Courtney Roberts

Paul Daly: 0:02You're listening to a soda con sessions by effective live from a soda con 2023.

‍Kyle Mountsier: 0:11

All right, we are sitting here in another soda con sessions podcast sponsored by effective super great partners there. And I'm sitting here with a literally, brand new friend. This is Courtney Roberts laws, a product marketing manager with Guba Guba. I always love that every time I say that I make sure that everybody knows I know the little phrase to get it out, right? I'm sure as a product marketing manager, your like, see the name right? Say their name, right?

Courtney Roberts: 0:41

Yeah. Because everyone's like, is it gobbly goo? It's it's Guba Guba Guba Guba Guba Guba.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:49

Guba. Like scuba, I like it. Alright, so you're just telling me, you. So you have a little one. You don't have to say names or ages or anything like that. But you have a little one who's at the house or at daycare, I got little videos. And And those were like hilarious is

Courtney Roberts: 1:05

hilarious as I'm here like wondering like, Oh, I wonder if he misses me. I wonder if he's okay. He's like in the video got his hands up. He's having a ball. He's doing music class, gym class. And I'm like, Well, okay, well, clearly, I'm not needed back at

Kyle Mountsier: 1:19

home. So that's amazing. I feel like that's, that's natural with so many things. And I wish we could get video recordings of everything that people are doing without us there. Because I'm this person that my natural. My nature is like, if I'm not there, things are very wrong, right? Whether it's my kids or company or anything like that. Yeah. Like that away from like, the normal office or

Courtney Roberts: 1:40

Yeah, because it's organized chaos when I'm there. So when I'm not there for four days, I'm like, Well, what's happening? And I call my husband, I'm like, how's it going? And he's like, Yeah, we're fine. I'm like, your shirt, like, so what did you make to eat? And it's like, yeah, we ate. Don't worry about it.

Kyle Mountsier: 1:56

Don't worry about it. All right. So tell me a little bit. So how long have you been with in automotive? And then how long with Gugu? Or has that been your whole time in the automotive realm?

Courtney Roberts: 2:05

Yeah. So I joined Gugu in 2019. So just just before the pandemic, right. And I had been in professional media before I was at Reuters before and I connected with Drew Delaware who I'm pretty sure you know, yeah.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:27

Actually, the way asoto is today is probably because of drew Delaware. Like the story is Drew Delaware basically connected Paul and I so yeah, he's

Courtney Roberts: 2:39

that's really cool thing, just phenomenal dot connector, people connect her. And he was just so passionate about the automotive industry. And I'm like, I actually, like know nothing about automotive. But I can learn quickly. I'm passionate about storytelling. Would love to join your marketing team? And yeah, so drew brought me on board. And here I am a few years later.

Kyle Mountsier: 3:01

That's so cool. Okay. So you know, that's an interesting thing. Even last night, we were on stage. And John Sacco was talking about the metal recycling industry. I don't know if you're in the session. And, and someone afterwards was like, So tell me about metal recycling? Like, did they sponsor like, why were they here and all this type of stuff? Then they said, Well, you know, I never really thought about metal recycling before. But now I'm kind of interested because John Sacco was super passionate about it. And you're like, well, if Drew Delaware was super passionate about it, yeah, I might might as well be. Do you see other instances of that just you being attracted or others being attracted to you because of passion? In your experience in automotive?

Courtney Roberts: 3:42

Absolutely. And I think passion is what really drives this business. A lot of the times like you think it's like high tech or AI, or it's it's the product, but not really, it's the passion, the people behind the passion that really connects all the dots. I think,

Kyle Mountsier: 4:00

man, I I'm all I'm constantly amazed at just the care and the culture, which people have in our industry. You know, you I call it like the guy in 109. Right? You're always if you ever lived in an apartment, you know who the guy in 109. Yes, right. Like it's that generic guy that just never takes out his trash. And it's always been loud. And then and then when you meet Steven 109, Steve becomes a whole other person. And you you meet all these people in auto Yeah, goodness. Those are incredible people. Drew Delaware now is like building a retreat center in Hawaii. Right. It's unbelievable. Yeah. All right. So speaking of building, you know, Google goo is doing some really neat stuff. And since you've come on in 2019, there's been a lot of transformation. I want to lean into one thing because I haven't honestly personally haven't seen a lot of it recently just because I'm on the the you know the industry partner media side at this point. But, you know, in our world, we have been talking a lot about people's move back to Brick and mortar, right? Where not just not just in auto, but in every industry right now more and more people are just going back to Brick and Mortar experiences, malls and they want they have the desire to shop in person. And in auto we, we kind of like got to this place where like everybody's gonna go digital retail Oh, wait. And and Google is really working to kind of solve that in store experience. Can you talk a little bit about the product evolution there?

Courtney Roberts: 5:33

Yeah, I think our in store experience is something that we've focused really, really heavily on from a product perspective. You know, just making sure that, you know, customers can create a login, and then access their data, whether it's vehicles that they viewed, they can go in and highlight vehicles that they want to favorite. And then when they go into the dealership, the dealer can now access their data can see exactly where they left off, whether they put in PII or value to trade in. And so the process is less antiquated, it's so much easier, it saves people time. And it's just so much more seamless. And dealers are more confident in being able to provide that exact same experience from their tablet or desktop when when a customer comes in store. And something that something that I really love is the offer builder tool, you know, it's like it's digital desking at your fingertips, right. So they can create a comprehensive deal, then go back and create multiple offers when that customer goes home. And then you know, send them those deals via text message or email. And I think back to when I bought a car. I think the dealer just like gave me a piece of paper with with a number of different payment options on there. I lost that thing. Like as soon as I got home, right? You say

Kyle Mountsier: 6:56

what I love about that. And if you're not watching this on video, what I love about your action you like, immediately became a customer, you are no longer an automotive employee for like three seconds in your brain just went like, I still don't know why they handed me a sheet of paper,

Courtney Roberts: 7:10

like, yeah, it was just I remember a little piece of paper with chicken scratch on it. And then it was like, Okay, your interest rate is this much, then your payments are gonna be this much. And maybe they gave me two options. And everywhere I went, like people were giving me like pieces of paper, and I was like, wow, we're still doing this. Okay,

Kyle Mountsier: 7:28

that's really why I love your perspective in that way, the way you just said it. It wasn't like, oh, you know, customers want you to have a personal experience about that. So obviously, the customer side of that is extremely important. And, you know, like their experience, how they, how they interact with the technology. But are you seeing the change in the employee experience? And have you been working or seen groups or dealers that have felt the impact on the way employees feel about working in the sales department?

Courtney Roberts: 8:01

Sorry, so so

Kyle Mountsier: 8:03

like, the employee impact of having a technology that allows them to, to, to more easily care for our customer? Have you seen the impact or heard the feedback that this actually enables a more efficient process and a better day for them?

Courtney Roberts: 8:19

For sure. And I mean, you've you've got different types of dealers, right. So you've got dealers that are really going to work the tool, make sure that their teams are trained on how to use it. And then you've got dealers that may not see the benefit right away, because they haven't taken the time to really work with it. And so what's been really important for us is just making sure that dealers know how customizable it is how much we can suit the tool to their needs. And so the dealers who work it and who and who use it really see the benefit, I think,

Kyle Mountsier: 8:53

cool. So there's just a just recently we ran a story, essentially, the idea is that in the marketplace, there's kind of this this study pinned to marketers and consumers and the way that marketers see the world and the way that consumers see the world is totally different. And you're in the marketing side of the world. So you see the world totally different. They're like, marketers always know about these things, and consumers don't even know about them. So what are your like personal, not just company? What are your eyes on? What are you looking forward to? That's coming down the pipe that maybe you're just excited about? Because you're seeing it on the horizon? Or you're seeing other companies execute with it? What's one of those things?

Courtney Roberts: 9:33

Definite definitely excited about AI chat GPT so if you know anything about Google, we started off in chat conversational commerce, and to see where not just the industry but where we're going with it. Our engineers are doing some really cool things and are going to be modeling our chat after chat GPT which means that you're going to be able to get in answers to your questions or get to a desired outcome a lot faster without us having to fully integrate with chat GPT. Because I think so many times you hear that buzzword and you're like, Okay, we got to jump on this, we got to integrate, but then I can see the pitfalls with that as well. Because if chat GPT goes down, then does your technology go down as well? You know, if someone like types in a chat, like, how many wars were there in 1985? Right? Is chat GPT going to give them that answer, right. And then it's like, it's not really solving for automotive. So I think you do have to be careful with it. But I'm still super excited about AI because of just just the many things that we're going to be able to do with a really,

Kyle Mountsier: 10:47

yeah, I think it's gonna be super fun. It's a lot of experimental right now, but there's going to be rapid advances in over the next year. Well, it's been fun talking to you. We've been from kids tea, and to do that in a 10 minute podcast is super fun. So great to meet you. Finally. Yeah, I

Courtney Roberts: 11:03

know. I heard such great things. I'm glad you have coffee because I'm like, how on earth are they from like 730 in the morning, just jumping on like five different stages, like they have not stopped. So yeah, kudos to you.

Kyle Mountsier: 11:18

I love it. It's the most fun I have all yours. Thank you.

Paul Daly: 11:25

Thank you for listening to this. So to concession by effective if you want more content like this, you can check out our other podcasts we have a daily show called The automotive troublemaker Monday through Friday, here and podcasts also live streamed on YouTube, and LinkedIn and Facebook. We also have a long form podcast called Auto collapse, auto collapse. And if you just want to go a little different in this community, you should sign up for our regular email we put our heart and soul into it. You can get it for free by going to us so two.com We'll see you next time.

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