How To Prove To Customers That You Actually Care with Ted Rubin of ActivEngage

Kyle Mountsier: 0:00This is the time that because Michael Cirillo didn't show up, we roast him.

‍Unknown: 0:12

This is Auto Collabs. Oh,

Paul J Daly: 0:18

all right, I don't know what you're gonna say.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:20

You think you'll not show up. We roast you.

Paul J Daly: 0:22

Oh, that's a great that's a great thing. Now, if I can stall just enough to get back to my chat history from grok the other day. I don't know if you noticed this, but when, if you have x and you go, you know where I'm going with this, and you so ready, and you go into grok, there's now a button, because now grok is right at the bottom of the XP. You just press the button, and all of a sudden, you're in there. And I, the other day, happened to open it. I'm like, oh, there's a grock button. Press the grock button and I there's a preset that says, roast me. I was like, yes, yes, I did it. Take it and it roasted me. And it was pretty fun. Made fun of my profile picture and everything, and then I was like, roast. Michael Cirillo hosted the dealer playbook podcast, and here's what it said, Michael, I'm gonna Hey, my voice for emphasis. Your voice friends. Michael Cirillo, the self proclaimed guru of I'll actually read it like Michael of car dealership marketing with this podcast, the dealer playbook. You've got more episodes than the Eagles have close calls in the playoffs. You talk a big game about dominating the retail industry. But let's face it, your real playbook seems to be quote, how to milk the same topic for hundreds of episodes. Ah,

Kyle Mountsier: 1:43

I love AI. You know, we've had actually, a lot of conversations with the company that Ted Rubin founded, our guest on the show today about particularly about AI and its use in the industry, particularly in chat. You know, we've had chats with his team. They've been to our events. And, you know, it is this conversation of like, okay, is it going to take take over? Are we going to have roast by AI and it's just going to absolutely be slaughtering us all the time, or, or is there human nuance that is super important to kind of understanding what's going on in the world, business, interactions, interpersonal all that, all that type of stuff. Yeah,

Paul J Daly: 2:23

so looking forward this the first time you know, we've, like you said, interacted so much with a company over the years, but never with Ted. So I hope you enjoyed this conversation we have with Ted. Rubin, CEO and founder of active engage.

Michael Cirillo: 2:38

All right, we're super excited for this one, Ted, thanks so much for joining us on Auto Collabs.

Ted Rubin: 2:43

Yeah, thanks for having me here. I really appreciate it. Love you guys.

Michael Cirillo: 2:46

There's several things I need to just get out of the way, right out of the gates. Here we go. I just have to know, I mean, Europe is one of my favorite places to go and travel, so I need to hear about I've heard through the grapevine, there's a little birdie chirping saying, we need to ask Ted about his recent visit to Europe. And so, I mean, the floor is yours, sir. What? What happened? What you didn't wake up in the back of a van somewhere? Did you? No, no,

Ted Rubin: 3:15

I didn't wake up in the back of the van. My My wife is a sommelier, and so she knows people all over the world, especially in Europe, who are wine makers and champagne makers and things like that. And so we, we tend to spend a decent amount of time in Italy and France, which is horrible for me. And sounds awful. Sounds terrible for you. Yeah, it was very difficult. Just thought through it. And so she had an opportunity to be there and go to Champaign and be, you know, right at the chandelies A for New Year's, which is like being in Times Square. And so we were right at the arch, like 80 yards, and had dinner at a restaurant and then just walked out kind of onto the street, because they had it all blocked off. It was sort of a secluded area and stuff like that. Just there were about 100 of us that had, you know, an entire street to ourselves. And then if you kind of turn the corner, there was 400,000 people that were like,

Paul J Daly: 4:12

Oh, look at these poor saps that have to do life that way. Pinky,

Michael Cirillo: 4:20

so she's a sommelier. You said, oh, yeah, did you help her study for this? Or was this already in place when you met me? Yeah,

Ted Rubin: 4:29

I don't Yeah, because that's intense.

Michael Cirillo: 4:32

Isn't that one of the hardest certifications that somebody can get, one of the most difficult? Uh, yeah.

Ted Rubin: 4:40

I mean, I think, you know, being a doctor is probably more complicated and stuff like that, as far as getting certified. But, yeah, I mean, she, you know, she's, she used to sell wine, and she, she used to, she did all the training and took the tests and everything like that. And so she's kind of like a mid to high level. Level Somalia, and she's helped set up. She used to work in the industry, instead of people's restaurants, what they ordered, she used to sell to them, and she was just kind of doing menus and things like that. And

Michael Cirillo: 5:12

I got to ask you, then they let me get one controversial question in on I

Paul J Daly: 5:18

mean, how many do you want? Three deep at this point,

Ted Rubin: 5:22

no controversy to answer your question. That's all that I'm here for. Is just to answer your question

Michael Cirillo: 5:27

for you as a tech guy, yeah, you know, with active engage in everything that you guys do there, has it ever crossed your mind that AI could replace the recommendations of a sommelier. I'll see myself out guys. I just

Ted Rubin: 5:44

has it crossed my mind. It has crossed my mind. The the issue. So it's a very subjective thing, right? Because each person has a specific taste, and then it depends everything. Everything depends on what you're eating, and then with the flavors and the sensibility of what each winemaker has made and when it was made and what transpired at that particular time in that particular year. It's almost like looking at art, right? So when you look at art, old art or new art, then it usually represents something about the time that it was done, even if it's an older opinion of an older item, then there's something about it that represents the moment in time. And so wine is like that. It has to do with who was the winemaker at that particular moment, what was important to people you know at that particular point in time, and what what happened with the weather throughout the entire year. Was it a wet year? Was it a dry year? Did it have a lot of water at the end? Did it have it in the beginning? You know, other things like that. People think of some of these wines and how old they are, and they can get tremendously old, and they're kind of consistently a certain way. Some of the really big like burgundies and Bordeaux and things like that. Other things that you just be surprised to know, such as champagne, which was, which obviously was a wine. It was just basically considered a wine. The person who kind of turned it into the celebratory thing was the blue Co, the widow CO, that's what that means, and and she basically during Napoleon and a lot of the Napoleonic laws where they were not allowed to sell to Russia, she found kind of a conduit, like a back door to be able to sell Russia. Yeah, yeah. And, and that opened up a huge market. But

Paul J Daly: 7:36

marketer is the reason, right? I like how Ted. I like how TED is like, No, I don't knock way over my pay grade, and then he just gives us a district. A beautiful it was. It was very artistic. It was. And

Michael Cirillo: 7:51

ironically, some parallels to the car business, like to the car buying journey and how many different touch points there are and considerations and nuances and what's important

Paul J Daly: 8:00

to who, when and why. Culturally speaking, yeah,

Michael Cirillo: 8:04

was it a wet was it a dry year? I mean, shifting to the car business, with what you're doing with active engage, what are some of the things that you're thinking about, especially with the emergence of, you know, programmatic and, you know, artificial intelligences and language models and things that nature as it pertains to digital retail, the path to purchase the various touch points and nuances that are in a car shoppers Path to Purchase. What are your thoughts?

Ted Rubin: 8:35

I mean, I think that AI is having, is starting to have a big impact, and will, long term, have a huge impact, you know, on the entire industry about the way things get done. I think that, you know, we use it a lot for aggregation of data, and we use it for presenting information to our agents so that we can find information more quickly. We use it for reporting. And, you know, I think there's a lot of places actually in the dealership, where it can be used really, really well to identify a doc sheet, maybe for guys who don't really understand how to look at one if you're running it new to running dealerships, I think that especially for accounting and a lot of other areas, certainly in our area, We use it to monitor conversations to be able to bring up data for the agent and bring pertinent information very specifically to the forefront, so that they can communicate about what's going on, or no specials, or no details about the dealership and other things like that. I don't think it's really the place that you want to I mean, I know that there's been some dealers or some companies who are kind of pushing to move the front end of the conversation to AI. That's not, I don't think that's a wise move at this particular moment. And it's not that you shouldn't use AI. I think you should, but I don't think it should be talking to the customer, because, I mean, you know, I'm an old school automotive guy, so it'll be like. 25th nada, and

Paul J Daly: 10:02

I don't know, like, when I was looking at your LinkedIn profile, I didn't want to be the one to, like, Bring, bring the mood down. But according to your profile, yeah, you started in automotive in the 90s.

Ted Rubin: 10:18

Yeah. Really? 90s, yeah. Well, 96 is the first thing

Paul J Daly: 10:21

on your profile. Oh, it goes further 93

Ted Rubin: 10:23

Yeah, further back, yeah. So it makes you can see it. I think it shows

Paul J Daly: 10:27

here, really, but, but 2525 nada. 25

Ted Rubin: 10:33

nada is look, I mean, including

Paul J Daly: 10:36

time with groups like, I think it's important. Like, whenever someone works for an industry tech partner, like you had an extensive run, like with auto nation, like hands in the dirt, like with dealers on the front line, yeah, as the part of the internal system of a dealer group. Yeah,

Ted Rubin: 10:51

listen. I mean, I was in the stores. I started, I actually had another company that was an inventory maintenance company in the early, earlier in the 90s, and I ended up working for, I got to be very lucky. Okay, when I sold that company, I ended up working for her on most of a at the headquarter group, headquarter. He was just making it a group. It was actually just a store at that time. And I started, you know, basically in get ready and managing those guys. And throughout my career, I've, I've been in parts. I was parts manager, director of parts and service, you know, I've been on the sales side, General Sales Manager, or, you know, I worked for automation. I got to work for some I got to work for these guys who were unbelievably savvy. And because I worked directly for those guys, they would sit and pontificate things, you know, just as I was kind of growing up in the business, and I I worked for the case and Rita case, I worked for Phil Smith, for Ron was definitely and then I was part of this initial team that was put together by automation to define how vehicles were going to be sold over the internet back, you know, in 99 and 2000 and, you know, we all kind of figured that out and then sold a billion dollars worth of vehicles. And then people looked at us, and we're like, Hey, how did that happen? And we all good went off and, yeah, you can do that.

Paul J Daly: 12:23

So, like, it's obvious, you've had all the experiences, and I think you're one of the disconnects that happens when a tech partner says, Hey, this tech could help you, right? I think the first unspoken question, well, I think we probably know a lot of dealers that would actually say it out loud, what do you know about selling cars? Right? Right? And you've been there, and you've done it, and so throughout your journey, you've just done all these things, you've had all these positions, and you become a part of what active engage is doing. And a lot of times, I think that when people make those decisions, it's because there's something about the DNA of the company that is attractional to them. So what is it about the DNA of active engage that was attractional to you? And how would you like position it?

Ted Rubin: 13:10

Yeah, I think that you know from the beginning when we came up with the idea to start the company for active engage, the goal was to not exactly take over. We wanted to augment the impact, you know, for the sales people at the store to be able to be more effective and more efficient in their dealings with the customer, right? And so dealers themselves, you know, there's a lot of training that goes into it, and there's the pros programs, and there's all these other things that dealers and sales people and sales managers do to kind of become more effective at interacting with the customer. And as I was, you know, starting to go talk about before, ever since, I've been in any business, and I was in some other businesses, even before that, even before being in the automotive industry, when you're selling, you're selling yourself. First, you know, it's all about the personal interaction and who you are and whether they trust you. And then that transfers over to the product. There's lots of products, and you can buy that product anywhere. You're buying a Toyota, there's a dozen dealerships, you know, within 3040, miles that they could buy the car from. It's really about who is going to service the customer the way that they want to be serviced. Talk to them whether they want to be talked to you. Do they believe in you? Do they trust you? So that's relationship building, right? And so when we designed the company from the ground up, we were saying, like, how can we impact it so sales people can be more efficient, more impactful? Can we get the customer the initial communication so that instead of just getting a lead, you know, we don't care a lot about leaves here, we care. We do care about leaves. It's not fair to say we don't, but we want to make sure we're supplying a customer who's highly motivated to want to buy from you, from a company that we're representing, if we're representing auto trader or KBB, or if we're representing the dealership themselves. Or a dealer group, then we want to make sure the customer understands that, that there's a relationship there, there's empathy, there's someone who cares about what's going on. We're going to talk to you to try to build trust and to motivate you to want to buy there, and the way that we do that is by making sure that you have the information. We're giving you information. You're asking a question. We're not going here's another question. You're asking a question, we're giving you information, and we want to make sure that you understand, and we'll talk about the sales process at the store, and we'll make sure that you know what's coming next. And you know, we want to make sure that you've gotten the information that you came on to get. And I think that's where a lot of people miss they forget that you know selling is about selling you, and if they don't buy into who you are, then they're not going to buy anything from you. And if, and everybody knows that, but they for somehow forget that online, because otherwise you would just have you would walk into a store and there would be kiosks, yes, no sales people. That's right,

Paul J Daly: 15:55

but that's not what people want. And I think, you know, like, like every entrepreneur, and it's very obvious. You are just one of those. You know, it'll never stop serial entrepreneurs that, you know, we constantly think like, there's a better way, there's a problem for this. And coming from JM and a right and starting active, engaged, there was a thing, there's a better way. And you brought up Michael, I don't know if you've ever heard this, because Michael's early career was like, Canada, auto, you know, and then, but the frozen tundra,

Ted Rubin: 16:24

Canadian, that's okay.

Paul J Daly: 16:27

And and the adage was, sell yourself, sell the house, sell the car, right, right? People need to like you, and then they need to understand why this business is great. And now this is the product that the business sells.

Ted Rubin: 16:42

That's it, I mean, and it's so it's so much more important that you build that trust, and that you build the relationship with the customer now, because there are things that you really need to trust, right? I mean, it's harder to get, yeah, it's harder to believe in the things that you're being told. And there's a lot of scary stuff out there,

Paul J Daly: 17:03

right? Is it fair to say to you both? I agree it's fair to say that, like when I come up on a net new relationship, or buying a product from a net new company, my trust is probably starts off lower than it would have, like 20 years ago.

Ted Rubin: 17:15

I think the thing that's that's also strange about this too. I think where it kind of tweaks the dealers, where they're not sure how it works is so if you ask a customer, and we see this all the time, so if you just ask a customer, what's your name and email, well, that's not hard to get, right. So anybody can get that. You can just ask and they'll tell you, it's what will will they respond to the phone call? Now, when you call them, will they respond to the email when you email them, probably not, because there's not any trust. If that's all that you did, you know you have to build some sort of feeling that there is, you're on the same side and that you're trying to get to the end of either a transaction or a conversation, or whatever it is, that you know, something transactionally in the conversation that's happening so that the customer feels like that was good. I would, I would talk to that person again. But if all you do is go online and you're measuring, that's why I said it before. If all you're doing is measuring, just leave anybody can just, yeah, hey, you know? Can you tell me please? Do you have this card? Do you know what do you like it or not? Do you how much is it? And you go, Well, what's your name and number. Well, you're going to get it, and then you might go, and we've seen other companies where they just go, Okay, thanks. I'll have someone contact you. That customer is never talking to you. You get anything that they asked for.

Michael Cirillo: 18:31

No, you brought this up earlier, you know, like, what? Why? You know, how come, all of a sudden it changes online. And I love this talk track about, you know, stop focusing on the lead, start focusing on building relationships. As an agency guy myself, I think I can envision 75 year old Michael with PTSD over the word lead, because it's like, you know, and I think the three of us could agree to your point Ted, that the difference between an okay lead and a great lead is often how it's handled and how the relationship is formed. You go on a cruise, there's a cruise director and there's event coordinators that are making sure that at every turn, you're having the best experience, that your trust in that that cruise line and in your experiences is increasing. We I often think, in conjunction with what you do, what would happen, how quickly we would abandon this lead concept, and if we changed our paradigm to say, I'm not a BDC, I'm not a chat rep. I am a customer experience coordinator, right? I am here to make sure, like, like a wedding planner, almost. I am here to make sure that at every turn you are going, Whoa. They thought of everything. They answered all of my questions. To your point. I just think that this is such a big thing, especially this year and beyond, to underscore in this conversation that we got. To stop talking about leads, because any one of us on this call right now could throw money at Facebook ads, and you're going to be bombarded with leads, right, right? Absolutely, those interactions of people that are actually, genuinely interested, who came to you from a variety of factors, who are asked, asking questions of interest, and your hand to your point where you left off saying and then you handle them with what's your name and address, what's your phone number, you know, you send out a canned text message, a canned email message, and then you we sit here and lament about why nobody's responding. And the simple answer is, because the internet has teleported many of us to an alternate reality where stupidity is okay. I just, what do I do with my hands? Would you do it in real life? No, then definitely don't do it

Ted Rubin: 20:56

online, right? Online? I think that's yeah. I think you're definitely right. I mean, listen, you know, just back to looking back to the DNA, and I'm going to answer all your questions, just in the very random order, I guess. But the, the the goal for us, you know, the way we built the company, as I was saying it starting to say, or trying to say, and I just forgot about it, is, is, effectively, you know, we want to be able to, you know, we're going to supply leads to the to the dealer, for sure, but we don't want to just increase the number of leads. That's sort of formulaic, because, you know, we're added onto a website, so you're going to get, possibly get more. But I want to increase the number of sales that each sales person is producing without increasing the effort. See, that's the problem with just supplying leads, is you're supplying all this stuff to sales people. I'm like, Oh, God, you know, I'll just go through these, or I don't want to look at these, or this is what I'm going to and it's just too much, you know? I mean, certainly if you take 1000 leads, then you'll sell the volume of cars that you want to be able to sell. The goal is, can I sell that same volume and do it in the work week that I'm capable of working. Can I sell that same volume with half having to stay here for 80 hours a week or 90 hours a week to be able to sell it? So our goal is to matriculate these customers so that they're very desirous of wanting to buy from me. Why? Because they built a relationship so now they're connected to you. They built it with a human being. You know, if you're on the phone with a computer, then do you care if you're like, He's halfway through a statement, I'm just going to hang up his computer. I don't care if it's person. You're not going to do that. You're going to be talking to someone in the middle of them, saying something like, yeah, no. Doesn't happen. So true. You know? I mean, that's the reality of the situation. I think that it's important for people to realize the impact of talking to a human being. It is huge. It is a huge thing to talk to your

Paul J Daly: 22:54

human we had white hankies. We'd be waving them right now.

Ted Rubin: 22:58

And so it's so meaningful, and it makes the customer much more tied to the dealership, much more desirous of pursuing the relationship, because they've invested time in it. Remember all these things from when you were first starting to sell cars? Now they've invested time. They've invested interest, you know, they can do their research, you know beforehand and and in fact, if all you're doing is producing, you know, relative information, do you have this does it have this information? Does it have these things? You know, they don't need you. That's not why they chat. People don't chat because they're looking for the information. People are chatting to test you right. People are chatting to see how you're going to respond. That is a great that's what they're doing, because if you think they're chatting to get information, what you think you're the only source for information, I can just go into Google garden. Does this vehicle have these options, like this person, right? That's what it is. That's what is. How does this dealership operate? Do they care about their customers, or are we just a number, and are we just somebody who's out there, and am I going to be handled that way? I want to know that when I go into dealership, I'm not going to spend five and a half hours waiting to get into F and I I want to know that they're going to be nice to me. I want to know that they're going to give me service, and if I have a problem, then I can take my car. But that's what they're doing, going online, to be able to actually chat. That's what they're doing. If you think it's something else, it's not. It's even more so that way than it is with email. It's more impact because now it's real time. You don't have time to kind of email. Think about what's going on a chat as

Paul J Daly: 24:33

a conversation. Email, chat to conversations. You're writing letters, right? Chat, it's just like conversation.

Ted Rubin: 24:38

It's just like this conversation. Mike, I like you guys even more now, even though we're just sort of meeting for the first time, right than I did before, and I watched all your stuff because I'm talking to you, there's interaction. I feel like, hey, these guys are nice. They're going to treat me well, and everything's good. No one said anything really wonky, like stuff about the wine and everything. I feel good. I feel good about things. But I mean, that's because of this con. Conversation. You know, it's not because I had, you know, a list or a prompter and it was just, you know, answer this question, answer this question. Answer this question, which means I'm not interested. I have no connection to

Paul J Daly: 25:10

Yeah, we'd be asleep by then, if that's how we were on the show, we'll

Michael Cirillo: 25:13

get to your prepared text in a minute. Yeah,

Paul J Daly: 25:17

I mean, and it's really great to see that through founding active engage and keeping these kind of as first principles right, like overlaying the tech, you're able to affect that feeling at scale for dealers and consumers, I think it's a great look for the industry to have any consumer that shops at any dealership walk away from a conversation, a chat conversation, feeling like they care about me. I think we all when that happens, that I'm not going to forget that that is for me, that's like going to be the thing stuck in my mind. When a consumer asks you, you know, a detailed question, a detail about a car, what they're actually asking themselves is, Do I like this person? And if you respond, and the response is like, don't respond with the information. Only respond because you want that person to know that you care about them.

Ted Rubin: 26:07

That's right. And I mean, also, you know, everybody really, you know, another thing that I used to even say to my own sales people when I was when I had them, you know, when I was running them in the stores and stuff like that, is, you know, people really, people. Everybody wants to be on the other side of the velvet rope, right? Everybody wants to be on the red carpet on the other side of the velvet rope in the VIP room, not just because it's special, but they know everything that's on the other side. I'm going to treat it super well. I'm gonna get all the things that I want. I'm gonna, you know, see other people that are gonna pay attention that who doesn't want that? So when the the ability to offer that is just as simple as having a live person talk to them, having someone pay attention to the conversation, making sure that you're responsive, that you're getting back to them right away, that you're answering their I mean, it isn't that hard to give someone that kind of VIP solution, and do it in a very, you know, with the humanity that you have. And again, I think that, you know, I want to make sure that that anybody who's hearing this from me, this isn't discounting or taking anything away from Ai. I think AI is necessary to give a lot of the superlative responses that we're able to give I just don't think that people want to talk to a computer. That's all.

Paul J Daly: 27:25

I can't think of a better way to end this conversation. Ted, it has been a blast having this conversation. We learned a little bit about wine. You've got me thinking about things in a more philosophical way, about communication and as always your heart to serve the industry and make it better, make it more human is just shining through bright and clear Ted. Thank you so much for giving some of your time today

Ted Rubin: 27:45

off the web. Yeah, I really appreciate you guys. It's been a really fun time. Thanks so much.

Paul J Daly: 27:53

So it's so funny. We talk about the nuance of human interaction, and how AI has a problem with Nuance. It tries to force feed it. And when Ted's talking about Michael asked him, Do you think you know his Ted's wife is a sommelier? Do you think AI will replace a sommelier? And he just went into extreme detail on the nuance needed to do pairings, complex pairings. And I think that's just the same with humans, like, it's a nuanced, complex pairing on what they're saying and all the other signals they're throwing and what they actually are trying to get to well. And I think

Kyle Mountsier: 28:29

as humanity, and when you liken it to like a Psalm verse, like a salesperson, right? I think we appreciate well timed opinion and nuance that, like, kind of sees the interpersonal connection of everything, right? Like a wine pairing with a good steak, or, you know, understanding exactly what's going on with the taste nuance of this wine. Like there's an opinionated state to that, the greater you graduate in, like, things like being a som, you know, there's definitely more alignment along those things. But some,

Paul J Daly: 29:06

like, everyone knows it's so fancy in ash,

Kyle Mountsier: 29:11

yeah, but, you know, that's the, I think that's the nuance that we get the opportunity to provide, kind of clearing the way for the menial things that the tasks master, stuff that AI can help us accomplish, and then you layer in this like unique nuance. And we actually, we have to go back at that point to really, really going deeper on the soft skills of interpersonal, relationship and communication. And that's where, whether it be chat or in the showroom or wherever it is, like your soft skills as an industry employee have to be even greater the more AI is introduced, because it is the differentiator, without

Paul J Daly: 29:49

a doubt, when Ted's in there talking about the impact, like the DNA of the company, and how the impact of talking to the human, a human, is actually far greater than we get. Get credit for, but we're gonna appreciate it more and more, the more we have to interact with AI. Well, we hope we got to talk to some humans today out there. That's a great thing about podcasts, that's only humans listen to podcasts. That's right and but, but not only humans do it. We're, we're two humans here, other two humans in the interview Ted. We have five humans, five collective humans. I'm running out of cats, lots of humans on this show. Listen, that's why we do things, so we can connect things in a meaningful way, because we believe thriving humans are at the center of a thriving industry. Thank you so much for spending some time with us today on behalf of com Mountsier, the roasted Michael Cirillo and myself, thanks for joining us today on Auto Collabs, sign

Unknown: 30:42

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