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July 24, 2025 26 mins

In this episode, my guest is Gary Graves,  the kind of guy who can build a SaaS platform by day and grade a dirt road by night. One foot in the tech world, the other in the real one. Equal parts futurist and hands-on problem solver, he's spent years collecting and analyzing the conversations dealerships have with their customers—and the insights he’s uncovered are eye-opening. 

We first aired this episode a while back, but honestly, it’s been aging so well we figured more people needed to hear it. The insights are still sharp, the stories still hit, and the timing feels just right.

Gary and I talk about what really happens on the other end of a dealership’s phone line—and what those conversations reveal about how we treat customers. You’ll hear why most CRMs still misunderstand the role of a phone call, how IVRs might be silently costing you business, and what dealers can do today to build actual loyalty—not just repeat transactions.

One of the things I love about this conversation is how practical it is. Gary doesn’t talk in circles. He breaks down what the data shows, what dealerships keep missing, and what it actually looks like to build a culture where customers want to come back.

If you’ve ever wondered why your customers don’t call back, or why some reviews sting more than others, this episode is worth your time.

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FlexDealer Need Better Quality Leads? FLX helps car dealers generate better quality leads through localized organic search and highly-targeted digital ads that convert. Not only that, they work tirelessly to ensure car dealers integrate marketing and operations for a robust and functional growth strategy.

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
MC (00:00):
This episode is brought to you by FlexDealer Gary.
Thanks so much for joining meon the Dealer Playbook Podcast.
My pleasure to be here.

(00:20):
So you said you've got a storyand I got to know it.
We'll get to the cellos and thestringed instruments in a
minute, because I think thatcould be a whole different
podcast.
Oh for sure, but I'm curiouswhat was your journey?
Did you do a trust fall, likemost of us, back into the auto
industry?
How did you get into doing thisand then founding, being a
co-founder of Total CX?

Gary (00:41):
Yeah, I made a wrong turn.
It was a total accident.
I was in the process ofconceiving and building a real
estate CRM.
This is 18 years ago, so I meannever got back to it but
effectively, my partner hadstarted in telephony and at the
time he had needed some help,and he found me and I was doing

(01:03):
consulting to keep the lights onwhile building my real estate
CRM, and I found what he wasinto is basically call tracking
marketing lines really, reallybasic calls from customers that
are calling in to purchasesomething.

(01:27):
That's information CRM issupposed to contain.
So I decided to build my owntelephony platform and
ultimately partnered with JackBR, who's still my current
partner, and we entered theautomotive space with the likes
of who's Calling, callsource andsome of the other ones that are

(01:50):
no longer here Very, verycrowded space.
We depreciated ourselves,though, by partnering with CRMs,
that we're the first telephonycompany that brought Click to
Call to automotive, with dealerups back in and Sales Edge
actually back in.
I think it was like 2006.

(02:11):
Everyone was scared to touch itat that time because of pending
regulations with the FCC aboutfederal communications and
recording calls and all that,but we we dare to to do so.

MC (02:26):
Yeah, I mean, uh, I think it was Dr Willie Jolly, who's a
Sirius XM radio host.
He's like you, you've got to bewilling to do something
ridiculous if you want to gowhere you want to go.
And certainly I hear you.
I mean there and I love thisabout automotive, by the way
cause, like anytime there's aregulation that comes down the
pipe, we're all like what are wegoing to do?

(02:47):
Is this going to change ourentire business?
You just forayed into it.
You were like, screw that, I'mgoing.
Yeah, head first.

Gary (02:54):
Yeah, absolutely, and it created an interesting dynamic,
ultimately because my partner hehas a long, long background in
telephony, hosted and cellularPBX systems, and he came to me
one day just with his knowledgeof the industry.
He said, gary, why can't werecord every call?

(03:15):
There's nice systems and theseother companies and Fortune 500
that do this, why can't we dothat?
And I'm like, well, we can.
I didn't know that that'ssomething that we wanted to do
this.
Why can't we do that?
And I'm like, well, we can, Ididn't know that that's
something that we wanted to do.
So we ended up creating anappliance, total Track, that
effectively taps the calls of adealership, all of them inbound.
Outbound Somebody picks a callup the phone to order a pizza.

(03:37):
We got that call personal callservice, parts sales, et cetera.
Interesting problem, though,because now you have a quarter
million minutes of audio.
What are you going to do withthat?
Who's going to listen to that?
Nobody.
So we partnered with Google in2017, because telephony data is
low bandwidth, meaning lowresolution audio.

(04:00):
It's not like hey, siri orGoogle.
There's probably a device in myhouse that's going to respond
now, but that's high fidelity,and most models were trained by
Google and Apple using highfidelity audio, whereas
telephony audio is low bandwidth.
So we partnered with Google andprovided a lot of low bandwidth
audio in order for them totrain their models, got a really

(04:23):
sweet deal, and it allowed usto now extract content from
recordings, because we knew whatwas being said.
And this is the trajectory ofhow we started with telephony
and then redefined the purposeof our existence, since we have
so much intimate data around the.

(04:43):
You know, with the cardealership, how many times they
call back when they'refrustrated, upset, when they
start cussing.
You know it's.
It's.
My favorite, though, um is whenthe customer reminds the
salespeople that they're acustomer.
It's like I'm the customer here.
You hear that Like that's justlike red lights, bells whistles,

(05:04):
defcon one.
For sure, but's just like redlights, bells whistles, def CON
1.
For sure, but it happens waytoo often, entirely too often.

MC (05:11):
I was going to ask you about this because now you're opening
up.
Dare I say, probably at thetime we felt like dang Gary he's
opened up a can of worms.
We didn't have metrics or dataon any of this stuff.
It was always there, but wejust weren't collecting anything
.
Now, all of a sudden, to yourpoint, you're collecting all of
these data points.

(05:31):
You know how many customersjust woke up on the wrong side
of the bed and they're swearingright out of the gates, versus
the ones that had to be provokedto a point of cursing and
flipping tables over and stuff.
Let me ask you this when didyou make this correlation Like?
There's actual data to be seenhere and I guess what are some

(05:56):
of the common things you noticethat cause us to get in the
customer's way and maybe deterthem from working with us?

Gary (06:06):
us to get in the customer's way and maybe deter
them from working with us.
So I'm going to speak to thedata part first and I'm going to
call it a problem.
It's a data problem and theproblem is that ignorance is
bliss.
And the other problem is thatthe CRM companies we all know

(06:26):
who they are they were designedfrom the start with the wrong
concept of a phone call.
They designed their systems tothink that a phone call is a
lead and it's not.
It can be but it's not.
It can be but it's not.
So now, when we came to marketwith our products, a lot of CRM,

(06:50):
like we broke CRMs because wehad too much data.
We made their call bucketsirrelevant because we had all
the calls and they're like wedon't want all the calls, we
only want the calls where peopleare calling to buy a car.
And I'm like CRM, right,customer?
Hey, we'll do that, we'll dothat and I mean they've gotten

(07:13):
better.
But the other problem is likeon the dealership side is now
you have all this informationbut you don't have number one, a
role in the dealership, aperson, a job description, who
has the authority to police orchampion the customer experience

(07:35):
across departments, because thesales cycle for a consumer
buying a car is longer than youthink.
It's not just you know, oncethe financing is done and they
got the keys, no, it continues,service recalls, their kid buys
a car, their mom, their cousincoworker, et cetera.
So that's why you wantrelationship for all those

(07:56):
branches that it'll create.
But there's no one todayenrolled, prescribed in a
dealership that would use oursystem at its full capacity,
because it's cross-departmentaland it's kind of the equivalent
of a game warden, meaning a gamewarden can go wherever a game
animal can go without a warrant.
So if the deer's in yourbackyard, a game warden can go

(08:18):
in your backyard.
So that's kind of like that.
So the things that you noticeare the things that are like the
boil to the top.
Like just blatantly obvious iswhen the customers complain to
the dealership about theexperience they had prior.
So meaning, yeah, I've been onhold for 21 minutes.

(08:41):
Then I hung up and called back.
So now you have a customerwho's called.
The original intention of thecall was to satisfy a need the
oil change.
I want a car, I want this caravailable.
What's the price?
How much will you give me formy trade?
And it went from that to now.
The first thing that they wantto share with you is how bad
they've been treated.
So it's no longer about whatthe intent of the call was, it's

(09:04):
about you know.
You just totally ruined my day,like I have a life to live and
I want to do this now.
No-transcript.

MC (09:17):
Yeah, how often is this happening from?

Gary (09:20):
what you can see.
It happens entirely too often.
It happens so often in fact now.
So I mean, we all know whathappened during COVID and
inventory, and customers werebuying cars sight unseen.
So the level of customerservice that needed to be

(09:45):
provided to generate a profitlowered extremely.
Right.
They fell back on their laurels.
Now you know that time is over.
It's time to get back to work.
Dealerships coming to us,because it starts at the top but
it's implemented at the bottom,meaning the way a dealership

(10:06):
operates is a direct reflectionof the mentality of its owners
and leaders, the soldiers thatare on the field taking the
calls and schedulingappointments.
Their directive is given tothem by them.
And if it's profit only if it'sprofit driven, that'll be
reflected in how fast they tryto move from person to person,

(10:26):
deal to deal, et cetera.
If it's quality driven, nowyou'll have a more hands-on
white glove type service wherethey're actually catering to the
relationship.
But you see that and this isstuff that's able to be
monitored, measured, reportedupon, which is a prerequisite to
actually having deliberateimprovement in those areas- hey,

(10:49):
does your marketing agency suck?

MC (10:52):
Listen, before we hop back into this episode.
I know you know me as the hostof the Dealer Playbook, but did
you also know that I'm the CEOof FlexDealer, an agency that's
helping dealers capture betterquality leads from local SEO and
hyper-targeted ads that convert?
So if you want to sell morecars and finally have a partner
that's in it with you thatdoesn't suck visit FlexDealercom

(11:12):
.
Let's hop back into thisepisode.
Have you ever tried to get helpin a Home Depot lately?
There is no, but I'm convincednobody works there anymore.
You stand in the aisle and it'snot even for a small purchase.
You're like I'm about to buy awhole appliance package.

(11:32):
I'm going to buy, I'm about todrop five grand in this place,
or 10 grand or whatever, and youcan't.
And so what do you start doing?
You start walking around, youstart looking for somebody.
10 minutes into this activity,you forgot why you even came to
Home Depot, so you just leave.
And, to your point, as I'mlistening to you, this is

(11:53):
exactly what we just did.
The pandemic made us soft.
Because it was so easy.
People were laying down oneverything.
Because it was so easy, peoplewere laying down on everything
and also to that, just to put abow tie on my little rant here
now that I'm enraged is you have, dare I call them COVID babies,

(12:15):
covid the pandemic this lasttime period.
That was their foray into thecar business.
They have no other referencepoint from before and they think
this is the norm.
And I'm telling you, dude, thatfreaks the crap out of me,
because now we're moving into2024 and nobody, you know we do
what we always do.
This is an indication thatwe're all getting old.

(12:36):
We start to speculate aboutwhat's the new year going to
bring Right.
Start to speculate about what'sthe new year going to bring
Right.
But let's go back to whatyou're talking about here, which
is how much effort right, tellme about this how much effort
the customer actually has to putin now to get what they want?
Seems like it's it's increasingsignificantly.

Gary (12:59):
You know it.
It significantly it is.
I'll tell you a story that'squite in the line with your Home
Depot rant.
I'll give you a little one ofmy own.
I was in Lowe's.
I'm a Lowe's guy.
I don't do Home.

MC (13:16):
Depot.
You're not the first one that'stried to convert me to that
side of the aisle.
I'm just saying.

Gary (13:22):
Hey, so I bought an air filter, right, and it was, like
you know, $120.
Air filter is like on sale for80 bucks.
Get to the self checkout lane,scan it, it rings up to 120
bucks.
Lady's there, I'm like you know, this isn't ringing up right,
it's like $89.
She's like well, I can't justtake your word for it.
You need to go, get a pictureand bring it back to me, and I

(13:45):
use my favorite line.
I'm the customer.
You need to get on the phoneand talk to somebody and to have
them go, and I'll be right here.
So she expected me to exerteffort to spend money with the
company and that's what you seehere.
So I'll see if you know thisone.

(14:06):
Thank you for calling ABCMotors.
Please hold.

MC (14:12):
I start to gnash my teeth.

Gary (14:14):
So I didn't wait for acknowledgement or you to say
actually yes, I didn't care.
I mean, that might as well justbe a recording for us, for that
matter.

MC (14:23):
Sure.

Gary (14:24):
But at the gate effort.
So now the effort that'srequired from you from the very
first phone call is patience.
So now you, you, you dial thenumber, phone rang, they
answered, you spoke to someone,and they tell you look, you're
not important, I'll be back withyou when I, when I, when I have

(14:45):
a moment.
Now they hit an IVR Okay, onefor sales, two for service,
three for parts.
Most people just hit the buttonthat's going to give them a
human, because if they hitservice, they're going to be put
on hold for a long time Rightto sales, or I'm going to hit

(15:07):
the zero and have the operatorcall and go that way.
So now they're trying to gamethe system in order to get
better, faster, responsiveservice, in order to spend money
with the brand Again, effort.
So every transfer, every hold,every time they have to repeat
their intention of callingexerts effort If it's a callback

(15:31):
, meaning they had to call backagain.
91% of people who have to make asecond call for the same issue
end up frustrated, upset,dissatisfied or they just
abandon the process altogetherand take their business
elsewhere.
And this is real data thatwe've extracted from the

(15:51):
conversations that our dealershave with their customers.
We were able to see this andwe're able to advise them and
say, hey look, you have aproblem here.
And some dealers are like, okay, tell me what to do, what do I
do here?
And those are the ones thatwe're able to help, but some
just don't want to do it.
That we're able to help, butsome just don't want to do it.

(16:13):
They just don't have aninterest in having a person
answer the phone that can helpsomeone.

MC (16:19):
I don't figure.
It's like right out of thegates.
We don't even realize it, see,because we've been sold that
this is going to make oursystems and processes more
streamlined.
Right, the IVR is going to beable to help us handle more in

(16:40):
the same amount of time, becauseit's going to handle the
distribution of the call.
We've been convinced that thisis the case.
Never once, though to yourpoint, have we looked at it from
the customer's perspective andsaid but what is the impact of
putting these systems in placeon the customer experience?
What are you seeing?

(17:00):
So patience, so, right out ofthe gates, we're asking them to
be patient, even though they'realready been patient, because
they had to show up every day togo to work to earn the money
that they're now willing tospend with you, and that took
time.
So we're already months intothis process, but we don't think
of it in that light.
What is the other impacts thatyou've picked up on that you're
noticing?

Gary (17:19):
I'm going to answer that, but I had to go back because you
said something very, veryimportant Customer perspective,
looking at it from theirperspective, and that's what we
call the CX mindset.
It's an inverted model.
Most people, even softwaresystems, model the way the

(17:40):
business looks at the customer.
That's not useful for thecustomer and it's not inherently
useful for the business either,for that matter.
For marketers I could see to adegree.
But the inverted side how doesthe customer view the business
and how do you measure andmonitor that?

(18:00):
And we can get into that later.
But the biggest indicators thatyou know there are issues are
you issues are abandoned calls,and these are things that can be
detected by any call trackingcompany or phone system

(18:22):
administrator who has a littlebit of coding skills or write a
query.
You just look at how many peoplecall me multiple times in a day
and then you drill down intothose situations and you'll find
some issues that you need toresolve.
The length of calls people whohave calls that are 15, 20

(18:43):
minutes long.
There's almost never anysituation or any conversation
that you need to have with a cardealership if you're not a bank
or an insurance company thatwill last that long.
So any calls that areexorbitant long 10, 15, 20
minutes, 20 plus minutes there'ssomething going on there,
probably a lot of hold time,because there's just not that
much to talk about.
It's not a personal call,there's not that much to talk

(19:06):
about.
So those are also things thatyou see.
But ultimately the biggestindicators are when they go to
the Better Business Bureau orthe Attorney General's office or
your Google, my Business pageor some of the other social
arenas where they're able tospout off and say, well, look,

(19:29):
they didn't care about mybusiness, they didn't care about
me as a consumer, and thatfeeling is hard to overcome once
it's ingrained.

MC (19:41):
What do we do about this?
As you work with dealerships,what's the first thing you
recommend Because it sounds likethere's quite a bit of
consistency across the board andhow things currently work.
When you come in and you say,okay, here's the new plan,
here's the first thing I needyou to do, what do you find that
common recommendation is thefirst thing?

Gary (20:02):
is to lose the IVR.
Thank you for calling.
Please hold.
Don't make your receptionistyour receptionist or the person
who's handling your phones,who's answering you know, that
pot of gold that you spent toget the phone to ring Shouldn't
be your lowest paid employee,should not like Now you're

(20:26):
turning things on their head.
So if you put something and itcan't just be one person,
especially if it's a verypopular brand.
I mean you have to look at callvolume Now if you really want
to get disruptive.
And what I would do if I were adealer principal, what I would

(20:47):
do if I were a dealer principal,I would have my service
advisors be cross-functional andI'll tell you why.
The majority of calls to adealership are to service.
So, no matter what, even if youhave the most charismatic,

(21:12):
great bed manners, if you wantto call it that on the phone,
like who answers the phone,she's still going to have to
transfer them because she can'thelp it.
All she can do is feel their,understand what they're calling
for and then direct them.
So when she does that, that'salready the first effort for
them because now it's a break intheir process of getting

(21:33):
resolution.
So now imagine if you would andI know service advisors are
busy, I know that.
So this is a pie in the sky.
It could happen, but I knowthere's other considerations.
So imagine this though callingthe dealership and a service
advisor answers the phone, this.
So thank you for calling abcmotors, I can help you.

(21:55):
Yeah, I need to speak tosomebody as service, my car,
blah, blah, blah.
Okay, what's the last eight ofyour event and you're into it.
When has that happened everwhere someone called a
dealership and immediately gotinto the issue?
That was the intent of theircall.
But it can.
And when it comes to changingthe paradigm and like Amazon and

(22:20):
Hyundai are trying to do, ifthat process just becomes so
seamless that the relationshipdoesn't matter anymore, or if
dealer principals andsubsequently the managers and
subsequently the advisors andsalespeople continue to treat
people like numbers, then therelationship won't matter
anymore, and that's when thattype of transacting becomes

(22:46):
desirable.
If you want to return somethingat Amazon, you put it in the
box and you take it back to thelocal Kohl's or whatever that's
it.
You don't talk to customerservice.
It's just purely transactionaland there's no relationship
necessary.
And I'm not suggesting thecards would be done like that.
My point is is that when therelationship is so bad that it

(23:08):
doesn't matter, things likeAmazon and Hyundai's deal become
palatable.

MC (23:13):
Is this part of just rounding things out as we start
to wind down?
Is this part of what you'retalking about, or what you call
the CX mindset?

Gary (23:22):
It is.
It is I, along with mycolleagues, my business partner,
all of my employees, ourpartners, are trying to change
the minds of the people inautomotive, to change the way
they think about their customer.

MC (23:39):
What's the impact of that?
So we know the impact of makingcustomer wait.
What's the impact of adoptingthe CX mindset, this empowerment
relationship-based mindset?

Gary (23:50):
Well, the first thing is that you now have, I guess, the
equivalent of biofeedback,meaning you have an instant
understanding of your posture asit relates to the way your
customers view you.
That allows you to beresponsive and deliberately
develop that to the benefit ofyou both, because it needs to be

(24:13):
a mutual benefit.
The customer is happy and thedeals are structured right and
their experience was great.
Long-term, that customerbecomes loyal and what loyalty
gives you is referrals,unsolicited reviews and all that
makes you the most desirableselection.
If there are competitors in thebrand, the consumer process goes

(24:37):
and compares the inventory.
Because you have something youwant and that store doesn't have
it, you're not going to shopthere.
So you're locked in on thevehicle and people buy for
different reasons.
But if you have that that's thevehicle you want, that trim
level, that feature set and thatdealership has it, then it's
the only one in the country.
Yeah, you're probably going tobuy there.
But if you're just going for aHonda Accord or Hyundai Genesis

(24:59):
and you can get it pretty muchanywhere, it's going to come
down to ratings to say hello,it's like what's their ratings,
how are other consumers ratingthem?
And then it'll go into theirown personal experience.
So by providing good experienceand seeing how your customers
are responding to it, it'll giveevery dealership the best
chance at the best possibleoutcome, which would be to

(25:22):
transact and to convert thatcustomer into a loyal customer.
I love it.

MC (25:27):
I love it, this conversation , I love this kind of stuff
because this is like thisdoesn't cost you any extra money
to change the way you buildrelationships and provide a
customer experience.
You know what I mean.
Like everybody out there is theshiny, this and the.
The guru over here said thatit's like or, and hear me out

(25:47):
care about people you know, careabout the experience.
I mean we could go down so manymore tracks here.
Certainly would love to haveyou back on the show, gary.
How can those listening orwatching connect with you?

Gary (26:00):
You can connect with us at TotalCXcom on any of the social
channels you know LinkedIn,facebook, instagram, etc.

MC (26:08):
Gary Graves thanks so much for joining me on the Dealer
Playbook Podcast.
My pleasure.
Take care, mike.
Hey, thanks for listening tothe Dealer Playbook Podcast.
If you enjoyed tuning in,please subscribe, share and hit
that like button.
You can also join us and theDPB community on social media.
Check back next week for a newDealer Playbook episode.
Thanks so much for joining.
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