Blending Storytelling and AI Feedback To Create The Ultimate Training Experience with Abby Vietor and Kathy Munoz of Ford University

Michael Cirillo: 0:00Have you guys ever tried these?

‍Unknown: 0:07

This is Auto Collabs abs.

Paul J Daly: 0:11

Core power. Super protein. They're so good.

Michael Cirillo: 0:15

So good.

Paul J Daly: 0:15

They're delicious. I mean, I get the thing you have to work out to make good use of those. Or else I'm just drinking a milkshake. So you might laugh better use for those.

Michael Cirillo: 0:26

I mean, not bad, though, right? Like, low in fat, low in carbs. High in protein. $80

Paul J Daly: 0:33

apiece.

Michael Cirillo: 0:33

It's $18 apiece. It's like buying you. It's like buying a gallon of Blue Bell Ice cream. Yeah.

Paul J Daly: 0:42

You see those in the store? And it's like the 12 pack of like, How is this $50

Michael Cirillo: 0:46

At this point, though, I've like I've fallen into the health, you know, mentality, which is like, you can spend $3.75 on this, or $400 a month diabetes medication. Oh,

Unknown: 1:00

you're there. I gotta say.

Paul J Daly: 1:03

How long has the fitness journey been? Because there's like half a Cirilo. Now. Yeah, there's

Michael Cirillo: 1:08

over a year. I think this is the longest I've consistently stuck with not wanting to turn back into Jabba the

Paul J Daly: 1:16

Hutt. I mean, you, you posted a workout picture. So I think you're in the club. Now.

Michael Cirillo: 1:20

I know. And did you see some of the people were like, those are tiny weights. No. I that was like, that was like, and he'll appreciate it because we throw jabs. But he's like, Good, I'm proud of you. It takes a lot of courage to lift tiny weights like that and take a picture and you should take up running. And I was like, well, it was just for him. I don't really mean this. But I had to come with I had to like come back with a jab. And I'm like, I thought about it and decided I want the physique of a man. So got a tiny weights, you know, I'm saying, look, I

Paul J Daly: 1:58

think you inadvertently just started us on a beautiful path to this episode, because today we're talking about Ford's new training programs added via Kathy Munoz. And there's something about getting the reps in, right no matter how big the weights are, even with tiny weights, it's the discipline of dedicating to it doing the right things, the right activities, and Ford kind of gave us an inside look at their new training platform. And boy, is it cool. So we hope you enjoy this conversation we have with Kathy and Abby. All right, we are so excited to be here with Abby and Kathy with Ford University, which is owned and operated managed by Ford. But let's just say Ford. Abby, Kathy, welcome to the show. Hi. Alright, so Abby, let's start with you. I think a lot of people in the industry, especially our audience, dealers, etc. Don't know who you all are, or maybe have heard of you. But we would love for people to just get a little bit of an understanding about your background, how you ended up here. And we'll start with you Abby, then we'll go to Kathy and then we'll get into some some good stuff.

Abby Vietor: 3:04

I only joined the automotive industry about a year ago. And when I joined Ford, that was my first experience and first exposure to automotive and I was brought in specifically to help build and develop Ford University for dealers because we were very much looking to tackle dealer training from a technological perspective, and move into more of a data driven approach while also optimizing the ability for us to be creative. And I had previously done this at Amazon web services across many industries, and before that had been in other tech industries. But one of the reasons why it particularly suited me was because I started very early in my career. I actually worked in Hollywood for many years, and went to film school at NYU. I started in a mailroom of a major talent agency. So if you watch entourage, I was literally Lloyd pushing milk. For agents, I drove bosses to their liposuction appointments, I did everything. And I worked in real worked and it's all real Entourage is so accurate. But I spent a lot of time in creative development, I worked on sets I worked on the movie almost died was Steven Spielberg and have a lot of exposure to production, and how stories are told, and how to craft effective messaging and storytelling. And it's ended up serving me so well in the vision that I was able to create for Ford University, in terms of not only blending the best of the technologies that we have that we started to roll out to our dealers, but also doing it in that sort of cinematic approach so that we could really be at the same bar is like a streaming service that the dealers, their employees are leveraging every day. So we're looking to really fit into their lives and bring content that they want to see that they're expecting at a certain production value, but doing it in a way where we're also able to measure the impact so that we can provide them and best meet their needs.

Paul J Daly: 4:55

All right, I love it. So far. We've got Film School at NYU. liposuction, Amazon Web Services,

Abby Vietor: 5:04

Harvey Weinstein to for a little bit, so I'll

Paul J Daly: 5:08

leave that off the list. Then we have. So Kathy, what do you what do you have for us?

Kathy Munoz: 5:14

Right? So I don't know that I can beat all of Abby's experiences very interesting. I'm a little boring in comparison, but my background is a little epileptic as well. And that I started out in the legal business, I had a legal services business supporting Michigan's which is where I'm from top 100 law firms. So I really had a pretty good entree into the legal world, and how things work there. And because of the workout in the legal field, I was really drawn to coaching. I wanted to know how do people work? What happens when someone's in a legal situation? And how do you help them through it, even something as fun as buying a home could be really stressful, right? So I pursued a coaching career based on that. And I'm a board certified and I'm proud to say, and I always say board certified ahead of time, because it really matters. I spent a lot of years and a lot of time getting that board certification. There's not many coaches who can say their boards. Yeah,

Paul J Daly: 6:09

I mean, there's probably when I think of coaches now, what you think of is like Instagram. Exactly. Okay, not sort of not boring.

Kathy Munoz: 6:19

Or yeah, or some, you know, some level, but I really care about the human experience. So having Abby having joined Ford, bringing this new opportunity for our dealers to learn in a different way, in a really exciting way, really brings us back to change management, one on one, right, and his behavior changes. And I even had that moment of, oh, is this really going to work or this is so different from where you know, how we typically learn, it's a big learning curve. And so I feel like having the opportunity to work with Abby and learn how her mind works. And, you know, her vision for all of this is really an exciting opportunity. It truly, truly, bar none, is not only innovative, but it's really inspirational. And I feel strongly that we're going to change the trajectory of how learning and how we adapt, you know, how we bring coaching into this environment. It's really exciting. I never feel like I'm working.

Kyle Mountsier: 7:14

That's gonna be, you know, a few weeks ago, we got the opportunity to kind of hang out with you all, and one of the first things that connected us on a very human level was the fact that you both were talking and Abby you just mentioned, like storytelling, and, you know, I, whenever I think of storytelling, and I don't know how you feel about this, but I think of my grandpa, and I'm getting somewhere, I promise. But you know, I think about the Thanksgiving table, I'm 11 years old, maybe having Thanksgiving at my grandpa's house. And like my grandpa is just deep in a story like family stories telling some about his dad or my or my dad or, you know, the my aunt or something. And everybody is all eyes on my grandpa. And those moments like I'll never forget in my mind, because they're connected to something deep about my story of origin. But also, you know, a joyful moment where I was deep into someone's story. I'd love to hear your perspective about just like, the crafting of stories and how that relates to Abby maybe like the human's ability to to experience and recall something that they're participating in?

Abby Vietor: 8:34

Yeah, I think it's, it's really important. And I just want to ask a question, you probably still remember, do you remember the stories that your grandpa told?

Kyle Mountsier: 8:43

Oh, my goodness, absolutely. And yeah,

Unknown: 8:45

and that? Yeah,

Abby Vietor: 8:47

I mean, that right? There is it's, it's so ingrained in our DNA, I mean, we've spent 1000s of years literally sitting around campfires, telling stories to each other. You know, this is how people learn to build a civilization. Look at you know, Greek myths, this is how we've adopted rules and traditions, it's it's so ingrained in how we developed as human beings. And this is how we are programmed to relate to each other. And this is how we have been programmed to transfer knowledge to each other. And for our dealers, you know, the ability to tell compelling stories is particularly important when you're introducing a technology to particularly new technologies. Because what do we do we talk about two stories of things that we have experienced. And we have a story to relate to a past experience. You know, you're sitting around with your friends at a dinner party and someone tells a story, oh, that triggers a memory in you and then you tell your own story, and there's an information exchange. But one of the reasons is particularly important around technologies, with the new technologies coming out, particularly the ones that are featured in Ford, you know, automobiles, things like Evie, blue cruise charging, we don't have years and years of past experience with these technologies to evolve our own stories. When somebody is looking to continue, it's

Kyle Mountsier: 10:07

like, you know, you don't have the like, you don't have the memory of your dad or your mom now on the road trips stopping at nine versus the 99 cents, you know, swiping their card or having to go in to pay the gas and teaching you how to not over pump and overfill like those stories of origin in your own psyche or not, or not

Abby Vietor: 10:31

there, none of us not Well, none of us like we didn't grow up going on first dates in an electric vehicle, they we don't have these associations, they do not exist. And we saw this very much at AWS and Amazon Web Services as well, where these people expect you to go out and have these robust, detailed technological conversations with customers who had no prior experience with cloud technologies, or AI technologies. It's all new. And in order to get to that point, we are well positioned and privileged through Fordham University to have the tools to enable not only for us to help people get those stories, but also have the ability for them to up through the work that Kathy and her team are doing and leveraging the like the for example, the AI coaching component of it, to help them understand how to Ori, and tell those stories themselves in a way where they could also then work and weave in some of their own personal experiences, as they start to learn and play with the technologies and help them become more sophisticated and that they can tell a story about, you know, a vehicle some sort of, you know, wheel structures or something that something has been consistent for decades very easily. But for things that are technology integrate at the solutions, the software services, that's where we really have to provide an extra level of support in order to enable that storytelling, it's not something that it's not something we can expect to be intuitive,

Paul J Daly: 11:58

without a doubt. So, you know, I think what we're talking about it this way, it kind of runs contrary to everything. Are the majority of images conjured up in anyone who's been through an OEM trainings to my right, it's like, we think cheesy role playing, we think you know what I mean, just like this person has never actually done that before. So what what is some? What are some of the cool things that you're leveraging going into it? Like, how is what you're working on? Going to contrast? Because what you're working on is gonna be rolled out to Ford and Lincoln dealers correct? And so like, how did you take all of that legacy baggage? I'll call it and set it aside? And what is the new experience? Like? What are the best experiences that people are going to expect?

Kathy Munoz: 12:46

Me before you answer that, because I know, I'm just gonna have a great answer to it, I just wanted to put it in context, a little bit about building on that storytelling, or the difference between the boring roleplay that you're talking about. So the work that I'm doing around missions is actually a roleplay experience where you can record yourself. And we use the the example of blue cruise, for example, blue Cruise is really cool. It's really exciting. And it's also new technology, right. And so the typical way to describe blue Cruise is something like it's on 97% of highways, and it's hands free, and you can take your eyes off the road, but you have to make sure you keep your eyes on the road, or the system is going to you know, let you know that you need to pay attention, all that good stuff that's important. Safety features, things that we need to talk about. But through the roleplays that we're looking to create under Abby's direction and guidance is really about that storytelling mechanism. So instead of saying all those things in that manner, you know, very perfunctory, here's why. Well, it's more about talking with your customer. So if I'm in Michigan, and I'm selling the vehicle, I'm gonna say something like blue Cruise is really cool. It's a 97% of highways. In fact, if you have di 96, which is one of our big interstates and drove you know, four hours and your electric vehicle to Traverse City or three and a half hours, whatever it is, you you can get there using blue cruise all of the way. Oh, and by the way, you won't need to charge because yeah, yeah, so it's like bringing the experience of, of helping people think about how their vehicle supports their lifestyle. Versus Oh, you know, in your vehicle, you turn it on you drive from point A to B go to work, go to play and you're done. It's really about bringing that experience to life and making it stick because you'll remember that you'll remember that I can drive from here to there and have a great experience somewhere.

Kyle Mountsier: 14:35

You must have seen some apple versus Microsoft, barista and commercial some time in your life, right. Yes, and it's interesting, you know, Kathy, has your like your, your bent is toward this coaching perspective, right, which is, it's a very coaching is a very interpersonal experience historically, right. It's like how do I as a mentor coach, in part with DME on you over time in order to see you better yourself with, I mean, so many things moving digital, including training. I mean, we've been, I took digital training, when I in 2009, when I started in the car business, right? It's not like it's brand new, but it's taking over. How do we maintain a feeling of interpersonal coaching? Through the digital coaching mechanism? Like how are you translating that feeling in something that you've historically done it personally into the mechanism of digital?

Kathy Munoz: 15:34

Yeah, I think as humans, we always want that, that level of connection, you know, to something bigger than ourselves. And we want to be growing and in, in this AI perspective of how we're going to use coaching, it's really about that growth mindset. As long as you're helping your learner understand that by doing things a certain way, and by building on your skill set and feeling confident and comfortable about what you're doing, you're going to have that growth mindset, I see myself growing. So when we're thinking about AI, it's not a relegation of okay, we're going to let the the AI coach tell you all the things that need to do, it's more self reflective, we're going to use the AI coaching platform to help you self reflect to help you say, Yeah, you know, be really honest with yourself to say, Yeah, I'm really good at that. But maybe I need a little help there. Or maybe I really suck, or I'm just not comfortable. So that the conversations you can have with your manager, who should also have a coaching component, in the physical sense of how they're working with, you can actually say, Well, you need to really overcome this, because you're really good at that, even though you feel this way. Or here's the things that you can do to make yourself better. But it's really having that growth mindset. And I think in any scenario, whether it's live in person, or virtual, or through AI, as long as the learner feels like they are making inroads, they're doing something that values their time and investing in themselves, and they're actually seeing it play out in a sales or in a customer experience or in a memory. We're good. And

Abby Vietor: 17:01

to add to that, you know, I think one of the key components of the way Ford University will be leveraging that AI as well as it provides that abundant opportunity for the employee to practice. No, they can just practice with this AI, they could do it as many times as they want, it's in a safe space.

Paul J Daly: 17:18

What do you mean, when you say practice, you could use the AI

Abby Vietor: 17:21

coach anytime you want. And you could do it over and over again. But no one sees your AI feedback about you. So you're able to consume and react to it in real time in the privacy of your own space, it'll tell you, you use too many yums you didn't use the keywords, you use this keyword too many times. It provides sort of this really robust comprehensive feedback, just like a coach would. But with a life coach, you know, you could meet with them once but you know, twice, maybe a few times a year, whereas the AI coach is literally it's 24/7.

Paul J Daly: 17:56

And there's like there's also like that anxiety, anxiety around like when there's a person there, or if you're doing it in front of the class or, and that just makes you know, probably 80% of you will be like, Oh my gosh, Please don't pick me Please don't pick me, please don't pick, right, right, what's comfortable, it's right. And it sets you up to not be thinking about the things that you need to be thinking about, which is like, just being in the flow and getting it right, like so often, when people are out of that environment, they actually perform a lot better, and then to be able to work on the nuances and probably get a lot of positive affirmation from the coach as well, I'm assuming, right? It's not just going to tell you what you're doing wrong, it's going to tell you what you're doing right.

Abby Vietor: 18:34

It absolutely highlights the things you're doing, right. But one of the side benefits of that regular practice is every time you are having that conversation. And it's a one way roleplay there's also two way roleplay capability as well, where you're interacting with someone on the other side that the AI person, but every time you go through that motion of practicing, you're also reinforcing the knowledge, the act of talking about it, it helps you internalize that level of knowledge as well. So the key point, not just fundamental, just

Kyle Mountsier: 19:09

like click, click, click, click, click got it got it got it answered matters.

Abby Vietor: 19:13

Exactly. And it isn't until just like, you know why people say you know, you know, when school they have you write essays, or they have you write things down if you go through the art of actually, or writing or trying to take a key point and put it into a conversational term and explain something. That's when it starts to really internalize and I think that's that's what really, one of the key benefits of this tool that Kathy and her team are going to be leveraging Is it both allows the safe space practicing. But every practice moment is also a reinforcement moment. And the more the employee is able to reinforce and they're able to document their understanding of that knowledge. We don't need to give them so much training we can reduce the amount of training that they need to take overall because we know that they understand it and they've internalized it. We don't need to keep put in more training.

Paul J Daly: 20:02

That's huge for people that are doing it well and demonstrate a command of the material and the processes. There's nothing more demotivating to making you do it again, the over weights, we're kind of getting close to time here. But I would love to know which areas Kathy OSAS when you which area do you think is going to see the earliest improvement which area the training or area the store, or the process do you think is going to see the quickest jump in improvement.

Kathy Munoz: 20:30

As much as I like to say the the AAA coaching part is going to take off, I think it's going to take a little bit of time to get used to. I really feel strongly that this whole concept of learning from a cinematic perspective of watching a video and having it sticky, and reducing the amount of seat time is probably going to be the most that takes up

Paul J Daly: 20:51

area or like one area sales service. Like where do you? Where do you feel like it's really strong right now? And like once you get the cinematic and even company with the AI coaching, what area do you think is going to benefit from this like area, this

Kyle Mountsier: 21:04

area of a store? Like what area of the store is going to see them? Yeah,

Kathy Munoz: 21:08

I wouldn't say I would say sales, we're starting off that way we're trying we're really gonna lean into the other thing that Abby hasn't been able to talk about yet. And I hope you have a few minutes ambience to talk about that back end of the platform, which is the reporting functionality that tells you where a learner is on their journey in how that learning transfers to sales enablement. So I think that's what we're gonna see what I talked about sales. Abby, did you want to talk about that part of it? Yeah, we

Abby Vietor: 21:36

do have some capabilities that we're piloting, that are going to allow us to be able to look at the impact inside the store, not just from a skills and training perspective, but actual engagement with the customers and the, you know, the impact of the store itself from a business perspective, and making sure that the dealers are armed with that information so that they can continue the learning, but also understand, you know, the investment in their time. And the benefit that they're getting from this, you know, teach show practice and reinforcement model that we're looking to introduce that it is worth their time, and it will have an impact. And the individuals who really lean into it, they're gonna go places they haven't gone before.

Kyle Mountsier: 22:17

And I'm excited about this. We've Paul and I have talked about this multiple times since we saw it released and then got to talk to you guys, individually. And now, kind of share your story with the asoto community. Abby, Kathy, thank you so much for spending a little bit of time with us today, sharing about your individual stories, how that brought you here and how that's translated into a really cool thing that board and fourth University are doing together. Thank you so much for joining us today on Auto Collabs. The thing that enamels me here is that an OEM is considering the story narrative in training, and it's not just like click click click on Do you understand the details of this car, it's like, there's actually a narrative because the reality is and you know, as I'm listening to them chat, when you know, when I was working at the stores, that's very core to the actual training profile of working with a customer. And so it actually what happens is it actually starts to get more analogous with the way that a dealer trains someone to consider the story of the consumer in their presentation in the walk around in the fact finding, it's like actually consider the story of the person on the other side. And so then if you wrap that with the story of the vehicle or the brand, and and kind of pull those two things together, I think this is actually going to be something that makes it feel more like more integrated with the way that we actually do business in the retail environment.

Paul J Daly: 24:05

It definitely is Michael, did you ever go through a dealership training platform for anything?

Michael Cirillo: 24:10

Yeah, they're pretty stale.

Paul J Daly: 24:12

I think that's very generous of you. That's generous. My daughter just got my 15 year old daughter just took her boater safety course right so now you don't have to go in and do it sucks at New York state you have to do it there like ride a jet drive and operate a jetski or drive a boat and so she took it and she literally it was just stories. And I was surprised because I took it like three years ago and it wasn't just stories it was like Welcome to the motor safety court. No and she crushed it. And she was she blew right through it aced the test. And I think that's just indicative of how people learn excited to see Ford jump on board,

Michael Cirillo: 24:47

but I bet the training programs are nothing like the way they are in Canada because in Canada they all end in you will die.

Kyle Mountsier: 24:54

Yeah, sorry.

Unknown: 24:56

You will die.

Michael Cirillo: 24:58

Motorcycle you probably do. I'm sorry. Oh,

Unknown: 25:02

yeah. Put your feet up on the dash while you're on a long road trip, they could blast through your face.

Michael Cirillo: 25:09

Do I even want to do anything? No,

Paul J Daly: 25:11

I'm gonna stay inside. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Oh, well, thank you for joining us today. We hope you if you're a Ford dealer, you're gonna get the benefit of this training very, very soon. So we're excited to see how that goes. Also to see excited to see how this is adopted further throughout the industry, not just on the dealer side, but on the industry partner side as well. Developing people is obviously an incredibly important part of where we're going as an industry, especially with all the AI stuff, investing in people is kind of like at the heart of what we do. So thanks again on behalf of Kyle Mountsier, Michael Cirillo, and myself. Thanks for joining us again on Auto Collabs. Sign

Unknown: 25:48

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@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 Welcome to Auto Collabs Are we recording

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