Retail Anywhere Clip - Risks

EL Let's talk about that. What are dealers sacrificing?

CW Well, I don't know if it's a sacrifice, but I think what's at risk is profits, right? So if you think about it, we have salespeople and we have F&I people, and their job is to educate consumers on the value of the F&I packages that they offer and how that benefits the consumer. So oftentimes if you're buying a 30 or 40 thousand dollar car, a lot of people might have a problem paying an extra five thousand dollars for an F&I package, right. So, now if you turn that around and say you're giving them the ability to browse your offerings online, what's the risk there? I'll give you a perfect example. My wife bought a car about a year ago. I went with her the day she was buying the car and sat through the process and the F&I person that was talking to her asked a lot of good questions about her driving habits and those kinds of things, which led her into buying a tire and wheel and another F&I package. And I can tell you on the tire and wheel side, there is no better thing that we bought for that car than tire and wheels. So I think, how do dealers maintain control of the process and not completely turn the reigns over the customer. How do we address that?

KE Well, Chris, as a follow up to that, I think that there's another piece of this whole process that's really critical that we need to look at. And that is accuracy, right? Just plain accuracy. Dealers can't sacrifice accuracy and if anything, accurate information in today's world and the digital environment with consumer’s expectations is even more critical and more important today. So whatever you provide back, whether it be a monthly payment to a customer, the appraisal on their trade, the quote of a job for your repair order, that has to match up when it's all said and done.

DB I think experiences too. You think about starting the process online, that consumer's experience still has to be personalized. It's got to be convenient for both the associate in the dealership as well as the consumer. And I think one of the things that dealers lose sleep over at night is the whole compliance factor, right. If you're selling cars outside your four walls, how do you make sure you got a valid contract? How do you make sure that that person is who they say they are? And then making sure that what they get offered and shown outside is the same as what gets offered inside the dealership, is just a real big challenge. And having good reporting and tracking of those steps is critical. And it's a real balancing act for dealers to be able to do all that.