybe was way above my head, and as we started to grow, it was very evident he bring me to meetings where we're doing acquisitions, and I'm just praying that nobody asked me any questions in that Paul Daly: 4:52 yeah, you're like, any moment, they're gonna realize it's me in this room, right? Adam Gaedke: 4:55 Yes, yeah. I'm just trying to, like, hide as much as I can and not make eye contact. Fact, so I'm with I sold cars for four years, which I think at at, you know, in this day and age, people want to advance quicker in the business, four years is a long time. So I learned a lot, though, and then I made my way through the ranks as we grew. So we slowly. We grew slow at first, but then all of a sudden, we just had rapid growth. I think we did in 18 months. We did eight acquisitions, so we added the con, and we went from one all the way up to 18. We went from having 25 employees to having over 800 I was with the organization through this whole big change. And the other thing that we went through was in 2018 he wanted to get out so he had no no no real plan, and no family to take over. So he sold it to the employees. So I was on the board of directors during that time, and learned a ton about what it means to go from being a privately held company to being an ESOP, being an employee owned company. So I was on the board during that whole time, worked through that trans that transition not only it's not just an ownership transition, it's a whole cultural shift within the organization. So, you know, my path was, it was really big, and the reason I reached out to Kyle was number one. You know, I really like the movement in the industry now about collaborating and sharing things, because where I came from, you didn't do that, right? Like in the early days, You protected your territory, you didn't tell anybody anything, you didn't share anything. And the industry is moving more towards collaboration as well. As you know, my story in growing through the dealership, is what I shared with Kyle. So I'll give you kind of a snippet of it. When I became a general manager, the owner called me up to his office, and he said, Okay, you know, today's the day you're the general manager. You know how you want to run this place? And I said, you know, I, I, I see an opportunity to sell more new cars, but I think the path to do it is to really pay attention to each person and like, try to really, and I use the word try to love each person that comes through the door. And I didn't really know what that meant at the time. I just kind of had this concept of, if I really pay attention to each one and care about what they want to do each time, maybe we can build this reputation. And he just looked at me, like, real serious. And he goes, That's really cute, but what are you gonna do? Unknown: 7:47 I know that response. I've gotten that response several times. Heard that, Adam Gaedke: 7:52 yeah, like he wanted a tactic, not just like Paul Daly: 7:55 a he's like, oh, Adam Gaedke: 7:58 so I looked, you know, like we talked about it, I go, I think Chuck, I think this is what I can do. And he was, he had a faith in me enough to let me do it, and it ultimately became the culture of the group. So we moved to that culture, and we moved dealerships away from the old school ways, and moved them into a model of really caring about the guest experience. And that's still how the group functions. So can we Michael Cirillo: 8:24 dive into that? There's a few things we got to unpack here. Unknown: 8:27 Yeah, so many questions, so you just get yourself sitiated. Paul Daly: 8:32 Okay, there's a lot in there. Okay, what? When you said, we made it a part of the culture, right? That's a really broad blanket statement. And I think this is why a lot of people struggle with thinking of things this way. When we when we say, love people more than cars, when we say focused on the guest experience, it's so broad that often people don't have a starting point or an ending point, or markers along the way. How did you take it from saying that in that conversation to the point where you're like, it's actually a part of the dealership culture. Now, what are the what are the markers within there and the strategic change points that you could point out? You know, obviously it's complicated, but like, what are some of the basics that a listener today would be like, Ah, I understand focus on this type of thing. Adam Gaedke: 9:26 You know? What it comes down to is, if you can't focus on the normal metrics that everybody wants to look at like, you can look at CSI, and there's a way to game CSI. Absolutely. Look at Google reviews. There's a way to game Google reviews. You really have to just get everybody's mind wrapped around creating this atmosphere of of the guest experience, and it means something different to everybody. But it also is creating process around it as well. So monitoring, you know, it's all the little touch points of. What you what you want to do. So when the customer arrives at the dealership, it's simple things. It's nothing like it's nothing this big, grand plan, right? It's simple little touch points of Hey guys. When somebody is coming to the door, you have to get up out of your chair and greet them. Unknown: 10:18 That's more relevant than you realize you don't even know. I'm gonna yell at the screen right now, because that's right. Adam Gaedke: 10:27 Like everybody look up when somebody comes in. Michael Cirillo: 10:33 Okay, tell them, Michael, were you? Were you in Kazakhstan with us recently? That's what I'm asking. That's what I'm wondering. Adam, we got to tell you, one of the things that impressed us so much, we toured what guys, 2530 dealerships. It was insane amount of dealerships that we went into. It didn't it did not matter what brand or OEM, from Kyle to one of the Chinese manufacturers we don't have here yet. Every time we walked into a dealership, a well dressed, well groomed individual would stand up at the guests like the Ritz Carlton welcome us in, ask how they could direct us, where we could direct us, the environment. Everything was I wrote down and underlined what you said here. You said guest experience. And I can't tell you how much that's been on our mind, to feel like a guest not not customer experience, like guest experience, not an interruption, not an interruption. That every dealership we went into in Kazakhstan, we were like, What? What? What is going away? I feel so loved. Adam Gaedke: 11:39 So yeah. So I tried to give everybody, like, little, little things that would make big effect. So like, one of them was, you know, everybody calls and confirms an appointment, right? So you can call in and go, Hey, I'm confirming your appointment. You get a beer at this time. Now, the customer, most of the time, is just going to say yes, even if they're coming or not. But if you change that, and you send them an email or a text or a call and you say, Hey, Paul, I'm calling to see what you would like to drink, and if you want to snack when you arrive at the dealership, come on, that changes the experience drastically. Everybody has coffee, everybody has water, everybody has soda, everybody has snacks. But if I call you, and I ask you what you would like, and then I prepared for you, and I go, Hey, Paul, welcome. Come on over. I got your soda and your snacks ready to go, come on over and have a seat. And I've got everything lined up for your Michael Cirillo: 12:33 kids too. It's just the three of us going, Yeah, Kyle Mountsier: 12:37 will your kids be joining you? Can I prepare some some games or some art things for them, like, Adam Gaedke: 12:43 all these little things, right? Like, all the little, little aspects, is changing the culture of what you're doing. It's not It's time, right? Like, are we, you know what's interesting that's never done. You're constantly doing it, and you're constantly working. Unknown: 12:59 Not one time yet. Have you said the words digital retailing, omnichannel? CDP, EDP, one to one message. You haven't said that yet. Why are Adam Gaedke: 13:11 well, because it's about when the customer arrives, right? Like all that other stuff is it's a tactic to get them to the dealership, but if you want to retain that person the show is when they arrive, and that's when you have to create what you want to what your culture is, is what you have to deliver when they arrive at the door. Unknown: 13:35 Here's why we can't talk. Here's why we're struggling. You guys know Steve C on on on LinkedIn. You ever seen this guy? Adam, who is it? I can't even see it. Say his last name. His first name is Steve cowsky, whatever it's got a bunch. If you don't know him, it's fine. Don't worry about it. I'm gonna give you the backstory. The backstory is he's got two big things he talks about every single place he's like when you talk about you talk about marketing, you got to include the sign out front, because that's part of the budget. It's telling your name. It's saying, Come, come to me. Nobody includes that. The other big thing he harps on is he says, why do people keep saying experience, experience, experience, experience. It's just a blank word, and what you just transition for me and for us, and what we've been like trying to find the words for since we went to Kazakhstan. Is this, like, is this? It's a level of hospitality that we haven't been willing to talk about, the level of, like, training, intention, like, what? What are the brass tacks about experience then contribute to a broader culture? Because my guess is that when you start doing like that first thing, which is greet them at the door, then the next thing, and it's like when you call to confirm the appointment, do this by the time you. Get to think four or five or six that are similar. In line with that, you don't have to actually train number 789, and 10. They just become natural to the environment. Adam Gaedke: 15:12 You know, it's it's another. Another thing is just the belief that most every customer that arrives at your dealership, they intend to buy when they come when they get to that point, yes. And if you have that belief that everybody intends to buy when they get there, and it's all about creating the right experience for them to purchase, that's just another mindset shift of I need to listen and create the experience that they want when they're here. And if I do that, I have a really good chance of them purchasing the car, and then I have a good chance of retaining them as a customer Paul Daly: 15:50 and then telling how amazing it was, because you surprised them when they expected one thing they got another thing. Adam Gaedke: 15:56 Yes, yeah. And there's something weird to me always about the way the automotive industry has worked, about everything being so secretive. When you when the customer sits down, you know, in my mind, I always just want to ask the customer, how would you like to purchase the car today, I don't need to, like, beat around the bush about, are you here? You know, at the end, surprise them with a purchase proposal. They should just tell me how they and they might go. You know, we're just looking today. Okay, great. How much time do you have to work with us today? I've got two hours. Okay, I want to respect your time. Oh, that's a great question, as we can in two hours. So how did Paul Daly: 16:39 you go ahead, I'm sorry, roll through Adam Gaedke: 16:41 those things. Sometimes people go, this has been really great. Let's just get this done and over with and purchase the car today. Paul Daly: 16:49 Yeah. How did you operationalize some of these things? Like, did you have scripts just training in general? Like, did you, did you lay down the gauntlet and say, this is the way we will do it. Or Adam Gaedke: 17:02 we built out a whole customer. We built out this, this whole guest experience process that that started. It just it started differently from the moment that people arrived. And we built it at one location, and then we just rolled it out one by one and what that looked like. And it was not only how the interactions went and we trained on those interactions, but then also what the follow up looked like. So we would, we created a different follow up for people in that location. So I shot a video. You know, we have 18 rooftops, and you can imagine how many visits we're getting. I shot a video, and I would give them my my personal cell phone and my email address in that video. So we would text them the video or email out the video, and if they didn't purchase it was asking them how their experience was and asking them, please provide feedback about what your experience was. Now there's two great things about that. Number one, it's kind of an accountability measure for your people in the store. The other aspect of it is you get honest feedback from people, and if you create a culture of we're not. Nobody's in trouble. I want the feedback because all we're looking to do is improve. So you give me the feedback, we're going to talk about it, but we're going to talk about how we're going to use that feedback to improve what we're doing. And you constantly create that number one at first, you're going to get some messages right? But slowly over time, those messages just go down, or you get messages that the other the other half of it is, I would give text messages or calls daily, where people would be talking about how great it was and how much, even when they didn't buy a car, they wanted to just reach out and say, I had the best experience. We didn't make a decision yet, but I want to let you know this person, this person, this person, were great. Well, then I would take the time shoot him an email say, Hey, I got this message from your customer. Thanks a lot. They said everything was awesome, and you just reinforced that over and over and over again. And was it perfect? No, nobody's ever perfect, Kyle Mountsier: 19:21 right? Yeah, humans in the room Adam Gaedke: 19:25 you're just working on creating that, that type of atmosphere where the mentality is, make it hard for them not to make a decision, right? Like, make them not want to walk away because they know what the other guy's gonna do. Yeah? When I mean, I'm Paul Daly: 19:46 like, let me just transfer all of this into it's just so odd that we have somebody that we didn't know, or I didn't know prior to the show, that is just saying all the same things that we think and feel every day. Okay, and that question of, like, I wonder if there's anyone else out there, you're just, like, proving the thesis that we always talk about. There are a lot of people who believe this that just don't know each other exist yet. Kyle Mountsier: 20:11 I want to, I the one thing I want to double click on before we get out of here is there are so many groups right now that are finding success through scaling, through purchase, through acquisition consolidation, but a lot of that success is just like bottom line. Success acquired net new revenue by buying it. But you you said, like from going to one to 18, you were able to scale the culture as well, especially in that 18 month timeline, what were some of the like, the intentional decisions that you had to make, or the steps that you had to take to make sure you didn't lose that along the way, you've kind of given us a few of those clear things, but especially in a tight timeline, eight stores, 18 months, you could really get lost in just like, Whoa. That's a lot of people, and there they go, and there's some revenue. And you know, what's the timeline, and what are the intentional steps that you took along the way to make sure that that culture got scaled and didn't just like, get lost as so many people came in. Yeah. Adam Gaedke: 21:18 So for us, we ran as a group. You know, some dealer groups don't run as a they're a group, but they everybody runs their own location. We ran as a group. And the benefits of running as a group are you have a lot of supporting cast. As far as you know, you've got a BDC that is taking all the incoming to create the experience. You've got a cast of people that train you've got all these resources because you're able to save in other ways. You don't have a title person and a controller in every location. You never no structure is ever going to save you the overall spend. It's just how you spend your money. So we had people when we would when we would acquire a store. We had a process and a team. So we would go in, we had an interview process for every person in the dealership. And this is maybe one of the areas that is not so friendly, but if you didn't fit, we knew, and we just parted ways with you right away. We had a process to come in and go, you're not going to be a culture fit, you're not a culture fit. You're not going to be right for this. And then that was it. And we we also built every time we'd go into an acquisition, we relatively had the leadership team for that store built so we would be heavy in employees in one area. They knew our culture. They knew what to expect. They would be the leaders in the location. So when we would go in one after another, we're not we're not bringing on or getting to know that the upper level people, we'd bring them in, and that was the way we would duplicate one after another, because they knew, Unknown: 23:00 I think that some people would look at that and be like, ah, that's so harsh to go in and operate in that way. But I think what it is is that it's actually the most loving thing that you could do for those people that maybe weren't a culture fit, because they would constantly be a rub. They would feel out of place. You would feel they're out of place. It'd be constantly a struggle and a fight. It's actually the most loving thing to say, You know what? I think you need to find employment elsewhere. That's a hard pill to swallow for a lot of people, but that's a big deal. It's a big like culture protector, you know, Adam Gaedke: 23:30 we've done it the other way. And to be honest, it's just a slow it's just a slow exit versus a quick exit. They learn, and you learn that it's not a fit. And if you just, kind of, you come to grips with it right away. It's it's easier on both parties. Paul Daly: 23:47 I know this is going to be the first of many times we get to spend some time together, whether that's on podcast. I can't wait to meet in person, and hopefully we can get you out to ASOTU con in May. That would be amazing too, to Yeah, have you meet some of the other people that you may or may not know believe the same things that you do. Adam, it's been a real pleasure to talk with you and get to know you for the first time for me. Anyway, live here. Thank you for joining Adam Gaedke: 24:09 us on auto. It was great. Thank you guys. Paul Daly: 24:15 Okay, I love it. How I wish I had the hat on, because when he mentioned standing up when people walk into a dealership. Talk about it much in the episode. We talked about a little bit, but one of the most impactful things for us was one of the very basics of hospitality. When we walked in these dealerships, they stood up. It was so impactful. We talked about a little bit in the show, but I like I don't think I can talk about how that made us feel and how they thought it was normal when we brought it out there, everyone there was like, Well, yeah, of course they did. Why? And that's something that you entered their space. Every single dealership can do right now. But really the question is, Will you do it? And hospitality, the differences in hospitality always come out in the smallest things, period. End of story. Yeah. Yeah, Michael Cirillo: 25:01 here's a small thing that it was one of the first things. He told a story about approaching his leader at the auto group and saying, Hey, here's some changes we have to make. And we kind of glossed over it. There was so much to unpack in his first, you know, dialog, what I wrote down is so he tells a story about his leader, and his leader is like, Okay, I hear what you're saying and and what I took from that is, sometimes the leader may not have the full vision, but they may have faith in you to round out the vision. Yeah. And I wrote faith in you, because I was like, actually, this is, you know, for those that maybe heard it and said, See that typical car dealer owner who didn't see the path to revenue, actually, what I took from it is, but, but but the owner was like, but I have faith in you to go and try this thing, and it's gonna go work out that I think there Paul Daly: 26:07 was nothing better and all that, but there's literally, I can say this as a leader, there's nothing better for a leader to have a member of their team that they trust with a vision and not a specific thing, knowing that that person and their gifts and their talents and their abilities will come back with a version of the vision that's better or beyond mind. And yes, what you thought, even the vision was like, I can't think of a even better an Unknown: 26:34 employee to have a vision to be like, no period. Trust me, I have a Paul Daly: 26:39 vision for this. I think this can be Michael Cirillo: 26:41 better. I gotta tell you one other thing that stood out to me from this call, and I don't know why it hasn't hit me yet. The three of us have been doing this now for how many years? I don't know, two years, let's say Paul Daly: 26:51 more, Kyle Mountsier: 26:52 almost four now. Okay, nice try, Unknown: 26:54 though. Has it been almost four years? Yeah, the first episode was in Philly live before the first ASOTU con, and we're on number five this year. It's okay. You immigrated from Canada to America in that time. Michael Cirillo: 27:09 Oh my gosh. You're right. We often joke, right, like, Paul, you and I joke, when Kyle gets like, super, like, nerdy and operational, we're like, yeah, here you go. Every day. Yes, you know. You know? What dawned on me though, like we we are. This hit me today, when we were talking about all of this, that the three of us are incapable of approaching a conversation from our vantage point as a CEO, a COO and a chief of staff like all of our questioning is either like very operational, very vision based, and very like people, how you arrived on that, like what's going on in Unknown: 27:48 your you just hit me with that. That just blew my mind. Right now. That's called right seat on the bus for all. Right seat on the bus. We know we're doing something Well, listen. We hope you had fun with us. We sure had a great time. If you couldn't tell, as always, thank you for listening to auto Collabs on behalf of Kyle myself and Michael Cirillo, who just thinks he's only been here for two years. We'll see you next Michael Cirillo: 28:09 time flies when you're having fun, boys, Unknown: 28:13 sign up for our free and fun to read daily email for a free shot of relevant news and automotive retail media and pop culture, you can get it [email protected] 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 you welcome to auto Collabs.