If there are two things that all Americans can agree on, it's that public lands are good, and dealerships—powersports or automotive—freakin' suck. Ask anyone what they think of the dealership experience, and they'll more than likely tell you, "I hate them," or "They're crooks," and "I'd rather set myself on fire before stepping onto a lot."
The reason for this disdain and hatred is that dealerships are inherently predatory and will do their damnedest to ensure you get rooked out of every hard-earned dime you've acquired. Trust me, I tried my hand at being a car salesman two decades ago and lasted less than a month, the final straw being my manager telling me to work with this kid who got his elderly grandmother to cosign on a car that he was rolling over an already heavily underwater loan onto.
I walked straight out the door that day.
This personal anecdote, however, isn't just anecdotal. Again, ask anyone, everyone, what they think of dealerships, and you'll find similar stories. You'll find stories of how salespeople swindled, lied, and cheated their way into your savings. How finance screwed the buyer after a deal had already been made. Or how the salesperson was a total dickbag to you when you knew what the price of the car should be, how much your trade-in was worth, and what you needed to walk out the door. It's why 76% of Americans don't trust dealerships or salespeople. The dealership model is broken, and we all know it, but because their lobbying group is so powerful, we're forced to continue to use it.
And that's what struck me about this idiotic article from Powersport Business about dealership futures, and how, in reality, AI is the thing that'll save them. Not better customer service. Not stopping being assholes. Not ceasing in screwing over their customers, so they'll want to return. No, instead, the premise is that AI will solve everything!
The title of this stupid article is "How AI Can Help Dealers Work Smarter, Not Harder," and is just a laundry list of utter bullshit that AI companies love to tout to gullible businesses that don't know or understand what the software truly is, and what it can and cannot do. Streamline your workflow, replace your social media person, replace your copywriter for listings, update inventory, etc, etc, etc.
But for those who've been living under a rock for the past year, and haven't actually done their homework, AI is basically fancy pants predictive text. It's not intelligent. [ Ed. Note: And a lot of companies across niches like to use the term "AI" purely as a marketing term, to the point where those two letters have almost lost meaning.jj] It has a habit of hallucinating. And it often relays information that is so ass-backwards, all the big AI companies have had to halt their respective programs' operations to reteach it. Multiple times a year, and some each and every month they've been online.
Google's Gemini once told me that motorcycle helmets could be good or could be bad, it depends on the person. Reality and science say otherwise.
But Powersport Business's article didn't upset me because they were promoting the use of AI—even though study after study from folks like MIT say it hasn't produced any measurable or meaningful results for most companies adopting it—but rather that it's the cure for dealerships in "delivering better customer service," and "giving [staff] back time to do the important stuff." Like what, though?
See, my basic premise and loathing toward this article is that it offers up a host of things that AI can (supposedly) help a dealership to do that will (somehow) better the customer experience in some ineffable way. And those AI changes and adoptions will help return foot traffic to failing dealerships. Something that's been at the forefront of the outlet's own reporting in recent months, as powersport dealership after powersport dealership has closed.
But the one thing that this piece doesn't address, something AI can't do, is that we all hate them for very legitimate reasons. And no amount of AI can solve that.
Right now, you have a dealership lobby that has never been more powerful, nor high on its own supply, as the Federal Trade Commission, the group responsible for protecting consumers from shady-ass dealership practices, has basically been gutted. During the last American administration, the FTC passed the CARS rule that gave consumers far more protections against bait-and-switch and hidden junk fees tacked on at the end of a vehicle transaction. But dealerships objected, as it hurt their bottom lines. Screwing you over made them money and they didn't want to lose that money.
So they fought the ruling, sued, and won, ensuring that consumers will once more be allowed to get raked over the coals by predatory dealer practices. Read that again. They sued for their right to continue tacking on hidden fees, junk fees, and utilizing bait-and-switch practices. They sued over not being able to screw you over.
And following the administration switchover, the current FTC ain't going to do anything to protect you or I in that regard. In fact, they've rolled back consumer protections on just about everything. And dealerships, for the time being, have won the victory to make your next experience with them as miserable as they want.
But yeah, the reason your dealership is failing, the reason you don't have foot traffic, the reason why you can't get a sales lead is because you aren't using AI! That's it! You don't need to just not be a shitty human being! You need AI everything! Honestly, this article is giving real Principal Skinner "It's the kids who are wrong!" vibes, isn't it?
Here's a thought, maybe treat your customers like people instead of marks? See how that goes toward affecting your bottom line. No? Still gonna go with staying awful and just adding AI? Yep, that tracks.
