8:30 am, July 14, 2024
This week I’ve been documenting my week behind the scenes of running my (very small) used car dealership business.
You may have seen we’ve been running the Clever Car Collection using the help of AI – and documenting the process on our YouTube channel in the AI Car Dealership Project series.
This week, in a break from our more polished (ish) videos, I’ve been capturing the highs and lows of a week running the business.
I started filming last Sunday when I went to pick up a Nissan Qashqai I’d bought on Carwow. It turned out to be an absolute corker and is up for sale now on Auto Trader. Since recording the video, I’ve had a lead on it and will be showing someone round it tomorrow.
The video shows the process that I go through when buying cars, how I check them over and how I get them prepped for sale.
Also this week, I took delivery of another Nissan Qashqai that I’d sourced for a friend. They’d asked me for a 2018 model with low mileage and I found the perfect example on the auction platform a few weeks back.
You’ll see me chat to the delivery driver picking it up and what it was like when it arrived. I managed to get it prepped, cleaned and handed over to the customer this week.
In addition, you’ll see me have to deal with a few problems. Podcast listeners will know these warranty issues used to stress me out quite a bit, but I’ve come to accept that used cars (especially 10-year-old ones) can and will go wrong.
Customers understand that can happen, but it’s how you deal with them when the problems do occur that really counts. I try very hard to maintain a five-star service when I’m selling the cars and stand by my promises to look after people when problems occur.
The video diary also shows where I’ve tried to use AI in the car-selling process. So far, it’s had a relatively light touch on the business, as it hasn’t been able to do many of the things that I want it to.
It’s been handy to help take emotion out of emails when replying to customers and – in AI’s words – to make them ‘more professional’. But many of the things that I really wanted it to help with, it just can’t.
There are so many different systems and processes that car dealers have to cope with on a daily basis, so an AI program that could connect them all – as I do as the human in the chain – would save a lot of time.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… What I really want is an AI apprentice that I can train to carry out the laborious and time-consuming tasks that I do all the time. It can’t be that far off, can it?
Check out my video diary at the top of this page, and to catch up with the entire series you can find the playlist on our YouTube channel.
