AI and the Future of Your Store

Part 1 of 2: AI’s impact on your people, talent bench, and customer relationships

AI could save dealerships millions of dollars in payroll over the next several years. It could also eliminate the very jobs that produce their future leaders. That’s the AI conversation I don’t hear enough dealers having.

Right now, I’m almost exclusively hearing questions about efficiency:

Which jobs will AI eliminate?

How much money can we save on payroll costs?

What can be automated?

What else can be automated?

Those are important questions.

AI has extraordinary potential to make dealerships faster, leaner, and more productive. If we approach it exclusively as a way to automate work and reduce headcount, we risk solving today's problems while creating tomorrow's, though.

The real opportunity is much bigger. AI gives us a chance to rethink who we hire, how we develop people, how we evaluate performance, which skills become more valuable, and where human interaction matters most. The dealers that understand this distinction will build dramatically better organizations. The ones that don't will become very efficient at destroying their own culture and talent pipeline.

What happens when you eliminate the bottom rung?

Consider the positions AI is most likely to affect: internet lead responders, appointment schedulers, sales, data-entry positions, accounting clerks, entry-level marketers, and inventory merchandising positions. Dealerships will likely need fewer people to do some of this work. AI can already perform many repetitive tasks faster and at lower cost than humans. Some considerations are missing from the spreadsheet, though. Those jobs aren't just jobs. They're entry points into the industry.

These roles have historically been the way for people to enter your organization, learn your business, prove themselves, and eventually move up. The sales representative you hire today could become your sales manager. The young employee doing relatively basic work today is gaining the skills they will eventually need to run a department. More likely than not, your future GM is sitting in an entry-level position somewhere in your organization.

If the entire industry uses AI to reduce staffing and eliminate entry-level work, we’re also eliminating our pipeline of future leaders. That's a dangerous trade-off.

I've talked extensively about the importance of building a bench. Great organizations don't wait until an important person leaves to start looking for their replacement. They develop people continuously. Except you cannot develop people who never enter the organization. If AI eliminates the bottom of your talent ladder, what’s the plan for getting people into the retail automotive industry?

The grass isn’t always greener on the other side.

Another important consideration: Just because you can automate something doesn’t mean customers want it automated. There are plenty of interactions where AI makes perfect sense.

Need to schedule an appointment at midnight? Great.

Need a quick answer to a simple question? Great.

Need basic information immediately? Great.

That’s progress.

Once an interaction becomes complicated, emotional, expensive, or important, though? Overwhelmingly, people want people. We’ve all experienced the ugly side of automation. We call a company because we need help, and instead of speaking with someone who can help… we get a phone tree. An AI agent asks us to “tell me more about what you need help with” when we know full well that a bot cannot solve our problem. Eventually, we’re practically BEGGING for a representative (which we may or may not get!).

There is a reason we're seeing consumers gravitate toward things that feel more tactile and human again. For example, demand for typewriters has gone up dramatically in recent years. Automakers are bringing physical buttons and knobs back into vehicles. After years of assuming everything should become a screen, we're remembering that sometimes the old experience was better. The same thing will happen with AI. Customers will appreciate automation when it eliminates friction. They will hate it when it becomes a source of friction.

That's particularly important in automotive.

You cannot turn relationships over to AI and expect customer loyalty.

AI won't make people less important. It will change which people are important. This is the distinction dealers must understand. Some dealership roles are almost certainly going to shrink. If someone's primary function is standing between a customer and information already within your systems, AI will increasingly be able to perform that role. It will affect lead response, scheduling, data entry, basic accounting, inventory merchandising, and entry-level marketing. Let’s look at the other side, though.

Master diagnostic technicians become incredibly valuable. Great service advisors become incredibly valuable. Used-car acquisition and appraisal experts become incredibly valuable. Consultative salespeople who can build genuine relationships become incredibly valuable. So do fixed operations leaders, AI strategists, compliance/cybersecurity experts, and GMs who understand both technology and people.

There's a pattern here.

The safest place to be in an AI-driven dealership is not simply being "good with AI." It's combining AI with things that are difficult to automate, including judgment, leadership, relationships, and trust.

Technicians could become the superstars of retail automotive.

There's one opportunity in particular that dealers should be talking more about: Technicians. For decades, our industry has struggled to make the technician career attractive enough to young people. We told generations of kids that the safest path to prosperity was to go to college and get a white-collar job. Now? AI is changing that equation. Some college graduates are entering professions where portions of the work they spent four years preparing to perform can now be done by software.

Here's what AI still can't do: Fix your car.

AI can help diagnose the problem. It can help a technician access information. It can make an exceptional technician significantly more productive. Eventually, somebody has to put the vehicle on a lift and fix it, though. That creates an enormous opportunity for our industry. We should be repositioning the technician career around what it is becoming: Highly technical, well-compensated, AI-enabled, difficult to automate, and an essential component of the industry.

Instead of concerning ourselves exclusively with which careers AI will destroy, dealers should be asking which careers AI suddenly makes more attractive. Technicians may be near the top of that list.

It’s time to update your people strategy.

Clearly, “embracing AI" and "replacing people" are not synonymous. It’s time for dealers to start asking the less obvious questions that AI introduces. Before eliminating a position, ask: Is this job also an entry point into my organization? If it disappears, how will I bring new people in and develop them? Before automating another customer interaction, ask: Am I removing friction OR am I eliminating an opportunity to develop a relationship?

The dealers that get this right won't choose between people and AI. They'll build organizations where exceptional people become exponentially more capable because of AI. They'll develop new ways to bring young talent into the business. They'll reward the human skills that become more valuable as machines get better. And they'll protect the relationships technology can't replace because the biggest AI decision you're going to make over the next several years isn't which platform to buy. It's what kind of people you're going to build your dealership around.

AI has great promise, and when done well - when it’s done intelligently, slowly, patiently, thoughtfully - it will do great things; it will allow organizations to dominate their respective industries. There's no doubt in my mind. That very same AI is going to drive companies out of business because they failed to get on board. The time is now. AI is unavoidable. Dealers who refuse to embrace it will eventually find themselves competing against organizations that are faster, leaner, smarter, and more efficient. Ask more strategic questions today, and it will have positive implications for your business five moves down the line. Guaranteed.

Stay tuned for Part 2, where I'll dig into what AI means for dealership operations, risk, and exposure.

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By the numbers

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How the best operators run it

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Comparing the two common approaches

How to choose

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About this guidance

Written by David Spisak from nearly 50 years in retail automotive. Last reviewed [month year].

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