Rethinking What Consumers Need When They Visit Your Website

Brian Pasch0:00Hi, this is Brian Pasch. I wanted to quickly jump into the studio and make a quick announcement. The team at ActivEngage has just released a new feature called AI Summaries, and we're going to be talking more about that at the Modern Retailing Conference because it's the perfect example of how AI is driving consumers to have more live conversations with dealership staff instead of replacing them. So get ready to learn more about AI Summaries at MRC, but let's listen in to the interview with Ted Rubin, CEO of ActivEngage, and see what's new in their technology stack and roadmap for the future. Hi, everyone. This is Brian Pasch on today's podcast. I'm sitting down with Ted Rubin, CEO

Brian Pasch0:56of ActivEngage, and we're going to talk about the confusion in the marketplace, the competitive advantage of humans versus AI, and what's the correct balance. And of course, we're going to continue this conversation at the Modern Retailing Conference coming up in Palm Beach. I've invited Ted and his team to bring their expertise to the show, but I wanted to have an interview now to help dealers set the record straight on how to sell more cars in a digital age. Ted, welcome to the show.

Ted Rubin1:29Thanks very much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Brian Pasch1:32Ted, you have an amazing pedigree, many years in the business, thousands of clients, working with marketplaces, the largest dealer groups. For dealers listening in who may be not aware of the history of ActivEngage, give me a little thumbnail on the expertise and innovation you've brought and for how long?

Ted Rubin2:02So the company's been around for about 18 years. It's actually 18 years just coming up like at your event. I think it's almost exactly our birthday at that time. So we've been around for a really long time. Lots of the people that are in the leadership here, including myself, you know, came out of the automotive industry, out of the dealerships themselves, and ultimately at some of the big groups or some of the OEMs or the distributors like Southeast Toyota and things like that. Even, you know, myself, I was a developer early on in my career. And so some of our developers here, in fact, our CTO, had worked

Ted Rubin2:44previously with my last company, which was one of the first CRMs in the industry. And so he spent, you know, seven years developing CRM working with conversations and customers and how dealerships interact with them and listened to me drone on about what needed to happen for, you know, for a lot of the things to work inside of the CRM and how to communicate with customers what they were looking for at that time and what dealers had to offer and how to accomplish that in the best way. So, you know, we created the market. We were the very first managed messaging service in the automotive industry that was

Ted Rubin3:22automotive specific. Right. And, you know, there were, we were the only one. And there was another one that was basically customer facing. And it was two of us, you know, for quite a long time, actually. And we just stayed focused specifically in that area for the entire longevity of the company. Other ones have kind of gone off to do some other things and digital retailing and stuff. And we kind of want to focus in this area. I think there's a lot to be accomplished just in the messaging space. And so rather than kind of Twitter off, we've integrated with lots of other companies so that

Ted Rubin3:57they can take advantage of the messaging in coordination with what they're offering. But we feel like there's more to do here. So we've kind of stayed focused in that area.

Brian Pasch4:06So I want to address this. First of all, I want to thank you and your company for supporting the Automotive Standards Council. So we can see engagement on the dealers' websites, conversions in GA4. That's really important. Some of the other communication platforms don't. And that's a mistake for dealers because when someone starts a chat session, they want to have a conversation. They are not fact hunting most times because today our VDPs have every spec, every detail, every photo. So I want to dive into this topic that there seems to be a craze going on. AI this, AI this. People are taking down human interaction communication services and just throwing AI because they think it's

Brian Pasch4:58cheaper. And what I want to dive into today is, number one, in many cases, the face value, it's not cheaper. But instead of talking about the cost per lead, what about the lost opportunities that come when we replace human connection and human understanding and its impact on sales? So, Ted, let's talk about this idea that dealers are missing the point that when someone starts a chat session, they're really looking for human touch. It's more like a phone call less than like an email.

Ted Rubin5:45Yeah, absolutely. I mean, listen, I'm a big fan of AI. We have AI developers. We produce it internally for certain things. And there will be a time that we have. In fact, there's some things we're doing right now that you'll probably see at NADA where we're producing some customer facing things. But I mean, there isn't, I don't think there's a salesperson on the planet that, you know, hasn't been told at some point that you're not selling the product, you're selling yourself, you know, you're building that relationship with the customer. That's what they're buying into. And I don't think that that's ever been, I think it's always been important to know that,

Ted Rubin6:20you know, because you have to build that relationship. But I don't think it's ever been as relevant as it is today, because the massive information hasn't been out there to be able to be gathered by the consumer as much as it is today. When customers are looking for research, then they're not going to your website to do that. They may be specifically about your store. That's one thing. But if they're looking for vehicle information, if they're looking to identify what it is that they want to buy colors, you know, certain features, which brands they want and things like that. I mean, I know when I load up my

Ted Rubin6:54computer, the first screen I see is Google. And if I have anything to ask, I'm going to do it there. And give me all the answers that I could ever possibly want. I'm not going to start navigating through to, you know, that particular company's website and then trying to find the search and then trying to see if their search is capable of finding the things that I'm looking for on their website. I just go to Google and ask, and the best answers come up first, then I get my questions answered. And that's what consumers are doing when they're trying to get details. So relative to,

Ted Rubin7:26you know, AI or people, then, you know, I think that one of the things that AI does exceptionally well is it's very task-based. So you can ask it a question that's going to go out and bring you the answer. And so if they're doing search, just like if you go to Google, then it does a good job of bringing you the data back, but that's not selling a car. That's just handing over the information to the customer, which not that long ago, dealers like, I don't want to give price. I don't want to give details. I don't want to give all these other things, right? Because I'm not selling the car.

Ted Rubin7:58I don't want to give that to the customer before they engage. So they used to look to engage and somehow, you know, it's not everybody, obviously, but there are some dealers out there who who are now kind of mesmerized by, you know, the technology, which it is phenomenal technology to be able to take advantage of. But it's like using a carrot to screw in a screw. It's not the right tool for selling. It's the right tool for data.

Brian Pasch8:19Yeah. And I'm going to make a parallel because I have Airbnb rentals. So I want to make a point, which I think dealers listening can understand. We've all planned vacations. And we can go to Airbnb or VRBO or Booking.com, if you're that type of person. And you'll put in things like four bedroom, you know, bup, bup, bup. And it will give you pages, two, three, four pages of matches, even though they don't match because they're close match. And, but you still have some questions and it will list bathrooms. And the questions that people ask me, right, about the rentals are quite interesting. The other day, I just did a test and I went into

Brian Pasch9:14ChatGPT and I said, I'm looking for a four bedroom rental in the center of Montalcino, Italy with a car that has good ratings. And it came up with one answer. It was our apartment. And I was like, that's so cool. But at that point, if somebody comes to my website, they do not want an AI, but because they're going to be like, Hey, I have a young child. What about the crib and blankets, or I have an elderly person, you know, how many stairs, you know, and you know, are people helping with luggage? There's a lot of little details. And I think AI is amazing. It blew my mind that I found exactly if I was, you know, but when it gets to

Brian Pasch10:07the dating period, I think there's a conversation. And when I test conversational questions, not factual conversations with AI, I don't feel like I'm talking to a human. I feel like frustrated. That's why I don't use Delta's automated attendant or United's because I'm smart enough to know everything about flights and booking flights and seats. If I'm calling you, it's because I'm stumped. And, you know, and so why, why Ted, are people saying I spend, look, the average cost per lead on Google Ads is over 300 bucks. And the form conversion rate on dealer websites are between one and 2%. And the forms are cold and not appealing. And you have the opportunity to pop up somebody who can

Brian Pasch11:07actually talk. Why are dealers just running to say, Hey, my forms suck. My conversion rate sucks. It's too expensive to put a real person who cares about my business in a chat. What, what, what part of our strategy is broken?

Ted Rubin11:25Well, I mean, so I think that people are enamored with the technology, like they always have been, you know, and, and, and there's always been first movers and, you know, thank God for them because, you know, I start companies and I need people that, you know, want those things first as well. So I think that that's a big piece of what's going on. The, and it does, you know, the, the, there are a lot of, there is a lot of utility for the AI to your point, you know, with what you're having happen at the Airbnb. You know, there's, it can only derive information from what's on the site that it's

Ted Rubin11:58pulling the data from. So you can't answer every single question on your website. So when you start to get down into the nitty gritty, when you start to go, okay, I've got this person's attention now, but now they're going to have more personalized questions. Well, that data is typically not there. That's why you need a person to be able to interact in that particular area. I think there's a disillusion or an allusion to the fact that, that generally technology, you know, I pay a single fee and this is what it is and that it's going to be cheaper. And it just isn't, you know, I, I know

Ted Rubin12:31a bunch of the AI companies out there when they, if you compare their price to, of just messaging to, to other live messaging companies, we're the same. So I think it's just policy. They don't really understand that that's the way. So maybe they haven't done their market research. I think they haven't done their market research on that and they have to really look, I mean, you know, the, the, the AI tools, they're, they're very, they're very prolific in the amount of information and how verbose they are in their responses. And that's not the way instant messaging works. Right. You know, I mean, typically it's as concise as you can possibly be. And you start to actually,

Ted Rubin13:13depending on the age of the person that you're talking to, they'll have responses that they're not even words, you know, they're acronyms, or they're just pieces of letters, or they're just graphics. And, and there's not as much data to pull from for the AI to understand what the context of that is. You have to remember that AI is actually, it doesn't understand anything, right? So it's estimating what the best response is from a statistical analysis of just the words. So it doesn't understand the words. It's just, I've seen this combination of words before. And I know that statistically, when I see this combination, then this is the best way to answer the question. But it

Ted Rubin13:50doesn't comprehend what the words mean. That's why you get the hallucinations, right? Because there's a lot of words that have many different meanings. And so it doesn't necessarily know the difference between those things. So I think that, you know, you, if you think about it, if you're a dealer, and you're thinking about it, and I would never tell anybody that AI isn't good, or it's not valuable, or that you shouldn't use it, or there's not areas to use it in your business. But I think it's, I think that when you start to look at, all right, well, what am I getting out of it, when you look at it, you go, well, it can make an appointment. Okay, but it doesn't upsell,

Ted Rubin14:25it doesn't make a connection with the customer. How often do those appointments show up without having to follow up and do other things with them, you know, from the dealership where you are interacting with a live person? You know, if you're, if you're having AI, and then you're ultimately having someone in the store that you're paying an hourly wage, or you're paying a salary to, that now has to spend time interacting with them, then your costs are massively larger. That's not taking those things into account.

Brian Pasch14:51And, and Ted, you know, I think that dealers haven't thought about the type of questions that are being asked based on their website. For example, it's common today. I just saw it. I was recording a video today. This dealer had Edmunds trade tool and KBB trade tool. And in this test on the site, both on the site, and they gave different values. I guarantee you, you put an AI chat bot and you asked the question, why do you have two different trade tools with two different trade values? So what's the right one? They can't explain that question. GM dealers, GM dealers typically have a button to start shopping, takes them off the

Brian Pasch15:38website, right? Take, take some completely off the website, but they may have another payment tool, you know, on the, if somebody is in a chat bot and said, how come there's two payment tools? What's the advantage of the General Motors payment system or your payment system, right? Dealers don't even understand that their own designs have nuances that, you know, a customer might be really close to a decision, but feels like maybe the dealer's making it more difficult. And then you put in a bot in there that has no clue of the context of the website design or the buttons on the website design. I believe Ted, that if somebody calls up for a quick transactional thing, I need to schedule an oil

Brian Pasch16:32change. I have no problem with an automated attendant. I have no problem with that at all. If, as you mentioned, they show up, if they show up, but there's so many nuanced questions that I'm trying to figure out if. Dealers at the end of the day should be focused on the cost of operating my business to sell X amount of units instead of cost per lead. I think that's a good question. Is it too hard for them to understand that they're dropping more customers today with an AI chat bot versus a human? Is there any way, Ted, that you can show dealers like, hey, when you pop up an offer to communicate and help a customer, when real people are involved,

Brian Pasch17:24right? It has a significantly different impact. What could you tell a dealer who's saying, no, I just think AI can answer everything and I'm getting some leads?

Ted Rubin17:34Yeah. I mean, the, there's lots of statistics that come from companies like Shift or the OEMs, or, you know, it depends where you want to look for what it is, but I don't know of any, I mean, the most important thing to look at is the best leads, the highest closing leads for most dealerships are the messaging leads, right? Are the ones that are coming from the chat or text or whatever that instant messaging is from the website. Those are usually number one. Sometimes there's some advantages if you have other tools that will prompt them into a message. Like we have an ActivTarget tool that pops up, you know, a special or a coupon or something like that. And then it goes into a

Ted Rubin18:14message instead of landing you on a page. And that has a very, very high, that has even a higher...

Brian Pasch18:19So that's like a conversational commerce approach.

Ted Rubin18:22Yeah. It's a conversational commerce. So if I popped up a, uh, uh, uh, uh, an offer to you and you go, yes, I'm interested. It's not just a hand raiser that we go, I'll take your name and someone else will get back to you. Just engage with someone right away. Right. And so they're now taking that into a conversation. So that has an even higher conversion. But I think in general that, that all the statistics are showing that the messaging in general, the instant messaging that's happening on your website is going to be the highest converting things. And so they know that. So they're looking for how do they want to invest in those things? And I think there's,

Ted Rubin18:56you know, there's good and bad companies that do messaging. And if you've had a bad one, or if you've had ones that don't answer all the time, or if you've had ones that, you know, are not getting into good conversations, um, or who are saying the wrong things to customers, then, you know, it's easy to migrate to something that you know is going to be there a hundred percent of the time. And that's always going to answer the question. And so I think there's value to that. Right. So I think that, you know, there is a value to being having to even to the customer,

Ted Rubin19:25to having a customer where they come online and, you know, they have a question and you just answer the question. The thing that's being missed there, when you start to look at what converts to a sale, to your point is there's no sales pitch, you know, so there's no, there's no one there to kind of take them through that next step. And so that now gets pushed at a later point. So now you're essentially getting a lead like you would get from any lead provider. Right. And then you're having to deliver it to someone else who's going to have that conversation at that point. Right. So you're

Ted Rubin20:01delaying the, essentially the satisfaction and the motivation of the customer to continue to want to go with you. You can stop them from going to other sites. If you gave them a personal communication where you said, Hey, I can not just answer your question, which is what the AI will do. It'll absolutely most of the time, I think, you know, it'll answer the question, but you know, it's probably not answering it the way that they want it to. It's giving this, you know, you're getting paragraphs of an answer instead of just, you know, here's the quick answer. And there's no engagement. There's no, Hey, obviously you're interested in this vehicle. Let me ask you a few other questions

Ted Rubin20:38about this. And let me engage with you, show you that I have real intent to help you and satisfy your needs. That's what you're doing as a human being. That's why dealers, that's why you say, you know, you're selling yourself. That's why dealers don't have kiosks in the showroom and get rid of all their salespeople. You know, I mean, at some point you have to engage.

Brian Pasch20:59Yeah. And, and Ted, you know, I joke a couple of years ago, I made a cartoon, my first attempt at cartoons and the cartoon was someone walks into the front door and the receptionist says, you know, fill out this checklist. Someone will be with you in the next few hours. But that's really what our websites are doing. We, we spend tens of thousands of dollars to drive traffic and all of the CTA buttons, which means normally, normally are forms, which means I'm not going to give you your complete answer. Now I will chase you later. There are some that have moved conversational CTAs right directly into

Brian Pasch21:41a communication, which you can do. And of course, then you're serving people instead of chasing. Right. I really want to encourage dealers to think if you have a service that can work around the clock with humans. When you have your CTA buttons for things like check availability or, hey, can I get additional discounts? Why would you chase them later when you could double, double the appointments? That's about the stat that's consistent. You can double the number of appointments for people to come in if you communicate with them. But there's this wacky, you know, rush to have AI. So let me flip the script just a little bit.

Brian Pasch22:24People say AI is better because even though it doesn't upsell, doesn't maybe create bonds, it can answer questions more reliably than humans. But when you and I talked last, right? I mean, we've been talking a few times this year. You were saying, look, we take all the information the dealer gives us. We have all the OEM information. We have AI internally that summarizes response. We have a knowledge base that can be customized. So is it that dealers are thinking about 10 years ago, you know, call center services or 10 years ago, chat services when it was in its infancy? What kind of resources do the people who answer a communication request from a customer,

Brian Pasch23:17what do they have at their fingertips? Because Ted, I think you've set the gold standard for live communication. So how do you do it in scale?

Ted Rubin23:27Yeah, I think, well, what we do, you know, more specifically, and I think it can be done by others. But I mean, we, so we interact with the store before we get started, right? So we find out what their advantages are, what's their niche, what is that they want to push, you know, as a dealer, what's what makes them unique in their market. We find out landmarks and other things so we can navigate, you know, a customer to them without just going, you know, here's our address, look it up, you can do that as well. But it's more, you know, go down here, turn right at the 7-Eleven,

Ted Rubin23:56do those things, all these things that make it personal, right?

Brian Pasch23:59And conversational, right?

Ted Rubin24:00And conversational, absolutely. We have other tools that are out there that are from the industry. There's lots of them, things like Chrome and other stuff like that, where we can, you know, know the assets that are on all the different types of vehicles. We know how much the vehicles are. We know what the customer may be seeing out there on the web and stuff like that. We have tools in the background that are AI tools that can feed us the same data that the, that would be given to a customer probably by AI on your site, but we're not delivering it that way, right? So we're not just delivering the data to the customer that, because again, that's not,

Ted Rubin24:40you know, we, it's proven. I mean, I would say that we don't believe, but I mean, it's a fact that the customers are not engaging you to get the data. There's some of that. I mean, they certainly want an answer, but they want to get a feeling for, am I going to like you? Do I feel like you care about me? Am I going to get a decent price from you? I have these other nuanced questions that I wouldn't be able to get answers as you just pointed out. And so they're looking for, do I want to buy from you? Not, if they say, do you have the car? They absolutely want to know if you have

Ted Rubin25:08the car. Is the AI going to be better at answering that question, or is the person going to be better at literally answering that question? No, the answer is the answer, but the response is different. So the correspondence with the customer is going to look drastically different, you know, whether it's coming from AI, where it's just going to give you the flat answer. And when you're talking to a live person who's going to try to see if they can make a human connection with you, where you're now more in touch, just like if you, you know, AI came out more significantly with phones in the, in the

Ted Rubin25:42beginning, everybody's gone through these phone trees and all these other things that are out there. And if you're not getting what you want, do you have a problem hanging up on the phone? No, because you know, there's nobody there. And it doesn't matter if you have, if you're on the phone, and you have somebody on the other end, and they are just not solving your problem, but they, you can tell that they're trying to, is it just as easy to hang up on that person? Not really, you kind of stay engaged a little bit. It's like, well, maybe I can navigate them through and often you can navigate them through to get what you want. And I'm not saying that you want

Ted Rubin26:12bad people on the other end. But what I'm saying is that you can make a connection just by being a human being, where the person that you're talking to is willing to go further down the funnel with you, just because they don't want to just drop off. They don't want to be mean. They don't want to be, you know, where they're trying to silo themselves away from the rest of society. They want to be interactive. That was the reason they clicked. If they didn't want to be interactive, if I wanted to know if you had the car, I would just, and I didn't want to talk to somebody,

Ted Rubin26:43then I would just go to the inventory. If I wanted to find out what options were available, I'd do the same thing. If I wanted to find out if there was a vehicle that met the standards that I want, that was your brand, then I would just go to Google or the OEM and I would do this. I don't have to talk to someone to get any of those answers. So when they engage, that's what it is. Yeah, not anymore. So I think that people forget that. I think that's what they forget, right? Is that we're in a time where any question that they're going to ask about inventory, price,

Ted Rubin27:17color, option that exists everywhere.

Brian Pasch27:17That's right. It's no longer held in the dealer's control. And listen, I try to coach dealers on website design more recently to improve conversion. But you know, Ted, I think one of the problems with like the difference between humans and AI is that if somebody is on the dealer website and the car's there and the dealer puts the stupid check availability button, look, if I go to Lucky jeans and I find a pair of jeans and I want a 34/30, it's going to tell me whether it has, there's no button that says, wait, we will call you back and see. Now I'm not comparing jeans to a car, but when you put gimmicks on the website,

Brian Pasch28:09which insult people's intelligence, when you show an MSRP in 12 different discounts and then say unlock price. Today's car shopper is not playing that game. I was just doing yesterday, unlock price, 11% completion rate. That means 89% of the people who said unlock price didn't want to play the game. They knew it was a game. And if dealers just simplified their websites and put a live person there to answer the relationship questions, hey, you get a trade value. Great. Hey, there's some really great trade tools. Got it. And some of the best convert, you know, click to lead about 45%, 50%. But when they get that number and they say, you know, I was really thinking I want to get more for

Brian Pasch29:04my car. I've tested it in AI. They're just like, well, come on in. Maybe we can. That's not really what people want. They want to like, well, why was it this number? And what about this? They want to have a conversation. But I think if dealers stop playing games on their website, uh, providing good tools, and then emphasize that a real person is there to help them. Right. I think that that trumps an automated AI agent. That's my belief when it comes to buying a car.

Ted Rubin29:38Yeah. I think your statement, it even really goes beyond, you know, the AI and messaging. I mean, the overall, as you were just saying, and I completely agree, the data that it, that people used to hold back because they're like, no, I want them to come to me to get that data that those days are gone. You know, and anybody who's as old as me that remembers those days, you know, they're way in the back mirror. I mean, they are so far gone. You know, everybody knows everything about they probably, I I've talked to dealers that they say, you know, customers know more about the cars than some of my

Ted Rubin30:11salespeople know about the cars. So, you know, that's out there. And so the, the idea, you know, as you drive down to this, you know, conversationally, the idea that the customer engages just to get that data is, to me is foolish. You know, that's not, they, they don't have to do that. They're not going to do that for that purpose. The reason they're doing it is to kind of, you know, feel you out and get an idea.

Brian Pasch30:38Right. And, and, and here's the point. They're coming to feel you out, watch this. And then you come and you list and say, this is our price, the pass price. Right. And then they have a button is like, unlock the price. And they're like, what do you mean? Like, there's the price. So their first impression is, is this a joke or is everything they put on here a joke? If a dealer shows discounts and says their price, I feel that it's absolutely fine to have a CTA inquire about additional discounts for sure. And a trade and a payment, but those are unique to the dealer, but all other questions,

Brian Pasch31:16it should say, look, we're here 24/7 live customer service. I wish dealers would understand that the data game, the hide and play game, the lead capture game is hurting them more than they even realize. And maybe the balance is stop playing games, understand they have the data. And when they come to your website, they're ready to ask questions.

Ted Rubin31:39Yeah. This is, here's a specific example of that, which is, you know, when you, when you use these tools, or even if you're a human being, and all you do, let's say that you're a live person and all you do is just give the answer to the question. So you've done something that they probably already have and that they could have gotten almost any other way. And even if you get the lead, so this is the conversation where it turns into, well, how does it make a difference for sales? So you haven't given them anything that they couldn't have gotten many, many other ways and probably already had. So you, the only thing that you

Ted Rubin32:14get as a dealer is you get the data. So I've had a lot of customers that have, uh, talked to me about what's the difference and things like that between my people and AI or your, and you and AI, because they both get the information. Okay. But the information that you're getting from us is driving the customer to you, right? Because we've moved them further on the funnel because we've taken them through part of the sales process by fully engaging with them, doing what you would do in the store with a live person, not a kiosk. That's the point, right? So if you're doing it with something that's

Ted Rubin32:48just giving correspondence and all that it's really doing is giving the data. So now when that lead comes into the store, do you have to start from scratch? So what is better? So, you know, that customer is buying a car, but is it better than finding someone in the phone book that also is trying to buy a car? What have you done for them that ties that customer to you more than just arbitrarily finding someone who's also looking for a car? Nothing. You've done nothing. And that's the issue. I mean, I, I, I've been involved long enough that when I started at a dealership, they literally said,

Ted Rubin33:25here's a phone book. One out of three people, they're buying a car. Call. Literally just start calling people in the phone book. And I don't think it was one out of three, but even if it's one out of 10, when I connect with that person, so I'm totally at scratch. They're totally at level one out of a thousand. And so when you have someone that comes to your website and all you do is give them the data that they already know, but you get a lead and you can call them. That person is the same of that one out of a hundred that's looking for a car, but I still have to say everything about

Ted Rubin33:53the dealership in the car.

Brian Pasch33:53Yeah. And, and Ted, I think if we could drill one phrase into dealers' heads is serve, don't chase. Right. And some comes to your website, serve them. Don't use a bot that eventually is just going to pop up a form and say, okay, yeah, we'll have someone call you back tomorrow. Um, serve not chase. We know that less than 50% on average, national average, less than 50% of leads in the CRM never communicate with the store because they've already moved on. They're not telling you they bought a car, but if, if you looked at all the dealers and their actual communication rate, it's less than 50%. So when you say I got leads and they've already left the website between

Brian Pasch34:44that and comparing to conversation. So I just want to encourage dealers today that AI is going to revolutionize parts of the business like never before websites will be more responsive. I think, um, sales presentations, needs analysis, uh, financial comparisons, all of those things, which take expert thinking. But when it all comes down to, I think Ted said it, the information's out there. The large language models are summarizing all the cost benefits when they come to your website and you just have form, form, form, form, and an AI bot. You're basically saying no one's here to serve you. And I want to encourage you do a real controlled test of adding live sales support to your website

Brian Pasch35:32compared to AI and really look at your operating cost per sales, not just leads, because at the end of the day, your website might be gaming your own tools to accelerate leads for stupid things. And if we can just drill home the fact that consumers have the information, make it easy for them, and then provide a real person to communicate with them. Man, that I believe is what's going to start differentiating dealers. You know, Ted, I want to thank you for your time today because, um, one of the phrases that you and I have talked about is a smart balance, right? A smart balance between

Brian Pasch36:16people and AI. And as you are pioneering, uh, new applications for communication, like you said, hey, we're going to show some things at NADA that are going to blow people's socks off. But fundamentally, we need to reconsider, uh, where we place these tools in the customer journey. Ted, if somebody wants to learn more about your platform, which is price competitive and performance accelerating, where would they go in case they have never been to your website before?

Ted Rubin36:49Um, they would go to just activengage.com. Um, and they can see all of our information. We show, we show all the, everything, right? We show it all. We show it all on the website. Um, and, um, certainly you can contact us at sales at activengage.com. You're welcome to contact me at ted.rubin, which is r-u-b-i-n at activengage.com. But, uh, you know, we're, there's lots of places to find us. We're at, we're going to be at your event next, next month, and we're excited to be there and NADA. So we're, we're obviously pretty visible in the industry.

Brian Pasch37:21Right. Hey, I want to thank Melissa Maxey. She does a great job of really promoting your organization, love working with her and for all the dealers who are listening in at the Modern Retailing Conference. We're bringing the thought leaders, the pioneers, the entrepreneurs together. You get to meet people like Ted, who are the owners, the visionaries and are guiding the company. We have the top AI companies all there, and we have the top tech partners. They're all for active conversations on what the future of modern retailing looks like. So if you want a conference where you're really networking with and seeing for the first time, what's going to be in market for 2026 is the

Brian Pasch38:08conference to do that. And then if you want to set up some face-to-face time, Ted already gave his email address, set up some face-to-face time, especially if you have some unique or thoughtful ideas on how to improve your online retail operations, Ted will be there with his team. I want to thank everyone for listening in. I want to thank people who have been just loyal to listening in and learning. I want to encourage you to come out to the Modern Retailing Conference, modernretailingconference.com. The main hotel is sold out. We have three other hotels right in the area that are on the website. So lock in your tickets. Don't miss this year. And I'm excited, Ted,

Brian Pasch38:50you're going to be on a panel. We're going to be talking more about this smart balance between humans and AI. I think that's what the future is going to look like in modern retailing. Ted, thanks so much for supporting dealer education and for giving us some time today. You really hit the nail on the head and challenging dealers to reconsider their investments.

Ted Rubin39:13Yeah, thanks for having me. It's always a great conversation.

Brian Pasch39:15Great. Well, everyone, thanks for listening in. I'll see you next time on a podcast session. Have a great day.