Stephane Ferri Breaks Down the Dealership Phone Call Problem

Stephane Ferri, CEO of Car Wars, joins Driving Solutions to discuss new data revealing how missed phone calls are costing dealerships millions in lost service opportunities—and how artificial intelligence may help close the gap. Drawing from Car Wars’ 2026 white paper, Ferri explains why the phone remains one of the most important lead sources for dealerships, particularly for service scheduling and customer inquiries.

The conversation examines operational bottlenecks that occur during peak call periods, when service advisors are balancing in-store customers with high inbound call volume. Ferri outlines how AI-powered communication tools can answer calls, schedule appointments, and route inquiries more efficiently, helping dealerships capture more service business while improving customer experience. The technology can also integrate with CRM systems, track call history, and support follow-up processes, giving dealerships greater visibility into customer communication. As fixed operations remain a key profit driver, improving call management may play a critical role in strengthening dealership profitability.

Key discussion points:

• The scale of missed service call opportunities at dealerships
• Why the phone remains a critical lead source for service scheduling
• How peak call times create operational bottlenecks for service teams
• Using AI to answer calls, schedule appointments, and route inquiries
• Integrating call data with CRM systems to improve follow-up and tracking
• The impact of better call management on fixed ops performance

Driving Solutions is the go-to podcast for dealership professionals who want to stay sharp, informed, and ahead of the curve. Hosted by Jim Fitzpatrick and powered by CBT News, each episode brings you real strategies, smart tools, and expert insights to help you run a more profitable operation.

Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and visit CBTNews.com for more.

Transcript

Welcome And The Missed-Call Problem

Announcer 0:00

This is Driving Solutions exclusively on cbtnews.com.

Jim Fitzpatrick 0:06

Hey everyone, Jim Fitzpatrick. Welcome into another edition of Driving Solutions right here at cbtnews.com. Every missed call or unanswered text is a missed opportunity. I know you've heard that before. And that's where Car Wars comes in. Today we're talking with Stefan Ferry, who's the CEO of Car Wars, about how dealerships are using tools to stay on top of every customer interaction. As you know, 2026, no dealer can afford to miss out on these customer interactions and customers that want to do business with you. So thank you so much, uh Stefan, for taking the time out of your busy schedule to join us on the show.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

Well, Jim, it's a pleasure to be here with you. Um it's an honor to go over this. We just released our 2026 white paper for 2025. So I think we have some really interesting data to go through.

Jim Fitzpatrick 0:56

Awesome. Listen, for viewers who may not be as familiar with you as we are here at the show, give us a quick overview of Car Wars and the role that you play in dealership operations.

What Car Wars Does For Dealers

SPEAKER_01 1:07

Yeah, great question. So Car Wars is the 20, uh, we're we are the 600-pound gorilla in the space. Okay. Our job is to work with many of the largest and smallest dealership groups in the country, capturing every opportunity we can to convert their clients into an opportunity for sales service parts all across the organization. And so we do call recording. We have uh our own technologies that range from voice recognition to human addicts to our own AI tools, and we can go through all of that uh as we go through this conversation.

The Data Behind Missed Opportunities

Jim Fitzpatrick 1:48

Okay. Sounds good. I want to I want to learn about all of it. This stuff fascinates me in terms of you know these technology technologies that allow you know you to know the attitude of the dealer, I mean the of the customer that's calling, and it just blows me away. But so what trends are standing out in service call data right now? And what do you uh what do those trends reveal about the challenges dealerships are facing?

SPEAKER_01 2:11

Yeah, Jim, in 2025, Car Wars uh tracked 53 million inbound service calls.

Jim Fitzpatrick 2:21

Wow, 53 million.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

53 million.

Jim Fitzpatrick 2:26

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

And not not to play the ballpark, but of those 53 million, 19 million calls were missed opportunities. Oh, god, that's way too high. Okay, so 53 percent left a message and 29 hung up because they were too long on hold. That's crazy. So the conversion is 4 million booked appointments. Now we can talk about those two favorite letters that everybody likes to talk about, but what I would rather tell you is that we've been doing transcriptions for 15 years, yeah, really digesting the calls in its entirety from beginning to end, knowing every keyword ever said. And now we're starting to use this AI in different ways to help the dealer convert. Let me give you an example, shall I?

Jim Fitzpatrick 3:19

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 3:20

Awesome. So one of the biggest problems is that uh the highest call volume across our dealership body is uh 10 a.m. and 12 p.m.

Jim Fitzpatrick 3:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 3:31

Well, their consumers are wanting to book appointments at the worst time, which is nine o'clock, ten o'clock, and eleven o'clock a.m. What why are we continuingly trying to run into each other?

Jim Fitzpatrick 3:47

Right.

SPEAKER_01 3:48

Right? Isn't that great? So it is crazy. So what we really want to do is create opportunities for dealers to do business. That is a um that is something that is strategically put on every one of the employees at CarWars. Try to find your dealers opportunities to do business.

Using AI Scheduling To Reduce Holds

Jim Fitzpatrick 4:08

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 4:08

And so if if you don't believe in AI or you don't want to use the service scheduler, they're so advanced now, Jim. You could have them on the second ring, the fourth ring, the sixth ring, or maybe you would do them just from nine to uh to 12 o'clock to match up with the times. Yeah, yeah. Where the dealership's busy. Or even better, for those that are really skeptics, just have it go from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m.

Jim Fitzpatrick 4:35

Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah. If I were to do it today, I would just turn it over to AI. I wouldn't, I wouldn't have my people screwing around taking calls and taking appointments and trying to because you know how that goes. You've got somebody that just came off of an I rate customer, or they're they've got their six deep in front of them, and now they're gonna pick up the phone and try to set an appointment. Forget it.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

That's right. Forget about it. So uh let's talk about the benefits. When it when um these calls are handled by people, they average about four minutes and 38 seconds to book an appointment.

Jim Fitzpatrick 5:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 5:11

Our conversational AI tool is just shy of two minutes.

Jim Fitzpatrick 5:16

Wow. Okay, cut it in half.

SPEAKER_01 5:18

So cut in half. So take the two million, uh, take the two minutes and take the four million booked appointments. Yeah, and how many minutes do you get to give back to the dealership to call declined ROs that need special handholding? That's right. Don't don't dealership operations doesn't allow itself the opportunity to get in its own way. Yeah, what they should be doing is working with the systems to change their systems to benefit their own clients. Yep. And I and I think too many times everybody is um, I mean, Jim, we were both at NADA. How many companies did you see advertising AI?

Jim Fitzpatrick 6:02

Every single one of them.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

Okay, perfect.

Jim Fitzpatrick 6:05

Everybody, I we did 40 interviews. I think all of them came up and said, we have got an AI component that we're, you know, I mean that that's where that's that's the future of the industry.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

That's right. So if we both agree to that and everybody's doing it, why I think Car Wars is set such an advantage is we don't take uh the niche of this or the niche of that. For 20 plus years, we're celebrating our 21st anniversary uh next month. Okay. And what what we really specialize in is total dealership communications. And so for any of your dealer body listening, reach out to us. Heck, give me a call. Many of you have my cell phone number. Reach out and we will show you how our AI is built around your operations. We don't want it to replace unless you want it to replace. You want it to assist, we can have it assist. We have made it based upon the telephony in which we specialize in to make AI work more in conjunction with the dealership and their clients.

Why AI Helps Fixed Absorption

Jim Fitzpatrick 7:10

Yeah, it's it sounds like it's very flexible for the dealer to do, which is a beautiful thing. I'm now uh addicted to, you know, what I call up Delta. I just assume stay on with the AI operator. Same thing with American Express. I'm good. I understand it now, it helps me, it's quicker, I don't have to wait, it gets everything done. It even has the little click, click, click, click, click, like they're actually checking their computer. In the game. Yeah, yeah, I love it. Absolutely crazy. And for a minute, I'm sitting there thinking, okay, I'll wait till she checks the what am I what am I doing? There's no computer. You know, that's that's absolutely crazy. But uh from your perspective, where is AI making a practical difference in service operations today?

SPEAKER_01 7:49

I mean, you just mentioned a number number of them, but yeah, well, for any dealers uh watching, it's to me it's about increasing fixed absorption for the dealership. Okay. Uh, if we increase fixed absorption for the dealership, then it puts less stress on uh variable operations. Right. The dealership can run a lot smoother. And I think the way we have created such flexibility, uh, we are looking to release some things in 2026 that will even bring Carrie, our conversational AI, into better aspects of the tooling and um the the different degrees where we see the phone calls dropping off to assist.

Jim Fitzpatrick 8:34

Okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:35

Jim, I'll ask you when you call any place of business, how long are you willing to hold?

Tracking Call Journeys Across Stores

Jim Fitzpatrick 8:40

Not long. I'm I'm glad you asked that question because a minute seems like a month. Three minutes, forget now I'm mad if they get on the phone with me, right? Because it's it's just it's just one of those things where what are you what are you doing? How come you're not taking good care of your customers? Whether it be the ones that want to do business with you for the first time, or whether I'm coming back as a customer of yours over the years and I've got to wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Obviously, it's just a bone of contention with everyone.

SPEAKER_01 9:09

Yeah. So two good points to bring up on that conversation. Uh, we uh service a lot of the biggest dealership groups in the country. We did a study on one of them where we in one town, uh I'll give it, I'm trying to keep it very uh um uh protective for both parties, but it's uh a major metropolitan city, a top 10 in the United States, if you will, uh, where they had multiple dealerships in one area. Um let's say I bought the car from ABC Toyota, they did not pick up. I called a sister store that happened to belong to that same dealer. So we tracked that phone call from the dealership one to dealership two, they were left on hold, they went to dealership three, and they were finally serviced or picked up. This is for a sale of an automobile, and then they were finally uh picked, but only did a soft contact. See, our business is about uh a breakdown of CRISP, connect, request invite, set and pursue. So all of the measurements of our business helps the dealer improve their KPIs in each one of those buckets. Now, fortunately for this dealer group, they actually called back to the first dealer because they were loyal and they had bought previous cars. Okay, but he had a soft appointment at one, not a hard, confirmed by a manager, which is another problem. It's a breakdown, as we both know. Yeah, and then actually went back to the first store and converted.

Jim Fitzpatrick 10:48

Wow. Okay, interesting. Interesting. And your software was uh what followed that that customer all the way around. That consumer all the way around all their stores. Wow, that's that's some pretty cool data that that you've got at the end of the day to be able to follow that call, you know, to see what actions or interactions they took.

Voice Recognition And CRM Routing

Carrie Service Scheduler And Recalls

SPEAKER_01 11:06

Yeah, and Jim, I think there's another important piece to bring up, and it's really how we got our start. Um, we've built something called voice recognition. So we know if it's Jim Fitzpatrick on the phone or one of your sons or me or or uh Alyssa or Pam. We can route every inbound and outbound phone call of the dealership. We diagnose the call, we know it's yours, we know if it's a sales opportunity, and then we move it all the way to your CRM to your folder. And so now it's not in general population where the cup just filleth over with 10,000 plus leads. Yeah, it's distributed across every CRM in automotive to help the dealers become more efficient with converting deals day in and day out. And we do it for sales and service.

Jim Fitzpatrick 12:03

How how does uh carry service schedule help service departments? Talk to me a little bit more about that. That's the name, obviously, of the schedule, right? Carry service scheduler. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 12:14

Um, we built this because our dealer advisory board um told us two years ago. Why in the world would you make us go to all the other companies? This is what you guys do.

Jim Fitzpatrick 12:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:27

And so uh we had a meeting, we put a plan together, uh, we launched about a year and a half ago.

Jim Fitzpatrick 12:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

And right now, Carrie is uh servicing these consumers in just under two minutes. And we can put as few or as many opcodes as you want. We're uh actively having a recall campaign to help customers as proactive reach out to then know what the back end system with the parts, so they actually know that the parts are available to apply the recall. Because we don't want to add any burden to the dealership. You just want to be there to assist and make fixed ops work that much better.

Tech Shortages And Better Time Use

Jim Fitzpatrick 13:08

And it needs it now more than ever because, as you know, with the average age of a car being over 12 years on the road, and people and affordability being a factor, people are keeping their cars longer. We're seeing fixed ops departments that have got quite the weight, and uh and you know, every single service bay is packed. And these are the kinds of tools that dealers need, dealers that are listening, that you owe it to yourself to check to check this out. Um, this is gonna help generate more traffic or generate more profits, take good care of your customers, but at the same time add more bottom line dollars, and at the same time increase your CSI score, probably increase your ESI score as well. Yeah, so it really is.

SPEAKER_01 13:49

Yeah, Jim, that you just brought up a massive point that a lot of people don't talk talk about enough. As we know, one of the hardest things for dealerships in the country are to get technicians and much less master certified technicians. Oh, yeah, for sure. Right. Okay. So uh earlier in the conversation, we talked about this opportunity to really drive um carry to book your appointments for the easy layups or the top 20 opcodes. Go let them do that. And then take those free hours that we just spoke about and go work on the declined ROs that are more complex, they're more expensive. You and I both know that those consumers probably need to talk to somebody because a lot of people are payment payers.

Jim Fitzpatrick 14:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:39

And let's reward the people to get the higher tickets into the shop because it'll reduce churn, it'll help the technicians, it helps the dealership, and it helps the consumer. I mean, it's a three-way win right there.

2026 Priorities: Proactive Texting And Compliance

Jim Fitzpatrick 14:53

Yeah, that's right. That's right. That's a very, very good point. It does give that time back to those individuals that are able to do that. Because as you know, that does take more time. Yeah, there's there's no question about it. Hey, looking at it in 2026, what should fix stops leaders, from your perspective, prioritize to stay competitive in the customer experience area?

SPEAKER_01 15:13

Yeah, I think we're gonna see a big push into being more pro proactive, right? Like um, Jim, if I told you that um for every dollar of marketing that you spent, that uh 31 cents goes to the trash can, meaning we're not picking up the phones. So I I envision us utilizing Carrie to make car wars even stronger. I I see us in a place where if someone's on hold for a minute, which is your lever or my lever, which might be two minutes, that uh I get a text back and it starts communicating, hey, sorry we missed your call. We're slammed at these hours. Tell us what you need, and we'll get it set up for you. I see a place where our platform becomes really a total communications platform to alleviate the problems of dealership uh traffic. I mean, we we spoke about it a minute ago, the hours of 10 and 12. Well, yeah, your people go to lunch. We need to we need to fix and solve that problem, right? So if we continue to repeat ourselves, we all know what that definition is. So let's let's stop it. We can fix it today and here and now. And we're working with certain dealers on uh some projects that will start to do outbound calling. We have to have the right materials in place to make these occur, but uh outbound text, because we are very compliant in what our nature is to contact people. That's a concern I think I would give to your entire dealer body that watches you. Make sure they're 10 DLC compliant, make sure that uh they know when you are allowed to, you're just not allowed to blindly reach out to everybody via text, right? So let's make sure that there are some measurements in place, would be my call out to dealers to be sure. I think you'll see outbound text and outbound email become better because consumers want to communicate in different ways.

Consulting Support And Playing Offense

Jim Fitzpatrick 17:23

Right. Let me ask you this for the well, for the dealers that are listening to us have this conversation and fixed ops directors and GMs and what have you that are watching us today. If you don't have a program like this, and then you need to obviously get with Stefan and his group at Car Wars to really learn. But I mean, come on, it's 2026, guys. What what what are you doing, right? And uh you know it's not even a question of saving money. What we're talking about is making money. Okay, you can't expense your way into profitability on every single situation. This is about making money and making your customers happier. But for those that, uh Stefan, that have got a system that maybe they're feeling like maybe I don't have the right system in place. Okay, the stuff you're talking about sounds pretty cool. Will you then do a comparison if they give you a call to say, hey, you got something in place here? Let us show you the difference.

SPEAKER_01 18:16

Jim, 100%.

Jim Fitzpatrick 18:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 18:18

As a matter of fact, I'm certain you have Car Wars customers on this line right now watching this something. Sure, we do, right? We have um a large consulting team. We are just not uh technology. We actually have consultants that follow up on data that we report on to alert the store. This is not a singular-sided business. We actually have a large consulting team that really works with their partners to fix and uh alert them to problems that they don't see. That's nice. That's a very nice feature.

Jim Fitzpatrick 18:55

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 18:56

And one of the most important things about doing that is I don't want any of our current customers or any potential customers thinking this is a defensive strategy. Yeah. This is offense.

Jim Fitzpatrick 19:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:11

Go on the offensive. Yep. Your uh competition with inside of your PMA or inside of your market is doing some of these things. The largest dealership groups in the country are highly concentrated on customer service.

Jim Fitzpatrick 19:27

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 19:28

And and I and I challenge all dealer principles like this voice recognition we talked about earlier. Make it a part of your onboarding process when a new hire starts.

Jim Fitzpatrick 19:38

Yeah, great idea. Yeah.

Phones As The Best Lead

SPEAKER_01 19:39

And then that way, as soon as they go in, they're gonna be like, hey, we know you're gonna be more successful here because we've bought tools to invest in you to make sure you can work your leads quicker, faster, more efficiently, than having the GSM distribute all these leads or the service advisor getting handed off and having a poor employee experience and ruining CSI.

Jim Fitzpatrick 20:02

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

The best lead in all of automotive, I've only been in this space for 26 years. I'm uh the rookie in the group, but I will tell you be sure to look at your phones and where the routing and the traffic are, because the best lead is the phone call.

Jim Fitzpatrick 20:19

And that's right. And what I don't know what the percentage is, I would venture to say it's somewhere in the 90s. You know, those people that call the store for whatever reason, you know, what are your hours? Let me talk to a salesman, let me talk to a service, let me talk to everybody calls the dealership before they're coming in. So, you know, don't underestimate that dealers. And as I said, it's 2026. It is time to bring this kind of technology to your store, to your people, and to your customers. So, Stefan Ferry, thanks so much. Very much appreciate it. Uh, let's let's do a follow-up on this. Maybe next time bring in one of your your clients and we can we can talk uh to uh he or she about how it works in their stores.

SPEAKER_01 20:58

I love it. Jim, thank you again. It's great to see you. We appreciate you and your staff, and uh look forward to seeing you again real soon.

Jim Fitzpatrick 21:06

Likewise, thanks so much.

SPEAKER_01 21:07

Yes, sir.

Announcer 21:10

Thanks for watching Driving Solutions exclusively on cptnews.com