Wake up, Buy Here, Pay Here people. It's a beautiful day. Go grab yourself another cup of Joe and say hello to Jim and Michelle Rhodes on the Buy Here, Pay Here morning show. Take it away, you two. Good morning. Welcome to the podcast. Welcome to the studio in North Ogden, Utah. Yeah, and to our next edition of White Hat Wednesday. That's right. Where we kind of talk about breaking some subjects down in a white hat way. Oh, did you not have enough light on me? No, I was hogging all the light. You were hogging all the light. Excellent. Yeah. So before we get in, again, NIADA is coming up. We have a booth. Come and see. We have a game that we're going to be doing. There's some cash prizes up for grabs. Don't say the amount. Cash prizes. Cash and prizes. Cash and prizes. Okay. So if you're coming, and I hope you are, and if you haven't made a decision yet, There's no time like now. Grab a flight. Yeah. And come and we will, it's going to involve our founding sponsors and yeah. And we'll be speaking on success tools. I've got a presentation on Wednesday morning around some success tools for profitability and cashflow. And we think that we can make it easier for dealers to quickly get to some numbers that are pretty helpful. Yep. Uh, what else we got before we can just kind of go into what I might just mention, we've got a V eight discovery meeting set for Monday, the thirtieth, right behind the conference where people who have an interest in kind of taking a peek under the hood or going for a test drive with V eight, they could do that. We haven't had that scenario because of privacy stuff. So now we've created a discovery platform where people can do and just count on that happening the last Monday of every month. You can kind of see how the blocks of how a V-Ape meeting is run and the kind of things that you're going through. Data points that we look at. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Being able to have some conversation even with people that are thinking about coming in. And I know that we will be inviting dealers that are members to be able to come if they want. Especially if they missed their meeting and they want to have some bonus time and digging into numbers. But yeah, it's all good. I think we'll just kind of have numbers that are anonymized and that way people can have people sit in. That's an interesting word. You like it? Anonymized. Yeah, it's pretty early in the day to be used. That's about a thirty dollar word. That's about a thirty dollar word. Well, usually like a limit is twenty five dollars. Yeah. Yeah. So. Excellent. Shall we dive into our thing? You know, this this. We've had so much fun with this. This is something that we've been working on for our own purposes and also for the betterment of a dealership's experience. And so what we're talking about today is something that we recognize is like it's... it's staying with the times. I mean, and I don't know those of you, you know, talking about AI at all. There are some that are like always on the front edge and always trying to try the newest thing. And I know for myself, chat GPT as an AI is, once I discovered what it could do, it's like, it's now my best friend. I, you know, we work with dealers that it's always on their desktop. It's just, you know, it's like, it's a team member. And so this is something that we've been, this whole idea about voice agents is something that we have been working on. Um, and, uh, We believe the whitehatway.ai, which is something we haven't fully launched yet, but we've talked about before about how AI is the Wild West. And so who's the sheriff out there? And it's something that Salesforce kind of did some things with Matthew McConaughey, perfect person to have on those commercials, but it is. And so in Buy Here, Pay Here, we've been aware of what AI can do for a dealer. How... massive and strong, it can really, I mean, how it can strengthen, um, it can also, it can also separate. It can distance the dealer from the consumer too. And so this is kind of talking about how, you know, we're going to talk about like the beauty of AI voice agents. Yeah, you say beauty. I find that, first of all, let's back up and say that people are hard charging on voice. AI, like people are out there. We're hearing from a lot of people who are interested in driving the tech around that. And we're working with some tech partners now and just exploring ways to kind of deploy some of our own solutions around this. And White Hat Way will have solutions in the AI realm. So we've been we've been active in that area, you know, kind of quietly behind the scenes as a team been working on ways to get there. I've been meeting again with tech partners and exploring ways to actually deploy the technology side. But I think that's the fascinating part of what you and I need to talk about here this morning, which is the straight line side. So for those who aren't familiar, Michelle and I kind of break things up in our white hat way context into straight lines subjects, which are, you know, the policies and procedures and the black and white things of business and operational efficiencies and this and that. But then the squiggly lines would be the intangibles, those things that are less tangible when you start to think about Things like caring and compassion and empathy and all these things, kind of these soft skills that we would bring to artificial intelligence. We feel like that's our lane. That's kind of where we, and listen, we're not going to say we have all the answers, but we know people who can help. Oh, absolutely. Create the thing, right? Yeah. So I've got, we've got a whole list of different things that are straight lines. So we're going to kind of break some of those down and then go a little bit into the squiggly line. And there's, I'm going to make some notes because there's some stuff on the squiggly line that I want to. Yeah. Well, let's, let's first talk about the kind of frame the conversation. So it's my hope that folks who, you know, sit with us today would, the takeaway would be that the, AI is coming. It's been my observation that people are either in a camp of they're a little bit afraid of it, they're still nervous and skittish about what it can be and how far it's going to run and all these kind of things. And then there are people that are excited about it and they're hard charging to get their technology out there. And that includes providers in our space that are pushing, pushing on AI to get it to market. And it's It's it's inevitable. We've seen a lot of we have some colleagues in the industry that have done text, AI agents and those kind of things. The voice agents are something that's that's I think some of the the newer up and coming companies that are in the space are starting to develop that. And I bet you at the conference at the Expo Hall, we're going to see a bit of that. probably um yeah and I think the part that we are focused on here this morning is First of all, just, you know, we've been working through the actual options for delivery. As I said, how would you bring that to bear? And then I think for me, we have come to have some understanding of the capacity of AI. Okay, so it's probably whatever we see, it's much, much more. Yeah, so it's like the fun, tech and delivery, that's a big thing, is a straight line. And then the functionality, it's like, what can it do? How can it function? So we got to be careful about how we think about, first of all, A voice agent. So if it's not familiar, it just means that we've made those phone calls and you get somebody on the thing. It sounds like a bot or a machine. And, you know, that's newer, right? You're not seeing as much of that, certainly not in our sector. You're not seeing as much of that. Because it's what it is, how it's shifted. The ones that we've been experiencing for the last five or so years, it seems like forever, but it really hasn't been. Those kind of agents haven't been in the thing very long. But the new AI voice agents are conversational. I mean, they have a personality and they're conversational. They can pivot in a conversation. Unlike, you know, you get on and say, press something, something for something, something. And if you want this press, that's kind of like the first iteration of a voice agent is like, the place that you call and this is your directory of where you can go. And so, and that's still pretty straight line stuff. It's like, you know, when the customer says X, we do Y and that's kind of, you know, it's almost like table form, you know, response kind of stuff. And so you're still almost mechanized, you know, in that approach. So I think the part that I want to be able to get to is the, This idea that a lot of people are creating tech and they're creating solutions to bring AI into their operation. And I think as we look at that, as we better understand the capacity, especially for right now, I'll call it the emotional capacity. Oh yeah. Right. So it's like, this is the thing that I have started to get some awareness about. And listen, we're late to the game, but I think what we see is. We're not late to the game and buy here, pay here. But in general, I think we are late to the game. And I think the piece that is most interesting for us in a white hat way context is to what extent can we create? And, and we're finding that it's a, it's a vast extent that we can create a AI personas that are trained, you know, and there's such a thing as machine learning and training, and they have their base of training that they receive. So I think what you're going to see White Hat Way do is be able to create channels for the The voice agents in this case, and by the way, a voice agent can fulfill most anything a text agent would fulfill. They would probably be able to do both, right? So you're not choosing really one over the other. The agent can probably report for the work and do either one. So now the question becomes, what is the foundational background that that agent brings to the mix? And, you know, I had a really interesting meeting with some tech people recently. And one of them said, well, you know, I don't have twenty years of experience, but I could probably create, you know, some customer relations based background. I think that's interesting. That's true. Anybody could go out and scour. And, of course, AI can scour for the kind of good customer relations skills, right? Yeah. So now the question becomes, in our case, what would be different is the actual branded element. Like, what does white hat way stand for? So when you get yourself a white hat trained, voice agent, most people will understand. At least those that have been introduced to what we teach and subscribe to it that way, they would understand fairly quickly what it is that the agent has as a baseline for customer relations. And as I said to somebody recently, Michelle, it's like, it's one thing to handle customer relations in a way that is solving the problem of the day. It's another thing to solve customers' problems in a way that you expect to have the customer with you for ten years. So this is that ten-year approach or what I have come to call long-minded customer relations. And not every dealer out there subscribes to it. Okay. That's just a reality. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Because I just recently said something to one of our clients that's a dealer and said something about that. And it was like, I knew that they knew what it was. Right. And that it was just kind of like blank. It was like, nah, not interested. And I get it. I get it. It's not that because it really is. We recognize that a white hat way approach is not necessarily what every dealer wants. And that's okay. We don't have to be everything for everybody. There's also the probability that there's a high percentage of people that don't yet understand. that what is represents what we teach yeah so I think this is part of why we you know we're now approaching like a hundred and fifty episodes maybe more of white hat wednesday so people are starting to learn what is it that white hat way does that is maybe different and I think that thing that I'm referring to about long-minded customer relations is one of the first things I would point to is like We're going to teach not only an AI agent the same way we teach a person to sit in a desk and answer phone calls. We're going to teach the same thing. And I just find that it's so fascinating as you work through the thing. We're primarily in chat GPT, and we've got some pretty expansive threads where we have, you know, it's a combination of fleshing out the emotional intelligence and fleshing out the technology. And, you know, all the pieces are really kind of, you know, coming together in a way that – I met with somebody this week who also said, what you're asking to deliver is doable, and it's probably about ninety days out. Now, that's them. That's the tech partner who we just barely met, and we have much to learn and much to figure out with them. But I'm just saying, the actual ability to be able to deliver an agent that satisfies the part that I'm suggesting is going to be The secret sauce, if you will, the unique elements of the white hat piece, that's the part that we expect to be able to bring to market. And so it's the straight line side of a voice agent is someone that's able to answer the questions. You know, these are the policies, these are procedures, these are that. And the white hat way is wrapping that in love and compassion and kindness. And so it's that you're talking to someone who is not a robot, not just a robot. I mean, they are a robot, but they are not just a robot. So should we go through some of these things that are straight line? And we already had tech and delivery. I mean, it is amazing what... abilities if you if you engage with the right platform and and we've talked to dealers that are like I'm in the process of creating one myself because there are lots of different software companies out there out that you know you can do your search and they can find the things and do the stuff and so um that there's there are a lot of options for delivery and and it is it is It's high tech. I would not suggest unless you are like super techie that you try to get in there and do build it yourself. There's a lot of layers to that. And I think one of the things, too, before you jump into the next piece on that tech delivery, we're seeing that. I'm finding that in ChatGPD, I can ask and specify that I don't have a tech background. So it feeds me. And I ask very specifically. You learn how to prompt as you go, just like we all did with Google years ago. It's like you learn how to prompt and you learn how to ask what it is you're looking for. And it feeds that back. And so I think it's helping me to identify the tech track or some would call the tech stack on how you get from A to B to C. Yeah. Yeah. So the next part is functionality. So, you know, like what is it that's the positive side for inviting a voice agent into your dealership that's around functionality? Yeah. So that all still ties into the tech piece. It's like, what will the function of a person? So, you know, obviously in our line of work, they're mostly where you're going to see voice agents deployed will be in the CRM pre-sales side is what I would call that. So not when the customer comes to the building, right? It's not like we're going to have a robot set with them. It's like, this is a pre-sales kind of online chat and maybe phone calls that are happening out there. So there's that element of the functionality side. And then there's going to be the collection side. So you just think about what is the function of this agent that And then how does it serve the customer? Like through what channels and through what methods does it serve the customer? So this is the part that a lot of smart people are out there working on the tech side of this. And we've met some of them and they're already actively in the buy here, pay here space, deploying technology in this element. So it's happening. The only question for us is, does it have um and and listen it's not unlike you and I talked about just this morning it's like if if a dealer were to hire us middleville indiana somewhere they hired a collector tomorrow and put them in the chair the question is how much training do they provide that collector so yeah and and having that that is it's that there's how how highly can a voice agent function in the capacity of what it is that you're asking it to do whether it be lead handling um you know just inbound switchboard um collections all of that and that it's like it's It's incredibly functional and where you know that you're going to tell it something once and it won't forget and it won't deviate from the thing that you're telling it. So that's a pretty big one. This next one is with voice agent is compliance. That is probably, you know, our friends, Alison Harrison, Steve Levine, all of that is like, okay, compliance, a voice agent. If you're adding this layer of like, what are the things, you know, that one of the problems, one of the challenges most dealerships have in compliance is not being consistent. Right. You know, that it's one person. Yeah. One person is saying one thing and another person is saying another thing and that it's not consistent. And so the consistency that a voice agent can bring you or AI can bring you is unparalleled. It's inhuman. I mean, it's like, it's not that the... It's because... That agent will not be tainted by the call before or the conversation in the lunchroom or whatever. It's just like it's the same thing. That's right. The same thing. So compliance, I mean, that's a really big one. And right now, when you talk about Wild West- Are they going to be, is the CFPB going to be like pounding on our doors or are they not? And it's just like, let's just stay because we don't know. Just even that whole organization right now is the Wild West. We don't know if they're going to, you know. Who knows what's going to happen with how they move forward. But, you know, it's better safe. Sorry, very consistency. So back to the legal aspect, you know, you mentioned the attorneys in our space. And I would say that, you know, we have part of the reason that White Hat Way sort of resonates with people who are in the compliance aspect is that what we're teaching is for dealers and their teams to understand operate in a way that we can generally just call it ethically, right? They will operate ethically and obviously the customer approach is a big part of those ethics. And when we operate with that, we naturally avoid a lot of the the elements that would put us in the crosshairs of compliance. So that, that's a nice, you know, kind of dovetail effect of what it is we're teaching. And I would say you talked about consistency in the compliance side, which is very important. And I was, I clued in on the fact that when, um, chat GPT was feeding back to us, you know, this, this kind of this agent design, if you will, that it was, um, It used the word, you would have an agent that brings both consistency and care. Okay, so I want you to think about- For the White Hat Way. Well, yeah, it's picking up on the, obviously right now in our chat GPT thread, it has a pretty deep understanding. And early on, because it sources so much stuff from the public domain, it had a pretty clear understanding very early of what White Hat Way's mission is, what its strategy, kind of its go-to-market strategy, if you will. And so it's been kind of clued in on that. But I would say that when it feeds the word consistency and care in the same sentence, what you can deduce from that is that's straight lines. Consistency solves a lot of the compliance stuff. It obviously makes us more potentially valuable as a business when we're consistent in our practices. But when you throw in the word care, I say now you start to go into the squiggly line side and the emotional intelligence aspect is like, if I truly... Let me just be a voice agent for a minute. If I truly have enough coding to care about the outcome, then I think I'm going to be more effective. I'm going to be more successful in the work, and it's going to serve the business from a longer-term perspective, not to mention the compliance. Yeah. One of the things that I've – Jim and I had a conversation a couple weeks ago where we were talking with a – provider about as, as we're looking at developing all of this. And they asked for like, give, what is this avatar? I mean, your agent is like, where are they from? What is their background? What is, you know, are they, are they this kind of personality type, this kind of personality type? And Jim's like, well, isn't that kind of like not being, I mean, you're coming up with a fictitious something. And the way that they responded to that, I was like, I appreciate that because So with AI and when we're talking with these different providers is you have the ability to program in a personality. And those of you that have gone really deep down the chat GPT track where you're actually listening to them, you can choose this, you can choose that. You can give it a lot of different personality, even to the point where they sigh. Yeah. in a conversation, it's like, hmm, that's a really good question. And have something that's super, super, it has a feel of talking to a real person. I mean, this is where... where we're headed, which is really, really beautiful. And I know that at first it was like, we're all about truth and all about transparency. And so why are you asking us to come up with this fictional character? But it really makes a lot of sense because just depending on a lot of different things, what kind of an agent do you want to have? And then do you want to have multiple kinds of agents and you know all of that because because these are duplicatable yeah so you don't have to just have one you can have multiple and you know and just depending on whatever the uh the the need yeah is in one of those conversations with tech partner I said you know in doing that I kind of went down this track where I gave three different names to to potential agents and let's build personas around them. And it fed back kind of description and kind of background and approach. And then I said, I want them to all be like agent one. And I told the tech team, I said, you know, this agent one is that that is the character list that if I were advising a dealer somewhere on who to hire, who to put in the chair, the collections team we were talking about in that capacity said, these are the traits that I would be looking for. So this is another area where we have enough experience to know. When you're approaching collections for the long game, and this is what we're all about over here, when you're really approaching things with a long game outlook, then it's going to affect your approach, right? And that's going to, you could say it's going to inform your approach. And I think that's important. That's something that we will bring. One of the things I would love, because we've talked about this before, about when we've worked with dealers, it's like, what's the personality type for a collector? And it's like a wise, patient, kind grandmother. And it's like, no, no, you know, we, we need to do this kind of thing. So I'm, I'm looking forward to seeing that kind of too, that kind of persona, because you do have the ability to do that, which is just, just amazing. Male, female, Spanish, English, which is what, what we're, we'll be releasing as a Spanish and English options too, as well. Absolutely. So this is part of where I think we can, you know, you'll see us, Art, when we bring that solution to the market, you will see that there's some foundational elements that we will be able to bring that you can associate with the white hat business approach. And like I say, some will subscribe, others won't. I think for those who subscribe, it's going to be a really valuable solution for people that really want to know That the agent that they're putting in that chair, so to speak, has got the same philosophical approach to customer relations that they do. Right. Absolutely. There's another piece. But before we kind of go into some of these first line topics, things that that. that AI can help with is operational efficiencies. And there's a lot of things that are involved in that. And I know newer dealers, their cost is everything. I mean, your overhead, that can really, really shift uh, the strength of your business is just, cause we've seen, we've seen dealerships where they've got really great collections and they're doing all this stuff, but they're still going under or they're just treading water. It's like, why? And a lot of times it's because of operational expenses. And, and so this is like one of those things that, that an agent, uh, And we've also dealt with with with with dealers where it's just like they're always off sick and they're always it's like they are never sick. They never have a bad day. They're always going to show up and you can have them working for you. Twenty four seven. Yeah. And so that creates just a beautiful level of efficiencies in your dealership. If you can, on frontline type calls, have someone handle those that you know that you're not going to be... Even, okay, let me ask you this as a dealer, even if you paid an AI agent, the same as if you paid as much for an AI agent as you do for a live person, but you knew that you had them that they would never be sick. They would never be in a bad mood. They'd never be depressed. They'd never any of that. Wouldn't that be worth it? Yeah, I mean, we have to find out. We'll see what the market will bear on that in terms of what dealers are willing to pay. But certainly it solves those problems, those operational efficiency problems that you're describing. And so I think, you know, it's certainly going to, and again, dealers aren't, aren't, as aware as what you and I are at this stage, many aren't of what the capacity is. And will they make mistake? Like what mistakes will they make? And so they don't, they don't know. It's still a degree of uncertainty. And this is one of the reasons why we say frontline. So it's like, it's the, it's the, the first line and then they can act as some kind of a switchboard if there are things that are being asked that are beyond what they can actually take care of. What we would suggest is that it is to start with, it is very just frontline and it's not going deep. Because you think about your collections, for instance, when you uh when you have calls coming in and you know the phone's ringing what are what are the things that people are calling in for and then what are the things that people are calling you know your collectors are calling out for and there are a lot of those kind of calls that are just it's just an operational thing I need to make my payment yeah and I would say that for for let's imagine there's a collector listening today. They're going to say, well, am I out of a job? No, what's going to happen is this, this voice agent is probably going to satisfy a lot of the sort of routine calls that you might find yourself involved in. And it's going to free you up to, to do kind of the, the, where you need to spend more time. You know, we talk about sometimes we're supposed to sometimes in a larger operation, got to finish this call in, you know, that's our team goal and whatever. It's like, this will allow you to invest more time in those areas where more attention is needed and allow the voice agent, in this case, to handle a lot of the more, you know, routine kind of... The mundane kind of, those kind of things. And also, what it will open up your collectors to be able to do is outreach more. Is that they will have a lot of these busy things taken off their plate so that they can, you know, we had the episode a few weeks ago about how outreach, how communicating with your customers on a quarterly basis just shifted these dealerships. They never lost vehicles again. People would self repossess if something came up and then come back and buy a car from them once their situation had changed. So you can turn your collectors into some of the higher level um solutionary so I'm not want to steal the solutionaries yeah um a solution shout out um thank you fred and lou um but also uh that to be able to to have um uh to be able to develop those relationships with the consumers with your customers Yeah, so absolutely building on what we call trust deposits, which was part of what, you know, we use that phrasing a lot and ChatGPT and our thread picked up on that and kind of fed that back to us. But I would say, you know, one of the key things that, again, ChatGPT picked up on, and let me knock out one more straight line thing quickly, integrations. And listen, we don't need to go into all the particulars about how we intend to tackle integrations. We have a little different approach maybe to that than some. And And, uh, you know, we don't have to share everything about what it is that we're, we're creating, but the, um, but one of the things that it fed back, um, I know I can try to locate the actual phrase, but it, it said in buy here, pay here. Trust is the product. And this is coming from our line of ChatGPT, isn't it? I think you'd have to ask it specifically how much of what it's giving because I think trust is the product whether we say it or not. Okay, true. So I think we'd have to ask ChatGPT on that. But it did come back and say, in buy here, pay here, trust is the product. So that just means trust. When you recognize that and you can create a voice agent, any team member, in this case happens to be a voice agent who's a little more efficient and consistent than others, then they can serve this matter of building trust. And now ask yourself, you know, again, you asked what would a dealer pay for that? Well, what would a dealer pay for a voice agent who could help build trust amongst the customer base? You don't have an answer today, but I'm just saying that's what you're ultimately having a chance to really produce through the white hat white track. So another fun thing that it brought up was that the agent can be a really important bridge between silence and support. That's so powerful to me. Like that is such a, so it's timing. Some of the tech people I've been asking, like, what is response time amongst these dealers? Well, we're not, we're not involved in that layer as much. So I don't. And that's coming up all the time in social media. It's like when someone calls. How long is it taking for someone to respond and call them back? Or like if they put in a form and says, I want more information, how long is it taking for them to have that phone call? For me, my answer on this would be, look, I'm looking for both quality and quantity. I'm not going to sacrifice quality in the interest of a timely call. I'm going to get the machine to call them back right away. I'm more interested in making sure that that is a quality engagement. And so I'm going to be kind of working through that. I shared with Jim a while ago, I was through my social media, I came across this person had recorded a conversation that they had with a voice agent. And so they had it was a business owner had gotten in and had filled out a form. And within a couple of minutes, he gets a phone call to verify you, we have an appointment, you know, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And so, you know, this, this, the person that it's, it's a male agent is like, Hey, this, um, this is so-and-so with such and such, um, just wanted to confirm that we have an appointment for you to talk to the rep, um, on Wednesday or whatever. And the, the, the The person that was and I mean, I believe that it was it was like they were recording the phone call for some reason because they were like, yeah. OK, so are there any questions that I can answer for you before? Do you realize it's two a.m. ? Yeah. That's a negative. But it's still like the conversation kind of went back and forth and back and forth. And so he's like, yeah, what about this? And so it would answer the question and it had a very conversational way about it. And then like this business owner posted this because he's like, this is amazing. is the depth of having an interpersonal conversation. It's like, yeah, I realize that it is early. You just filled out the form. Is that a problem kind of thing? But just the way that they were able to just – flow through this conversation in a way that they, that they, they realize. And they said, yes, I am an, an artificial agent. And that's actually what the product was. And so the, the dealer was, or the business owner was just like sold. It did two things skillfully that I heard in that same thread that you're talking about, that same recording. So, and one is a straight line thing. And one squiggle, like the, the person who was booking the appointment asked the voice agent, um, Yes, nine a.m. Is that my local time zone? And I was able to come back and say, yes, that's Eastern time zone or whatever. So that straight line, it was able to, you know, obviously there's a CRM integration or whatever. There's a booking integration there. So this gets into the tech side on that piece. But then it also was able to come back. And I'm trying to remember the other piece was sort of of the nature of the guy was asking questions and it was able to. very skillfully professionally deflect the question in a in a way to say I can't they're starting to ask about pricing and so the the guy said I uh that you know joe will go over pricing with you in the call blah blah blah there are a lot of factors redirected and the guy was just blown away like this is exactly how I would train somebody exactly exactly exactly George, I, George Spatz listening in through LinkedIn. And so he posted something and it was like, this is very, very true. Because back to this question of, you know, collectors, what happens to my job? And he says, when an ATM was invented, the tellers thought their jobs would be done away with. There are more bank employees now than there were in nineteen seventy. I'm not at my bank, but anyway, go ahead. That was in nineteen sixty seven. So back when this was created. And so and now they're called personal bankers. Yeah. Good point. So, you know, and it's it's how do we want to frame it? And and that it's. And what problems does it allow them to now satisfy on a deeper level? And have a relationship, create relationship agents instead of straight line, taking your payment, you know, that kind of an agent. So, yeah. It's going to facilitate the interpersonal. It's not that we're asking the voice agent to become the customer's friend and do all the stuff. What it's going to do is be that bridge. Right. between silence and support. It's also, and we don't need to go into all the technical elements, but there are ways that Michelle and I've talked plenty in the past about ongoing engagement, engagement after the customer buys engagement, you know, at various levels. And so we're very much focused on that piece. And certainly, um, every indication is that voice agents will be highly capable of making trust deposits and creating that level of engagement that you and I have, have kind of envisioned. And, and now, you know, you, you begin to navigate those pieces. I think what you're going to see White Hat way release in the way of, you know, an agent platform and we'll, we'll soft test it, you know, with some dealers before it actually goes to market. But again, We're going to kind of keep it heavy on emotional intelligence, long-minded customer support, and able to fulfill certain functions that we see dealers struggle. There are certain gaps that we see dealers struggle to close. And so we'll be very focused on those pieces first. And there are plenty of other people out there going, you know, deeper in terms of the integrations and all the stuff and taking them inside the software. And there are challenges. There are challenges and there's challenges. Yes. We hear about it all the time on social media, the challenges of integrations. And that's, that's a whole nother can of worms. And so we're sure that there will be, there will be a lot of softwares within our industry that will be creating that. um and what we ask and what we're what we're working on is something that is open yeah to it's it we're we are in white hat way not creating a closed system yeah where it's like everyone's invited to the table and and you know how and and doing our our best to be able to open that up because integrations can be um a really It's a tough topic. I'm glad you brought that up. Inclusion is one of our pillar principles in White Hat Way. We're not looking to build anything exclusive and shut anybody out. We're always aiming at doing what is going to be ultimately good for the industry at large. Right. And obviously we're aimed at those people that would most closely resonate with the type of principled education, ethical education that we're going to be bringing in, not just education, but solutions. And just so you know, too, White Hat Way will always play nice with all providers. It's just, that's just, that's, that is what we will do. And yeah, We're kind of prioritizing collaboration over competition. Yes. But isn't that a beautiful thing? It is. And it doesn't mean you don't still have friendly competition. Everybody's competing for their piece of the pie, of course. We just know that the best way to serve more people quicker is through collaboration. Absolutely. Absolutely. And having that open platform, open system, open, I hate to say open APIs, but something along that lines that it's like, this is an easy thing. We can just connect to whatever. We're open. In my world, there's really only one definition of collaboration. Yeah. It's not collaboration within our ecosystem. It's like collaboration with anyone that wants to collaborate and have high morals and principles and values and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. I mean, that's who people naturally we've drawn to what it is we're doing. Yeah, absolutely. We don't have to sell anybody. And one of the... We kind of talked a little about the secret sauces and industry perspectives and customer approaches that White Hat Way would be bringing to this, but also a level of emotional intelligence. And this is something that can be part of that avatar as we create these White Hat. And like I said, there's a lot of providers out there that are outside of buy here, pay here that are working on these kind of things. But being able to, program in, I mean, that sounds so sterile, but it's just, it's really true. There's just a level of emotional intelligence as well. It's like, oh, it sounds like, you know, you're really upset about something and, or, and, and being able to navigate those kinds of conversations with people are, you know, we know, especially if we're going to be having them in the collection side and that there's a different level of emotional intelligence than if you're doing lead management or those kind of things. Here's what will happen with that. Will it be perfect right out of the gate? I mean, when you have people that are emotional, will the voice agent know exactly what to say? First of all, when you get into that kind of – escalation or you know a customer's upset that's probably not where a voice agent stays a voice agent is going to escalate that and move it on through to somebody a human who can address those things but I would just say that you're going to see them address those things very consistently and then they're going to learn from those experiences so you know that's what happens is they they they learn as they go and they're very consistent and they kind of build on what, and they, they don't forget. So, you know, it's like, you're going to have a, you're going to have an agent who gets better and better. And, and so this is part of what, and you talked about the emotional element of just humaning, just showing up for work and having a lot of stuff going on in your personal life. And it just got off a bad call with the customer. And it's just, it's human, it's human nature. And so, you know, like when someone, you get an inbound call and they're really spicy. Yeah. You don't know what just happened five minutes before, and they know that they're late and they're already feeling the stress of all of the things. And you also have on the other side is you get these reviews that say they were very unkind, very uncaring, and you don't know what that person just went through. You know, they might've just had to put their cat down and they, or they, that they're going through a difficult thing and they have no patience for anything, all of those kind of pieces. And, you know, one of the things we were talking about as we're kind of closing up, I was like, AI kept bringing up that our consumer in buy here, pay here, more often than not want to have some kind of connection. Good. like an emotional connection with someone. And, and I, because, you know, um, because we, we know our, our customers, our, our customers, they, Tommy Brandes, it's like, they are survivors and, you know, they, they, when you're in this credit loop of, of problems, I mean, it, it really spreads out into a lot of different things, you know, uh, health crisis. I just, you know, I can't, I can't pay this bill right now because I have this, this thing that's all of the things. And so, you know, we were kind of talking about that human, the humaning element of it. And, and I was like, you know, I, I see a day when a white highway dealer or uh that that there is such a culture in their business that that they the consumers know that they're cared about um and so if there's something you know they need to make arrangements about something or whatever that it's just like I don't need to bother tiffany Because I know what my options are. And so I can just go through and do the thing and be able to take care of it myself. And I know that if the options aren't what I can actually work with, that I can go talk to Tiffany and we can come up with something, whatever. But I think that as we develop relationships with our consumers, because they do want to feel connection, that part of this whole idea of, Will voice agents create more separation or will they help us be able to draw people in into a culture of caring? I think that the key and the impetus is on the live people that are there, that their main focus is on caring and outreach and just being there to just develop this culture of We care, you know, how are things going? What can we do to help? You know, here's the thing that's happening. And that can be people that can be, you know, there's like the newsletters, all of the things. But when you create an agent that is part of your team, And part of your overall arching theme and goal of creating a culture within your business and your community where we love and we care and we have the compassion, that agent, as we're developing these White Hat Way agents, that agent can be such a huge help in creating that as well. I think some dealers would hear that, Michelle, and they would say, they would expect their voice agent is going to get on the thing and say, be so compassionate. Of course, I'm sorry you're dealing with that. Of course you can have six months to make your next payment. No. That's not what we're doing. That's not what White Hat Way does. That's not what we teach and that's not what we would be, you know, programming. But they're, you know, dealers will be able to set their own kind of policy limits around those kind of things and the voice agent can operate within those bumpers. Absolutely. There's nothing that says, just because we're empathetic and compassionate and good listeners, it doesn't mean that we do exactly what the customer asks for every single time. That's never been why, that way. Yeah, that's not what we do. We're not teaching people to be pushovers. Sure, yeah. So, yeah, absolutely. What else we got? Anything else you want to wrap up? I think that's probably it. No, I would just remind folks about our, ask for an invitation, send me an email. I'll put it on the screen. You can email me. People get this in a quick note. If you want an invitation to that V eight discovery session, that'll be in the evening on Monday, the thirtieth. So, and again, look for those last Monday of the month. And then again, if you need any help with anything, please don't hesitate to call or text nine Oh three eight one six Oh two one six. Right. We're happy to have a conversation and see if there's some way that we might be able to help. Of course. All right, everybody. Hey, it's Wednesday. Thanks so much for having us as part of your day. We know you're busy. Appreciate you tuning in. Let us know if there's something you want us to talk about. Please, shoot us a note. All right, so have a great day, and we will see you on Friday. Take care. Thanks.
