DriveCentric CEO Matt Leone on AI, Engagement, and Dealer Retention

Matt Leone, CEO of DriveCentric, joins CBT News from the DC20 User Conference to discuss how dealerships can strengthen customer engagement, simplify their technology stack, and improve retention in an increasingly competitive market.

As dealership margins tighten and showroom traffic becomes less predictable, Leone argues that retaining customers across sales, service, and F&I has never been more important. He explains how DriveCentric has evolved from a traditional CRM into a customer engagement platform by integrating AI, digital retailing, reputation management, and communication tools into a single solution. Leone also shares why dealerships should rethink disconnected software vendors, how successful dealer groups approach technology adoption, and the role company culture plays in delivering long-term customer success. The conversation offers practical insights for dealers looking to improve efficiency, strengthen loyalty, and build a more connected customer experience.

Key discussion points:

•  Why customer retention is the top priority in today's retail market 
•  How DriveCentric evolved beyond a traditional CRM platform 
•  The benefits of consolidating multiple dealership technologies 
•  How AI and engagement tools improve the customer experience 
•  Best practices for implementing new dealership technology 
•  The role of company culture and customer success in long-term growth

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Transcript

Welcome From DriveCentric HQ

Announcer 0:07

Welcome to Inside Automotive with Jim Fitzpatrick.

Jim Fitzpatrick 0:11

Hey everyone, Jim Fitzpatrick with CBT News. We're on location here in St. Louis at the Drive Centric headquarters for the DC 20. And look who I have here with me, the CEO of Drive Centric, Mr. Matt Leone. Thank you so much for inviting us out to this incredible event.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Thanks, Jim. It's so good to have you out here at our headquarters.

Why DC20 Matters To Users

Jim Fitzpatrick 0:28

Sure. How important is an event like this for your users and your clients?

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Well, we've had Steve Russler, Fortune F, our chief evangelist officer for many years, and he had this idea of putting together an event like this. And so this is our 13th one of these. Wow. It really is a twin group for our power users and our user community. And Steve loves these events, and I think these events are a great opportunity for us to pull all of our customers together, talk about all best practices, talk about how to get the most out of Drive Centric. And these events just keep getting better, better and bigger and bigger. So a lot of that is thanks to you know Steve and what he's doing and the vision of what he had.

Jim Fitzpatrick 1:01

And if you don't know Steve in the industry, maybe you haven't been in the industry that long, right? So uh he's the live with drive guests. That's right. We were here for the opening, um, and the opening was just incredible. You had the coffee guys in there, you had Katie Mayers, who did a great presentation as well. Right. Uh but uh but Steve obviously kicked it off and uh Steve had energy.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

If I only had a tenth of it, it would be uh you know. We could bottle that. Yeah, definitely. That's right.

From CRM To Engagement Platform

Jim Fitzpatrick 1:25

For the few dealers that might not be as familiar with Drive Centric as we are here at CBT News, tell us a little bit about the company.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

Yeah, Drivecentric have been around 15 years. Uh we started off as a CRM platform, a modern native built uh CRM platform. We've evolved in that period of time to make sure that we had native products of video, uh ability to do live rooms, video genius and AI within the platform. And now we've moved it to a new category, a category called an engagement platform. And we've taken what used to be uh CRM for task management and making sure there was reporting on how your sales team's doing to your digital customer, the people that are out there, how are they engaging with you and making sure that you have a tool to gauge them back in real time in an efficient way? And that's really what uh Drivecentrics evolved to. That's great. We have a uh a series of different products beyond just the core CRM. So we have a reputation tool, a chat tool, digital retailing tool, a marketing tool. Um we have several different agents that are out there now to really help empower a dealership to just focus on engagement and how best to engage with customers.

Margin Pressure And Customer Retention

Jim Fitzpatrick 2:27

And all of this today is so vitally important to a dealer, right? I mean we're look we're looking at margin compression, we're looking at fewer people walking into the showroom, we're probably gonna finish around 16.2, 16.3, arguably, uh a SAR for the for uh 2026. Every single deal matters. And if you don't have the right technology in your store to be able to provide all of these services, you're in trouble.

SPEAKER_00 2:50

I think so. And you know, the when I think about where Drive Centric fits into that is how do I not replace the human, how do I augment and support that human at the dealership to be more efficient? And not just the salesperson, the BDC, the marketing team, how do we make it more efficient across the dealership? How do I connect the different departments for visibility on a customer card? Because the number one thing you have to think about as a dealership is retaining a customer, loyalty to that customer, because the market is tough right now, margin pressure is real, the competitive environment is real, but making sure you're focused on that customer is the number one platform within your dealership. How are we engaging with those customers across sales, service, F and I? How do we retain them? How do we manage them? How do we engage with them so that we don't lose them to the competition? And then let your DMS be your accounting system, your back office accounting platform, and the other platform that becomes critical for your dealership is the one focused on customers, and that's what we're focused on.

Jim Fitzpatrick 3:42

That's right, that's

Switching CRMs And Change Management

Jim Fitzpatrick 3:43

right. And uh for for dealers that are out there, I know as a dealer myself, when somebody would come in with a system, whether it be a DMS or a CRM, that's a big move for a dealer, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 3:53

Very hard. Very hard change to do. Uh the change management is something that a lot of dealers even today think could say, I'm not ready to rip out my CRM. I've been with it for 15 years. And I look at that and I say, just reverse that in your head. You know, what's holding you back? You're sitting on legacy technology, you're sitting on something that is 15, 20-year-old technology that probably hasn't evolved or changed. You really need to think about how do I move into a modern tech stack. Right. And, you know, the platform technology is is hard to do. Where Drive Centric really, I think, shines is we have the idea of we'll remote set you up and we're gonna remote support you, but we're gonna ensure you have the right support. And we're gonna make sure your users have real-time ability to talk to a human how to interact with our system, how to get the most out of our system. We pride ourselves on our support, yeah, but it is something that dealers have to look at and say, yes, there is some change in management with moving out of CRM. But what do you get with that? And usually what I tell dealers is it's not just ripping out a CRM.

Consolidating The Dealership Tech Stack

SPEAKER_00 4:49

You're probably consolidating five or six different products down into one platform. Wow. And so when you look at your tech stack, you're managing multiple vendors, you're managing data flowing all around, and you're talking to a customer in five different voices. Why? Why can't you consolidate that down to one coachable voice that you could talk to your customers in one platform and see everything in one area? And that's the change management exercise is looking at your entire tech stack and saying, what do I want to consolidate down to have one platform drive-centric help manage

Rolling Out Across One Store Or Twenty

SPEAKER_00 5:19

all that?

Jim Fitzpatrick 5:19

Yeah. I spoke to one of your clients and uh they've got about 20 stores, and they said they were a little bit apprehensive of changing over their current CRM. Yeah, you know, and it had been one of the kind of the old guard CRMs, the kind of the household name, if you will, for the last 25 years. Not necessarily the best for them, but uh but it was kind of the safe bet, so to speak. So the dealer told me I was a little bit apprehensive about moving. He said, So I gave him a couple of my stores, you know? He says, and what they did in just a three-month period of time was amazing. Yeah, I gave them the rest of the stores. Do you find that dealers will will maybe try you on in in certain certain circumstances and they'd be both.

SPEAKER_00 5:56

We have some large public groups, we have some mid-sized groups, we have some single-point stores. I find it fascinating which ones are willing to say, you know what, I want to roll out all my stores, I'm gonna make this change, and we're gonna rip the band-aid off to the stores. They're like, I'm gonna take a year and roll out all of my stores over a course of a year. It's all over the map. We'll support whatever the dealer wants to do. Uh but the best references and the best referrals we have and the best growth story we have are dealerships that are like, hey, I was at this store, I'm now a GM over at this store, I want to bring Drive Centric with me. Right. Or, hey, you know, the word of mouth, this was a great implementation, it was seamless, it was you know friendly to switch over. Yeah, let's just roll it out for the rest of the stores. And usually what we find is that acceleration. They were thinking, I want to do this over a series of six months, yeah. And they're like, hey, this went so smooth, let's just roll out all of them. Right, right.

Jim Fitzpatrick 6:43

That's

Support Pods And Company Culture

Jim Fitzpatrick 6:44

the key. That's the key. We've had some uh ch a chance to spend some time with your team here, your success team members and what have you here, and this incredible folks, we're gonna be showing you some of this footage of the entire location here that they've got in their corporate headquarters here in St. Louis. But uh what I was amazed with was their attitude. I mean, you've got a bunch of typically young people that are just full of a tremendous amount of energy and uh and willingness to help their dealer clients.

SPEAKER_00 7:11

Yeah. I mean, culture is a big important thing, and I think our office here is amazing, and we call them pods. Our pods uh are made up of several different team members that support a series of accounts, and so we've grown uh tremendously. We went from you know about 10, 11 pods, we're up to 16 pods now. Yeah, just keeping up with our growth. But the idea is each pod has their own culture, their own team dynamics, uh, their own pod lead that manages that. And the great thing is you have a culture here of hey, we're a fast-growing modern tech stack. Dealers tend to love what they have and they love their pods. And anytime you have dealers loving the technology they're using, you have pods loving supporting it, it's a beautiful combination where dealerships are happy, we're happy. And that's right. You know, as long as we keep innovating, I think it's the energy in this office. Yes.

Jim Fitzpatrick 7:56

And I did hear something about your company just in doing the research and doing business with you, and that was that you have very few people, if any, that come to Drive Centric and leave Drive Centric.

Retention Rates And Rapid Growth

Jim Fitzpatrick 8:08

I mean, that's one of the things in the industry that you're known for is holding on to your customers. So you must be doing something right in that area.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

It it's definitely a pride thing. You know, I've worked in software for you know 28 years now. Having the retention rate that Drive Centric has is just not something that is out there in the industry. You know, for a company that's been around 15 years and growing the pace we're growing, I mean we're adding 100 to 150 dealerships every month into Drive Centric's ecosystem. Wow. And that's not including the upsells that we're doing within the ecosystem of the new products we roll out. But to be able to retain them at the level that we do, particularly franchise dealerships, um, is just remarkable. And that's a testament to our pods, it's a testament to our product team and our engineering team for creating a great product that's very stable, that's got a lot of innovation coming out, and this year, you know, the the hardest thing for me as a CEO is keeping up with the innovation to ensure our dealerships, and that's why it comes back to conferences like this. That's right. We do three a year now. We do one on the East Coast, one on the West Coast, and then one in St. Louis is our showcase one. Just to get our users together, just to understand what is all this innovation you guys are pumping out. I'm always surprised there's just how little, you know, some of the power users know of some of the stuff that we rolled out six months ago. And it's just like, wow, they're blown away when they're when they're hearing up great.

Dealer Sentiment And Power User Learning

Jim Fitzpatrick 9:21

You know, it's funny, the indoor you've got a probably, I guess, 150, 200 people here right now that came in from all over the country, and uh it's amazing how positive all of them feel about the industry as we finish, you know, the second half of 2026. Yeah, and they're all they're all feeling very bullish on on their dealerships and their markets.

SPEAKER_00 9:39

Yeah, you know, it's it's interesting, you know, the ebb and flows of that. I would I would venture to guess right out of Q1, sort of that April-May time frame, there was some apprehension. The war had just picked up, oil prices were high, inflation was still a little bit creeping up. And now we're coming through the summer, and that that sentiment I definitely feel and sense is back up with a lot of them. But you know, getting to a conference like this, most of our speakers are all power users. They're all people that love drive-centric and they're all here speaking about drive-centric. You know, we don't have t uh typically a lot of drive-centric people presenting at these. We allow our dealerships to talk about here's how I'm using it in share notes and share exchanges on and how they're using it. And what we have is our Drive-centric people on the back just capturing as many notes as possible to kind of make sure that we're we're doing that uh the best possible for our customers.

Thanks And Wrap Up

Jim Fitzpatrick 10:24

Well, Matt Leone, CEO of Drive Centric. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks, Jim. Thanks for coming out for us. Absolutely appreciate it. It's been a real delight. And uh it was great to see the corporate headquarters. And Steve told me about it a number of times, said you got to come out here. So thank you for uh having us out and uh and and having us part of this program. So it's it's beautiful. Awesome. Thanks, Jim.

Announcer 10:44

Thanks for watching Inside Automotive with Jim Fitzpatrick.