Rank the CRMs
- Thread starter Brad Burlingham
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There is no Fixed integration with Tekion DMS and Drive Centric at this point. Variable Booked deals do report accurately.
The desking tool in Drive is better than Tekion's, but if they desk in Drive they have to manually build out the deal in Tekion (aside from some customer data that does push). They are all desking in Tekion at this point BUT the managers accept their fate because they love DriveCentric for what it does well as a CRM.
In transparency, my historic complaints about Drive, and this is well known in forums and with the Drive team, are:
- Reporting customization and diversity isn't what VinSolutions was and not nearly close to some third parties like Hive and FourEyes. The level of reporting I WANT isn't what most stores use or will use so I'm a unicorn in this regards.
- There is no salesperson-based reporting for individual salespeople. VinSolutions created this after I had pushed for years. Salespeople should be able to see their own Lead performance without having to rely on a Manager to show them.
- No Tekion Fixed integration for customer life-cycle that includes Service visit data for household or VIN
- I cannot train the AI for our custom needs. For instance, I cannot train our AI reps with a prompt like, "Don't say 'because you were on 700Credit.com' when the shopper was using the 700Credit soft pull widget framed in on our site. It confuses the shopper because they weren't on 700Credit.com so they are immediately cautious of what happened to their data. Say 'thank you for using the pre-approval tool on the site' when you see 700Credit Soft Pull as the source on the lead'" The AI reps ARE crazy good overall though.
- They have no DNC integration for visual alerts on phone numbers on customer records like other CRMs have. This is a growing area of concern once you've been sued...
I have had product requests, as many others in the Drive community have submitted as well, that they have added and updated ongoing. I just want mine done first LOL
- Feb 15, 2016
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- Steve
Dan — that level of transparency is rare and genuinely useful for anyone doing due diligence on Drive right now.
On the reporting side — the customization gap vs Hive and FourEyes is real. Those tools built reporting as their core product, so CRMs will always lag there. But the salesperson self-reporting gap is the one that compounds quietly. When salespeople can't see their own lead performance, you get two problems: managers spend time pulling reports instead of coaching, and salespeople have no accountability loop between deals. VinSolutions adding it after years of requests tells you how much pain existed around it.
The AI training limitation you described is a surprisingly nuanced problem. Most stores don't even realize their AI reps are creating confusion around third-party widgets until a customer complains or goes cold. The 700Credit example is exactly the kind of edge case that erodes trust in AI-assisted conversations — the customer doesn't know what happened to their data, and the AI can't explain it because it wasn't trained to. That's a human-in-the-loop failure point that's hard to anticipate until you've seen it happen.
The DNC visual alert gap is the one I'd be most concerned about at scale. As TCPA enforcement tightens, "we didn't have a visual alert on the record" is not a defense that holds up well. Hopefully Drive prioritizes that one given the liability exposure as Steve confirmed.
The Tekion variable ops accuracy being solid is the key thing — if booked deal data is clean, the manual desk build is painful but workable. The Fixed side gap will matter more as your service retention strategy matures.
Sounds like you've pushed the Drive team hard on these — which usually gets results faster than most vendors admit.
On the reporting side — the customization gap vs Hive and FourEyes is real. Those tools built reporting as their core product, so CRMs will always lag there. But the salesperson self-reporting gap is the one that compounds quietly. When salespeople can't see their own lead performance, you get two problems: managers spend time pulling reports instead of coaching, and salespeople have no accountability loop between deals. VinSolutions adding it after years of requests tells you how much pain existed around it.
The AI training limitation you described is a surprisingly nuanced problem. Most stores don't even realize their AI reps are creating confusion around third-party widgets until a customer complains or goes cold. The 700Credit example is exactly the kind of edge case that erodes trust in AI-assisted conversations — the customer doesn't know what happened to their data, and the AI can't explain it because it wasn't trained to. That's a human-in-the-loop failure point that's hard to anticipate until you've seen it happen.
The DNC visual alert gap is the one I'd be most concerned about at scale. As TCPA enforcement tightens, "we didn't have a visual alert on the record" is not a defense that holds up well. Hopefully Drive prioritizes that one given the liability exposure as Steve confirmed.
The Tekion variable ops accuracy being solid is the key thing — if booked deal data is clean, the manual desk build is painful but workable. The Fixed side gap will matter more as your service retention strategy matures.
Sounds like you've pushed the Drive team hard on these — which usually gets results faster than most vendors admit.
Still want to be clear. If ranking the CRMs today, Drive is still the number 1 choice.
Hard to argue with 7 rooftops of real-world data behind it. Appreciate the candid breakdown Dan — this is exactly the kind of unfiltered perspective that's hard to find anywhere else.
- Mar 21, 2012
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Big fan of drive as well, hoping in the near future we can help "train" our ai and expand it's capabilities. The feature request is a nice option in drive and I do see features get added that are requested, hopefully they start adding more staff into the development side because if you scan the request portal you will find a ton of valuable request from users that would make the tool even better.