• Stop being a LURKER - join our dealer community and get involved. Sign up and start a conversation.

Uncle Joe's Makeover Diary 2.0

Jump to latest Follow Reply
#121
joe.pistell said:
There will be epic demand for digital domain specific experts damn near everywhere. These are large language models, they often make mistakes. The gold rush will be to make them domain experts.

Someone had better tell the CEOs of AutoTrader, CarGurus, Cars.com Edmunds, TrueCar, etc that they're toast. One of the big dogs will build a personalized car shopping app that will vaporize car shopping as we know it. This one page mock shows how it's a google killer too. (i.e. Why Google at all?)

Where ever there is friction. IT's GONE.
Click to expand...
This hits me in the feels because I could not agree more. I actually just pitched a product similar to what you're describing to my wife the other day. She works for a large health care company, managing a team creating an AI chat bot for client services usage. When I pitched the idea of an AI being her personal car shopper, researcher, and broker her eyes got real big. The idea of dealing with an AI is significantly more appealing to her than dealing with a sales person/dealership, and I feel a lot of people have similar sentiments.

I 100% think it's doable with today's technology and I'm 85% sure most shoppers are ready for it.

Is anybody doing this? Because if they are I feel like I need to talk to them! Maybe I need to do it .....
 
#122
@Jon Singo , this mock circa 2017 https://joepistell.wixsite.com/1glide

1689616699160.png

Personal SME kills the requirement to go to Google and all aggregators. The SME does the work for you.

Jon, be careful what you wish for. This concept is really really difficult to build a moat around this idea.

p.s. Someone will open source the easy parts of this (i.e. scrape and dump the LLM on it).
p.p.s. Watch this team make a tiny pivot into AI'ing their SME UX https://www.copilotsearch.com/
 
#123
@joe.pistell

I remember seeing you posted that before and I love the idea. My head is going in a little different direction than both what you posted and CoPilot Search. I hadn't heard of CoPilot before but might download the app just to see what they're on about.
My head has gone in a different direction with the idea, as more of a 3rd party service. I truly feel like we're at a point where a 'well groomed' AI by industry experts could outperform every 3rd party service on the table.
Either way I'm incredibly intrigued by this idea and would love to work on it.
 
#124
Jon Singo said:
My head has gone in a different direction with the idea, as more of a 3rd party service. I truly feel like we're at a point where a 'well groomed' AI by industry experts could outperform every 3rd party service on the table.
Click to expand...

Shopping is a task, what are your essential building blocks (i.e. structured data) in helping shoppers complete this task in a manner that is so satisfying that the natural conclusion of the UX is a shopping cart purchase.

p.s. The Glide mock is a 3rd party svc. and how do you define: "well groomed" AI
 
#125
@joe.pistell

Shopping for a car is incredibly difficult right now as an average consumer. It's hard to tell what's in stock, APR sticker shock is real, trade valuation is all over the place, and some stores are at MSRP/some are over. I've dabbled in brokering for family and friends on the side and I think I can use an AI to do most of the general questions I'm typically asked. An AI with access to chrome data information, pricing, data from home net, etc. could be very powerful in getting a shopper from A to B. As a gut feeling, I bet a lot of consumers would feel more comfortable asking questions to an AI vs a dealership salesperson. Let's be honest, a lot of dealer salespeople aren't great at answering questions, they just want to get a customer in the door. I fully acknowledge this is an unpopular opinion on here but most people would still rather visit the dentist than buy a car so why not make them feel like they aren't dealing with a salesperson?

I'm imagining a 3rd party service that acts as a broker to assist with everything from initial vehicle research, inventory search, financing, accurate trade valuation, and being able to tie all that up with a bow delivered to a dealership. Huge value to the consumer while delivering high quality leads to the dealer. Ideally, customer shows up having already answered all the pain point questions ready to go.

Think very early TrueCar when it was helping consumers get deals but significantly more interactive.
 
#126
Jon, you've defined Glide, a personal domain expert.

The revenue generating power of the app is it can negotiate on the owner's behalf.
1690042288829.png
Originally, I saw it being a reverse auction system for the trade-in and the purchase. Reverse auctions only work if the seller wants that kind of business. Dealer's don't care for reverse auctions (i.e. low ball offers & time wasting).

AI can bypass this reverse auction friction and go old school. It can easily become the app owners negotiator. It can read/write text and email, and now with Air.ai It can call and receive phone calls. It can book appointments (trade evaluation, test drives) it can get a revised insurance quote for the new car.

No IP moat around the idea. The app is an API hub. Someone big in auto tech space will build it, it's a logical marketplace progression. The big aggregators (cars, gurus, AT etc) had better lead the charge, cuz they're toast when this concept hits critical mass.
 
#129
Wow, this is interesting. We (Autofusion) built a reverse auction system back in 1999/2000 called the CarPrices.com Price War. Consumers gave us the details of what they want - year/make/model/trim, optional equipment (nice-to-have/must-have), color and trade-in. Dealers then place bids to win the consumer's business. Each dealer had an experience rating system that consumers could consider while evaluating bids. We ran digital, radio and tv ads to promote the system. Consumers loved the idea but the biggest hurdle was signing up dealers to participate.
 
#130
CarlAutofusion said:
Consumers loved the idea but the biggest hurdle was signing up dealers to participate.
Click to expand...

joe.pistell said:
Dealer's don't care for reverse auctions (i.e. low ball offers & time wasting)
Click to expand...

Ahh Carl, you got it! you'll recall, back in the ebay days (before it became ebay motors) ebay was a perfect tool for 100% consumer control over negotiation. Buyers rarely bought with the auction, all we got was auction vultures circling around the VDP looking for a negotiated deal over the phone.
 
Top Bottom
Back
Jump to latest Follow Reply
Jump to latest Follow Reply
Menu