Scott Traylor on Mia's AI Strategy for Modern Dealerships

AI is quickly becoming a core part of dealership operations, but not every platform is designed with automotive retail in mind. In this episode, Scott Traylor, Vice President of Sales at Mia, explains how the company's AI platform was built by dealership professionals to automate customer engagement, improve operational efficiency, and generate revenue outside traditional business hours.

Drawing on decades of dealership leadership experience, Traylor discusses how Mia integrates with existing dealership systems to manage appointments, answer customer questions, and support sales and service teams around the clock. He also shares why after-hours customer engagement is becoming a competitive advantage and what dealers should consider as AI adoption accelerates across the industry.

Key discussion points:

• How Mia's automotive-focused AI platform supports dealership operations
• Why after-hours engagement is generating new sales and service revenue
• The evolution from scripted automation to agentic AI
• How AI integrates with dealership CRM, DMS, inventory, and service systems
• What Mia's General Motors IMR partnership means for dealers
• Why AI strategy will soon become more important than AI adoption itself

Traylor offers practical insights into how dealerships can use AI to improve customer service, increase efficiency, and stay competitive in a rapidly evolving retail landscape.

Inside Automotive with Jim Fitzpatrick is powered by CBT News, your go-to source for the latest news, trends, and insights in retail automotive. Subscribe for more interviews with top industry leaders, dealership innovators, and experts shaping the future of automotive.

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Transcript

Why Dealer Built AI Matters

Jim Fitzpatrick 0:11

AI continues to reshape the way many of us conduct business, but not every AI solution is built with real automotive in mind. Joining us now is Scott Trailer, who's the Vice President of Sales at MIA, with more than 20 years of dealership leadership experience, including roles as head of sales at Echo Park Automotive and uh general sales manager at Berkshire Hathaway Automotive. Scott brings a unique perspective on where dealers need the most support and how AI can help. So, Scott, thanks so much for joining us here at CBT News.

Scott Traylor 0:41

Thanks for having me, sir.

Jim Fitzpatrick 0:43

Sure. So uh what a background. I mean, you got a uh a a real uh retail background, which I think makes a lot of retail dealers comfortable when uh you move to the vendor side, right? You you know, it does.

Scott Traylor 0:55

You know, it gives a lot of credibility when I'm able to speak with uh retail leaders and let them know, hey, listen, for 20 years, I'm in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. I've managed high-volume stores for 20 years.

Jim Fitzpatrick 1:08

Yeah.

Scott Traylor 1:08

And then when I, you know, when I let them know my resume is Van Tyel, Berkshire Hathaway, Sonic Automotive through Echo Park. These are the top organizations, you know, in America when it comes to automotive. And, you know, it wasn't fly by night. You know, I did over a decade with Van Tal going on the Berkshire Hathaway and wow years at Sonic and uh Sonic Automotive and Echo Park. And it gave me incredible lessons. Those are incredible leaders in automotive. And I got to soak up some incredible lessons that we could apply here at Mia. One in just knowing the pain points of the dealer.

Jim Fitzpatrick 1:46

Yeah.

Scott Traylor 1:46

And by knowing the pain points of the dealer, creating features that support what the dealer needs at store level, whether it's the workflows or how you approach a task, how you approach setting an appointment, things that we should not be involved in. All these things are uh we get to, you know, myself and a few other individuals that are in leadership here at Mia that come from automotive, we get to share that dealer perspective so that Mia is dialed in specifically for the dealer. And we have our tagline, we actually promote this. We are car people, yeah, making solutions for car people. Yep. And when we can have vis-a-vis, a person like myself or Twee or anybody else in my org, along with the the solutions that we're developing in the AI working together and displayed together, it stands out against anybody else that's getting in the space.

Jim Fitzpatrick 2:38

Yeah, you know the pain points uh better than the vendors out there that have not spent any time. Maybe they're great technologists or what have you, but unless you're in the car business and actually worked it and understand it,

How Mia Started With ChatGPT

Jim Fitzpatrick 2:50

and obviously those organizations that you were part of are world-class organizations. But uh you were also really part of the think tank and and one of the originators of the idea for Mia, right? Talk to me about that.

Scott Traylor 3:02

So uh how we got here, um, you know, if you go back in time, uh 2022 in November, OpenAI dropped dropped Chat GPT, and then December Microsoft invested in OpenAI. It was like $10 billion. It was a crazy number. I sat up. I'm like, okay, there's something here. In February of 23, they dropped the open source code. And I'm just a car guy. You know, I I I know pretty much everything about dealer operations, but when it comes to AI, and especially at that stage of AI, you had to be an engineer to really get it. And so by April, I had kind of put my hands in here and said, I need help. Yeah, I had been playing with it for a few months. I couldn't figure it out exactly what was in my head. I couldn't get AI to do exactly what was in my head. So I reached out for help. There was a local university, University of Texas, the Dallas campus, and they had an AI society. And the president of the AI society is our CEO.

Jim Fitzpatrick 4:04

Okay.

Scott Traylor 4:04

As a car guy, I just co-called him. You know, I just I was like, hey, I can't figure it out. I need help. Um can we talk? And he said, Yeah. A few days later, we met with uh the chief product officer and they showed me that they had this voice conversational AI that was going to be a big thing, but honestly, they didn't know exactly where they were gonna point it.

Jim Fitzpatrick 4:27

Okay.

Scott Traylor 4:27

And so we had this conversation, and I encouraged them if you point 100% of this at the automotive industry, you will never look at another industry in your life. And so the theory was automate the BBC as best we could. That conversation turned into this corporation that we are we get to. I was just talking with Brian, our CEO, a little bit ago. He's in Dallas today, and I was like, we get to do this. Yeah, this is a passion. This isn't a job. This isn't, you know, this isn't like, you know, you know, uh working at a bank and all you're doing is flipping money. This is something we're absolutely passionate about, which is helping the automotive industry and being on the the ground level of change, yeah, of positive influence on this industry for the forever to come.

Jim Fitzpatrick 5:13

Yeah.

Scott Traylor 5:13

And it's exciting to us that we get to do this on a day-in, day-out basis.

Jim Fitzpatrick 5:17

So for the viewers that are not as familiar with Mia as we

Agentic Voice AI For Dealerships

Jim Fitzpatrick 5:20

are here at the show, tell us a little bit about Mia. I mean, you guys are really kind of an AI employee for dealerships handling inbound and outbound calls, right? Yes. Expand on that.

Scott Traylor 5:30

So, first off, the approach was voice conversation, and you have to appreciate how we grew over time, right? So uh you you were mentioning pre pre-show that you've been in the business 30 years. Yeah. Well, you'll remember when Leeds used to come across on the fax machine. That's right. And used to write the sales on the glass on the wall in the sales tablet.

Jim Fitzpatrick 5:49

Oh, you know it, bro.

Scott Traylor 5:50

Okay, and inventory may have been on a sheet of paper up under your keyboard on your computer.

Jim Fitzpatrick 5:55

And you actually logged, uh, I'm dating myself, but you logged the customer in with a with a showroom log. Remember those? Right. Yes.

Scott Traylor 6:02

And then somebody came up to you and said, Hey, you need a website, or you're going to be in uh irrelevant in just a short period of time.

Jim Fitzpatrick 6:08

Yeah, but nobody buys cars on the web. I mean, come on, Scott.

Scott Traylor 6:12

You we're at that threshold. Somebody back then, somebody said you needed a website.

Jim Fitzpatrick 6:19

Right.

Scott Traylor 6:19

And then technology kept growing. You got the first version of a computer that could talk to a human.

Jim Fitzpatrick 6:25

Yeah.

Scott Traylor 6:25

But the reality was it was a script, it was a uh decision tree, if this then that. Right. You've all experienced it. Call your bank or credit card. If you haven't, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. You know, very painful. Oh, yeah, friction-filled combo. That's a gent, that's a generative AI. Then we got to agentic where we are now. And this is different. This this can this system can reason. You give a gentic AI a goal. And so by leveraging agentic AI, we created a voice conversation, a free-flowing, like you and I have been doing for the last few minutes, a free flowing combo.

Jim Fitzpatrick 7:01

Yeah.

Scott Traylor 7:01

And we apply it with integration to our CRM, to our DMS, to our inventory, and to our service scheduler. Now you pipe in every system in the dealership to the back end of this, this AI, and Mia now has the ability to set sales appointments, speak about cars. If I go from this trim to that trim, what do I lose? What do I pick up?

Jim Fitzpatrick 7:28

Yeah.

Scott Traylor 7:28

Or uh set a service appointment, putting all the opcodes and things into the appointment uh for the service advisor, making everybody's lives easier. Now we can flip a switch and a BDC or a good chunk of the BDC, not the whole BDC, but a good chunk can be automated uh overnight. Right.

Jim Fitzpatrick 7:48

And it's 24-7. I mean, this isn't, you know, most people will shop for a car um from the hours of eight o'clock till 12 midnight. And when they get home from work or after dinner, whatever the case might be, lo and behold, the dealerships are closed. So this comes into play with that as well. Many people during over the weekends might think, hey, I gotta set an appointment for my car to be serviced, or maybe it broke down or what have you. There's a need for this in a very, very big way, right?

Scott Traylor 8:14

You know, my average uh revenue from my dealer after hours is around $10,000 a month. Most of that's service. And I think we have to appreciate that in America, a good chunk of our country goes to work and clocks in at 10 p.m.

Jim Fitzpatrick 8:29

Yeah.

Scott Traylor 8:29

It'd be first responders, pilots, uh fulfillment centers, right, uh, truck drivers, whatever the case may be. There's a massive chunk of our country that clocks in to work at 10 p.m.

Jim Fitzpatrick 8:40

Yep.

Scott Traylor 8:40

And they still have to take care of their family needs for their automotive. And so uh, like I said, my average dealer is around 10,000. It's it's low-hanging fruit, it's icing on the cake. Yeah, but I have some dealers that advertise hey,

After Hours Appointments And Revenue

Scott Traylor 8:55

book appointments with me at 24 hours a day. Those dealers are achieving upwards of $30 plus thousand dollars a month in revenue overnight. Wow, that's a beautiful thing. Wow. While you're asleep, you have an AI system putting up that kind of revenue for you.

Jim Fitzpatrick 9:09

And you guys uh integrate directly with over 40 dealer systems, kind of replacing that Franken systems of stitching together different point solutions, right?

Scott Traylor 9:19

Right. We had to do it that way so that Mia could be prepared to meet the dealer regardless of what their technology was. And so the assault on the integration was in 2023 going into 2024. We just went on a mad assault to integrate with absolutely all the relevant technology in automotive. But the the high-level thought process was meet the dealer exactly where they are right now for sales, for service, for receptionists. And then if the dealer at corporate level is thinking about pivoting to a new technology, yeah, be prepared to be the right partner.

Jim Fitzpatrick 9:57

Yeah, good.

Scott Traylor 9:58

Be prepared to be the right partner. So we already have that integration ready to rock as well. So we want to not tell a dealer what to do, which when I was in a um dealer operator seat, a lot of vendors would tell me this is what you're gonna be able to do. Sure, sure. I can't stand that. Just being transparent, I couldn't stand that. And so now we talk to leaders and say, listen, blank canvas, let's talk about what your dream would be. If you had a technology that could do what we do, what would you want us to get involved in? What would you what do you see as an obstacle that we could lift? Right. And so another pride that we have here at Mia is that we customize Mia to you, the dealer. And so we'll listen and you'll always have an engineer on the phone. And all my engineers are in Austin, Texas. All my operations are in Austin, Texas. And we'll always on your performance calls, always have an engineer on the phone so we can listen to what you need. And then we take it, we take that feedback and make the adjustment and uh customize me to what you need at store level.

Jim Fitzpatrick 11:03

Well, this is probably what's led to your success in a relatively short period of time. You've got now over 500 dealerships online.

Scott Traylor 11:10

More than that, more than that. But wow, yes, 100%.

Jim Fitzpatrick 11:14

How long, how long, what is the um onboarding period for the dealers that are watching right now? I'm

Integrations That Meet Dealers Anywhere

Jim Fitzpatrick 11:20

asking for them. If somebody gives you a call today and says, hey, you know, hook me up. You know, I've got uh maybe four or five stores, and uh what what is take take me through that journey? What does that look like to onboard those stores?

Scott Traylor 11:32

Depending on the technology, it could be uh in the best case, you know, in the best case, maybe a week and a half, two weeks. But on average, right now, we're right at about 21 days to onboard a client. So about three weeks. Yeah, that's not bad. No, no, it's not bad at all. And it took us some time to get here. Yeah, you know, just being transparent. Two years ago, I couldn't say that.

Jim Fitzpatrick 11:50

Yeah.

Scott Traylor 11:51

Uh now I can. And we actually have uh an actionable plan within our engineering team to get that onboarding time from 21 days to 14. And we think that's really going to be the sweet spot where we're cooking with oil.

Jim Fitzpatrick 12:03

Okay.

Scott Traylor 12:04

And we've we've come out as a leader with enterprise accounts. You know, you have some people that are getting into space that are sitting in a dorm room coding up something and slapping up a website and saying we're in an automotive industry.

Jim Fitzpatrick 12:17

Right.

Scott Traylor 12:17

Well, you know, the the serious automotive groups in America that are um taken into consideration this AI, they also take into consideration who am I partnering with. Yeah.

Jim Fitzpatrick 12:28

Yeah.

Scott Traylor 12:29

Everybody can't handle an enterprise account.

Jim Fitzpatrick 12:31

Yeah.

Scott Traylor 12:31

And we've been able to prove with multiple triple digit rooftop accounts that we've onboarded, that we can handle enterprise accounts and automotive at scale.

Jim Fitzpatrick 12:44

Yeah.

Scott Traylor 12:44

And this is something we stand in price, and it's separating us from everybody else in the market.

Jim Fitzpatrick 12:48

Well, my producer gave me a note here that I think is worth noting, which you guys have an all-time Mia performance. Four million conversations, 450,000 appointments booked, and 275 million in total revenue generated from AI booked appointments. Those are very impressive numbers for this early in the game.

Scott Traylor 13:08

It is. And it you have to look at how much that that dealer was going to pay to achieve that revenue. Yeah. You know, and I'm not just speaking of headcount at store level. We're not in the business of replacing staffers. Uh, we're in the business of making the staffers' jobs easier.

Jim Fitzpatrick 13:27

Yeah.

Scott Traylor 13:27

Specifically, what I'm saying is you have a BBC or even a service advisor's job, they're completely covered up.

Jim Fitzpatrick 13:35

Yeah.

Scott Traylor 13:35

What we've done in market, what we've done in the automotive industry in the last 20 years is that we have perfected the marketing of a car.

Jim Fitzpatrick 13:43

Yeah.

Scott Traylor 13:44

We literally have. Wow. That car can be bought at an auction and be completely merchandised and on the website within minutes with a nice background on it, everything. Yeah. Generating leads. Or, you know, the servicing of the cars that we've already sold. What I'm getting at is we've created this perfect storm where it's not a coaching problem, talent problem, it's a math problem. We literally, at store level, do not have enough human beings to manage the inbound traffic that's coming into these stores. Yeah. And so the ability to turn on a technology like this has no

Onboarding Timeline And Enterprise Scale

Scott Traylor 14:20

capacity issues.

Jim Fitzpatrick 14:21

Yeah.

Scott Traylor 14:21

And you might need a thousand calls answered, or you might need 10,000 calls answered in the doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

Jim Fitzpatrick 14:28

You're covered.

Scott Traylor 14:29

Mia can get into that space and affect change immediately at scale. And yes, it's uh created a lot of success for our dealers because they're capturing, they've already spent the money on the marketing.

Jim Fitzpatrick 14:40

Yeah.

Scott Traylor 14:41

They've already spent the money to get the phone to ring. They just didn't have enough capacity to capture it. And we're so they're all benefiting straight across the board.

Jim Fitzpatrick 14:48

Yeah. And we all know that there's a huge, every dealer out there knows that there's a huge waste factor for the advertising dollars that are spent to those calls that are being picked up and being worked. And uh obviously people in the dealership will say you no, no, no, boss, we need more advertising. We need to spend more money in advertising, more money on leads. Meanwhile, who's answering the leads that are currently coming into the store?

Scott Traylor 15:10

Right.

Jim Fitzpatrick 15:10

Right? Right. It's gonna be a good thing. And that's exactly it.

Scott Traylor 15:13

It's a it's a capacity, it's a math issue. And this is an issue that Mia can solve as soon as a dealer decides, you know what, I'm gonna give uh technology a chance. Yeah, and here's the real big threshold. Earlier I said that you know, websites came in and then it just changed dealerships forever. Yeah, we're at that threshold. By this time next year, we talk again. You're gonna see most dealers are making decisions on not if I'm gonna be an AI, right? What is my AI plan?

Jim Fitzpatrick 15:44

Yeah, very good point. Very good point. Now, you guys have had some huge success with OEMs. I mean, you're you're the first uh OEM, or I should say OEM uh being General Motors for their brand new AI and uh conversational intel category. So talk to me about that.

The Capacity Math Behind Missed Leads

Jim Fitzpatrick 16:00

That's that's pretty impressive.

Scott Traylor 16:01

First and foremost, you know, hats off to General Motors for being such an amazing leader.

Jim Fitzpatrick 16:07

Yeah.

Scott Traylor 16:07

They saw that the future of automotive retail was going to be with AI, period, full stop.

Jim Fitzpatrick 16:15

Right.

Scott Traylor 16:15

There was no putting a genie back in the bottle, and so they wanted to get ahead of all conversations that had to uh be associated with AI and automotive. Case in point, this whole conversation started last year. Wow. They've been working on that before then. And so you got I'm saying this because I want to highlight just how advanced General Motors is when they're seeking out the best opportunity for the retailers to get the best technology in their stores. I I just have to say it again, hats off to General Motors for just doing the work and being the leader that they are. Yeah. Now, they searched everybody, uh they searched everyone that was in this category in America. They got the list very short. They said, Mia, you're number one. You're the first one we're moving with for obvious reasons. Nice. And we've we're grateful for this opportunity. I've told the leadership team there at General Motors, we're not gonna, we're not gonna let your retailers down. Yeah, we are gonna service them with honor. That's a huge we're gonna service them with honor, and it is huge for us. Really is and we will we do not take this opportunity lightly. We're truly grateful for those.

Jim Fitzpatrick 17:25

So for the GM dealers that are listening, they're now eligible to select Mia and apply their I uh IML uh IMR co-op funds towards that, right? Saving them.

Scott Traylor 17:35

Yeah, there's a lot of initials at General Motors, it's kind of like military. Yeah, you have a lot of acronyms. So, yes, uh return key, meaning they can go into their IMR DDS portal. Okay, click on uh the category is called the AI and conversational to Intel category, okay, and select Mia. We're the only ones there, so it's an easy selection. And uh then we will get the information and start the process of connecting with them. And they get co-op dollars that can be applied there. Of course,

GM Approval And Co Op Funding

Scott Traylor 18:05

each GM dealer has their own level of co-op and they know their program, they know how this is applicable at store level, sure, but they can apply those co-op dollars to offset the cost of Mia and uh bring us into their store to help out with their operations.

Jim Fitzpatrick 18:19

Yeah, wow, that's fantastic. What a what a vote of confidence you've got there. I mean, uh, who doesn't want to uh have GM, you know, on basically on the team to say, give you a thumbs up for your technology. Exactly that.

Scott Traylor 18:31

Exactly that. No, we're honored. We're absolutely honored, and we're gonna we're gonna rise to the occasion and make them happy.

Jim Fitzpatrick 18:36

For dealers that are watching us have this conversation, and there's a lot of you out there that are either on board with AI right now, great, keep going. There's a lot of you that are in that uh, well, let's see what happens here. Let's see the the vendors that are coming to the table that can really, you know, show us how to make money from this and how we're gonna run our dealerships more effectively. Uh Scott Trailer is your guy in your corner. That's the guy that you want to call. He's with us right now. These are the solutions we want to be bringing you at CBT News. And uh, I suggest you give him and his team a call and say, hey, come on in here. Let's benchmark where we're at right now, what your capabilities are. Admira, show us your stuff, sit back down 90 days from then. And uh, and by the way, it sounds like he can have you up and running in about two to three weeks, which is not

Final Advice For Dealers On AI

Jim Fitzpatrick 19:20

bad. Right. So uh it's it's a it's a huge step in the right direction. And they're GM approved. So if you're a GM dealer, this just became a no-brainer. So, Scott Trailer, vice president of sales admiral, thank you so much for stopping by CBT News. We very much appreciate it. Uh, as I said, these are the solutions that we want to be featuring here. So uh thank you so much.

Scott Traylor 19:39

Thank you for having us. Truly honored. Thank you so very much. Thanks.

Jim Fitzpatrick 19:44

Thanks for watching Inside Automotive with Jim Fitzpatrick.