Transcript for "5 signs your dealership's transportation program is costing you more than it should": Welcome to today's session, five signs that your dealership's transportation program is costing you more than it should. Your team probably checks tire pressure, oil levels, and brake pads on a set schedule, but when's the last time you ran that same kind of check on your customer transportation program? Today, we're gonna walk through a five point diagnostic, the signs that tell you that your program needs attention and what to do about each one. We'll start with the case for why this matters, walk through all five signs in detail, and then we'll bring in John Hess from Circle CDJR to talk through what his program looked like at his own service department, and then take a look at how Uber Central, our dispatching tool, addresses each one, including a live look at the platform. So to give a little bit more of a formal introduction, my name is Justin Goldberg. I've been on the Uber Automotive team for about a year and three months, and I'm super excited to be on this session today. Before we get into today's content, a little housekeeping. If you wanna submit questions, look for the q and a tab on the right side of your screen. Our team's on standby, and we'll follow-up after the session for anything we don't get to live. If you wanna learn more about Uber for Business, check out the related content under the docs tab. And if you wanna talk to our team directly, click get demo at the top of your screen, and we'll follow-up after the webinar to get that set up. Alright. So why this matters? Most transportation programs were built years ago, and they were never revisited. You know, a lot of dealerships ended up using a shuttle, using loaners, and kind of set it and forget it. It seems like, you know, an easy thing to to get set up. It's what most dealerships in the industry have been doing, and it works mostly. So nobody touches it, but good enough might not be good enough. And so what is the data telling us? Mass market service wait time is about five point two days on average, which is up from four point eight days. Routine maintenance takes about, on average, one point six one hours, and 62% of aftermarket shops are finishing in under an hour. So there's a lot of competition, obviously, between some of those mom and pop shops and the dealership service departments. Dealerships are actually now handling 12% fewer service visits than in 2018, and so it looks like there's some market share that's being lost to some of those aftermarket shops. Only 54% of owners with newer vehicles are returning to their selling dealer for service in 2025, and that's down from 72% in 2023. So the trends are pretty clear, and the takeaway here is wait time is the top friction point in the service journey, and transportation drives a lot of it. So five signs ahead. If even one sounds familiar, it's worth a closer look. Sign one, wait times are stacking up. So what does that look like? Customer expects a quick pickup. They're watching the clock. Maybe the car is ready, but no ride is arranged yet. Maybe the shuttle driver called out sick, or maybe they're already occupied taking care of another customer. So what patterns do we see from there? Customer complaints start to cluster on smaller routine jobs. To give you an example, one dealer we work with saw roughly forty minute shuttle wait times, and it was driving poor CSI scores even when the repairs themselves were going fine. So as a self check, what questions can we ask to kinda dig a little bit deeper on something like this? Have you measured your wait time from the customer side? Does it show up in service surveys? Sign two, spend is going untracked. What does that look like? Nobody can actually state the program's true monthly cost, and this is because those costs are scattered across many different general ledger codes, parts, service payroll, facilities, insurance, vehicle maintenance, cleaning, fuel, and these costs are really never consolidated into one clean number because there's so many different elements, and it's kind of hard to pin down. So to give an example, one dealer that we work with found that their program costs roughly $12,000 a month once they add it all up. And one dealership group told me between their five locations that their shuttle program cost ballooned to over $400,000 a year. So what kind of questions can you ask to do a little bit of a self check here? Could you produce that number today? And if you don't know the exact cost, would you confidently be able to estimate it? Would that number surprise you? Sign three, shuttle coverage overlaps. What does this look like? More vehicles and coverage than the actual demand requires. What causes this? Fleets are sized for peak demand like a Saturday rush, and then they sit idle the rest of the week, still costing insurance, parking, and depreciation. On top of that, administrative costs of scaling a shuttle program can be super high between additional vehicles, drivers, fuel, insurance, and maintenance. For dealership groups running the same setup across multiple locations, that overlap multiplies. So what can we ask ourselves on something like this? How many vehicles are actually in motion on an average day? When did you last compare your fleet size to ride volume? Sign four, OEM reimbursement dollars going unclaimed. A lot of OEMs will actually reimburse for rides around warranty repairs, so a lot of times that reimbursement ends up going unclaimed. Manufacturers' reimbursement programs include Hyundai, Kia, Stellantis, Toyota, and more. OEMs clearly recognize that a good customer experience is gonna help with customer retention and getting those customers back in the door for future repairs. So what's causing this issue of of not claiming those warranty reimbursements? Dealerships don't really have a efficient way to consistently flag warranty versus non warranty rides at the time of service. As a self check, you can ask yourself, do you know which manufacturers offer reimbursement? Does your manufacturer offer that reimbursement? Has anyone calculated how much money is going unclaimed? Even if your OEM doesn't currently offer reimbursement, looking at the systems now that will set you up to take advantage of those programs in the future as other OEMs catch up will make things so much easier on you guys down the road. Sign five, staff time. There's no real industry benchmark here as this can vary from dealership to dealership, but a couple things you can look for are times where you might have to pull an adviser or a porter off of a customer conversation to arrange or track a ride. Or maybe there's times where more than one person is involved in getting a customer set up with a ride. Maybe the advisor books it, someone else drives, maybe a sales rep or a tech is covering as well, nobody can really say how many hours a week are going into it. And when employees are pulled off of conversations and tasks that they're already doing, it can just add friction to operations and really slow everything down, including getting customers in and out of the the dealership. So this is a hidden cost. It's baked into everyone else's day instead of its own line. So you guys do the math. How many people are touching each ride times how many minutes each times how many rides per week. That adds up to a lot and can really have a major effect on the service department operations. So now that we know what to look for, let's hear from someone who's recently evaluated their own transportation. And now we'd like to welcome John Hess. He is the parts and service director over at Circle Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram in Shrewsbury, New Jersey. He's been in fixed operations for twenty six years, and so we're happy to have you here, John. Welcome. Thanks, Justin. Appreciate you having me. Yeah. Of course. So so to kick us off, before you guys were using Uber, what does customer transportation look like over at Circle CDJR for you guys? I'd say a very long answer. It wasn't as simplified and easy and kind of one one point like you guys give us. So, we had a lot of options we work with. We used shuttles. We had valets. We had third party companies that would come in to drive for us on top of sometimes even finding a an adviser, a tech, a valet to even drive a customer home in their own car sometimes. So we had a we had a lot of different things. Our our loader fleet was much different as well before we had the Uber. Gotcha. Okay. And when you know, along that journey, what did it look like from a staff time perspective? Who you know, if we could dig in a little bit more there, who was coordinating rods? How much time did it take from their day? And and which other roles were kind of pulled into this process? I'm gonna say that's that's actually a, a split answer. Part of it is we spent too much time doing it. And and by by that, I mean, we'd have, again, service advisers that should be working with customers, service managers that were, you know, better off running a shop or doing other things, trying to run around and figure out a ride for people. We would even take technicians and lose them on the road to drive somebody somewhere. So I would say the the time spent trying to facilitate, coordinate it all, follow-up on it, was a lot of time was spent on it. And on the other end of that, I'm gonna say not enough time was spent on it because it wasn't a a usable system. So we weren't utilizing it the way we should have been. And by doing that, by nature, we're stuck with customers waiting or not getting a ride or or declining to offer the the alternate transportation because it just wasn't worth the time investment in trying to get it done. Gotcha. And then from from a reimbursement perspective, prior to using Uber, were you guys taking advantage of any reimbursement for for ride share for transportation? Yes and no. We, we have luckily, our ROE, we we do work for Solanas. We have reimbursement for shuttle rides that we are entitled to. Obviously, they also reimburse for the complete, you know, Uber experience. To to get reimbursed for a shuttle ride, we have to keep a very detailed log. There's a big process for claiming it. When we use your your service, we just have the the bill. So it's just the invoice is all we need. So we we didn't keep that log 100% of the time, for an adviser to grab it and claim it on the on the RO and then go reference the log sheet and show the times in and outs and the mileage. You know? That that was kind of prohibitive. And and, really, for the, I believe, $7.50 they offer us for the ride, a lot of times, just look through the cracks. It wasn't a a priority to the advisers. So, we were getting full reimbursement. We were certainly taking get on the cuff quite quite a bit. A lot of our rides, I would say, were were never recorded, were logged, were logged properly, and therefore not claimed. So we were utilizing our own staff, our own hours, our own gas, our own cars, our own insurance, and sometimes even upsetting a customer over it. You know, it could be as easy as, you know, can I get a ride? Well, yeah, the shuttle just left, so he's got about forty minutes to come back. So, you know, we we weren't being reimbursed properly. And, again, we weren't even giving the rides out properly. Gotcha. Gotcha. And, you know, now that you guys are using Uber Central and you have the ability to tag each ride as a warranty or a non warranty ride, has that been been, like, an advantage for you guys? Yeah. It's it's fantastic. We we obviously, my warranty administrator has access, so she'll make sure that all the the rides were tagged to the ROs and then, you know, submitted and reimbursed for. It makes our our billing easier instead of just a magic number at the end of the month. Obviously, we can go through whatever should be reimbursed. I think it's not I still have the advisers as best practice bill every ride out, whether it goes to warranty or it goes to our, you know, service policy or the customer's pay, whatever it may be. At least they're all on the ROs and the the the warranty administrator, pardon me. She can review and reconcile so monthly we know, you know, exactly how much we spent, but how much was reimbursed. I I don't have the percentage in front of me, but it's pretty high. So, I don't see I don't see Uber as a cost. You know? There there's a nominal cost involved, but considering what I was doing before, it was almost 100% of it was costed against me. So now we we're able to limit the amount of staff that waste time on it. We're able to provide more rides. We're We're able to get reimbursed the entirety of the the claim, not just $7 because that obviously doesn't cover the employee's time nor insurance, nor gas, nor tolls, nor wear and tear on the vehicle. So when we do the Uber ride, it's obviously, if it's reimbursed, it's no cost to us. So, being able to monitor it and then show ownership as well, you know, we we can show, hey. Look. We spent $5,000 this month, and, you know, 4,300 of it was was came back to us from Stellantis. So for the, you know, $700 cost, that's nominal compared to what we were paying. Gotcha. Okay. That's great. And then I guess a good segue there would be, you know, now that you've made the switch, what does that what kind of effect does that have on your wait times for customers receiving a ride and then CSI scores? Yeah. It's huge. Luckily, right now, we're competing for number one in our district year to date. We're number two. We're we're we're closely close to the the number one guy. We've had three and four months running where we're number one in the district. And a lot of that is the simple, you know, customer satisfaction of of not inconveniencing them right right at the onset of the RO. So they come in for service, and you tell me I gotta wait an hour to get a ride home, or we simply can't provide one. You've gotta call a spouse or a friend or a coworker or worse, they actually have to call Uber and pay for it. That's that's instantly, you're up against the wall and it's hard to redeem the customer and and you're expecting, you know, a 10 experience that's not a 10. Right? So just the option of the Uber does give us a lot of, leeway. So if somebody comes in, doesn't have an appointment, I'm not committed to saying, sorry. I can't help you. At least now I can say, sure. You gotta give me a little bit of time, but let me get you right out of here. And we'll say, we'll call an Uber. And a lot of people are shocked, and we say, we'll cover it. You know, we'll we'll handle it. And they they put their phone down and, like, kinda in awe. Like, yeah. Hey. Good news. It's gonna be a black Toyota. It'll be here in three minutes. And and they're just, like, they're instantly taken aback, and and they're in a in a better mood. You know? So the CSI impact is is instant. I I credit a lot of our CSIRISE with that. Again, it's it's the ability to take in without appointment. So it's, you know, shop dynamics and shop flow usually dictate that, but you give me a little bit of a tool that I can use. So even if I can't accept the car, I can at least accept the customer, you know, and get them a ride. Or they have to wait. Great. But it's a three hour repair. Nobody wants to sit in my way here for three hours. I don't wanna sit here for three minutes. So when they come through, we give them the option. You know, can we take you up to the diner up the road? Can we take you to the mall? Do you wanna get dropped off at the boardwalk and walk the beach for a few hours? You know, we'll we'll pick you back up, and and we send them the FlexLink. So, you know, when they're ready, we can bring them right back. They're not, you know, they're not lost or abandoned on the beach somewhere. They they always have a way back to us. So that that is, I mean, they're they're I can't say enough about how how much it impacts our CSI. And you can even you can even extrapolate that to to sales. You know, if a customer that's upset from the start and is defensive and feels like they're being slighted or not taken, you know, care of, they're not gonna spend money. They're not gonna approve work. They're gonna be give me my car back. I have to go now. I don't know what time. I'll come back another day. So we can turn that into, you know, obviously, a more open ended service visit where we have the time to do it. Obviously, the customer's more likely to approve repairs whether they're, you know, cash warranty, whatever, it keeps money in the shop. So by being able to get the customer out of the waiting room, we can keep money in the shop. Wow. That's that's great. Yeah. I mean, that's that's what we're starting to see, you know, across the industry is that, you know, dealerships want to make this a better experience for their customers because nobody's nobody thinks about bringing their car to the to the dealership for repair and thinks about it as, like, a, you know, a fun eventful time. But if you can make it a better experience for them, then, you know, they're gonna be happier. They're gonna come back and do more repairs, and it's just gonna mean, you know, a better experience for them. And and, and it's gonna help you guys kind of bring people back and make make more money and more profit. Exactly. We've we've even found a lot of customers got used to it where they'll they'll come through and are you guys still offering rides? You know, they they're they're looking for it. So they feel, you know, less again, I don't know, threatened, intimidated, or just put off when they come in for a service visit. They know it's gonna be convenient, and then the rest of it is on us. You know? We we, obviously, we have to do our part to keep happy. So when I say CSI, you know, we always we always wanna see tens. That's the big thing. If you're not providing a 10 experience, then you're simply, you know, not gonna get them. You're you're begging for something you didn't earn, and and our goal here is to provide the the true 10 experience and and granted your service is a huge facet of doing so where we can wow them from the start and then the advisers have the chance to actually win a customer over and not just get them to say yes, but actually, you know, earn their business. Right. Right. And we're starting to see data come in specifically towards what you spoke spoke to earlier in terms of, you know, if I'm a customer and my car needs additional repairs and I'm waiting in the, you know, the waiting room for two, three hours, then you come up to me and you say, hey. It's gonna be two more hours because we found something else that needs to be repaired. Well, I know my first question is gonna be, is it totally necessary? Can I can I have the car home now? Because, it's been a long time, and I don't wanna wait much longer. But if I was in the comfortability of my own home, if I was on the beach or at the shopping mall and you'd gotten me arrived there, you know, my stress levels are a lot lower, and I'd be more likely to say, hey. Yeah. Go ahead and do that extra repair if it if it needs to be done. Yep. And then it's and then a side effect of that is, you know, you also have people that are on the road who are getting all the repairs that they need. So it's a little bit more of a safety it's a little bit of a recent safety as well. Yeah. I mean, it's it's listen. Safety, it's organically gen genuinely earning, you know, proper CSR scores. People really are happier. It's obviously a morality thing. It's it's good to do the right thing and get cars fixed and keep them safe and, you know, reliable, and that's good for the brand. It's good for everybody. It's I mean, my family's out there driving on the road. I want them to know the cars around them that need breaks got them done. You know? Like, it really is genuine to to wanna see everything get done right. Again, it's there's no there's no loss to it. It's all win win win. It's win for the customer, win for us, you know, win for everybody else on the highways and and everybody that cares about people driving those cars too. Exactly. Now looking at more of, like, the bottom line, John, could your could you be would you be able to state, like, the the old cost of what your transportation program was costing you back then and what it looked like before versus after making the switch to Uber? Yeah. It's it's it's tough to quantify because there's a lot of corollaries there. There's a lot of, intangibles even. Obviously, my staff needs have been diminished. I don't have to have as many go valet drivers, shuttle drivers. I'm I I I used to have two vehicles that we, you know, insured, maintained, purchased, wrote down, depreciated. We have one now, and so we we still want to have the one. Know, we we can rely on you if we need to, but don't wanna be caught without a vehicle. So we're down to one, but that that has cut that cost in half for what it's worth. The cost of insurance, the cost of liability on the road, you know, less less incidents for accidents or other damage, fuel costs. So to to really quantify that is is tough, but it's it's thousands and it's probably tens of thousands a month that it it does benefit us, besides the obvious, you know, customer impact. So there's there's there's, again, there's more to that that I can't really quantify because a happy customer is more likely to come back. They're more likely to say yes to the work it needs, and there's there's gross profit in that. But, you know, to tie it to the to the override, I don't know. I just know that it is tied to it. Even even as much as our loaner fleet, we've been able to to minimize that because a lot of customers say, come in and say, I need a loaner car. And commonly, it's a battle to have one, and everybody's in the same position as we are. You know, there's there's never enough. And loaders, you know, we get reimbursed. They cost us. And the depreciation alone, especially in this Atlanta store, is pretty pretty extreme. So we already reimburse the usage of the car, but we're losing money every month. And I've been able to to lower my loader fleet down from, we we had 29, and we're holding 16 now. So I I took almost half of them away, and we're still confident, with with supply. That way, we're not running out. I think a lot of people walk in and say, I need a loaner. No. They really need to get home. You know? They need to ride to work. And then, well, how am I gonna put my car back up? We'll send it we'll send it over for you. So we we can get around you needing the loaners by using Uber quite a bit. And since Delantis allows us to ride home and ride back, you know, that's usually I don't wanna say it's it's all people need, but, commonly, that's what they're looking for when they say they need a loaner. They don't really need a car. Just need to ride home or to work and back. So we can, I can certainly say we've been we write down our cars probably probably even if we utilize them well, we'd probably lose a thousand dollars a car per month, on our loader fleet? So if if I saved, you know, we'll call it 13 cars, then I I can tell you I save $15,000 a month by doing that. Wow. That's awesome. And and I'm sure that there were situations where you know, you know, somebody, like you said, asked for a loaner car. They really just need a ride home, but you end up giving a loaner to someone who maybe has, like, a smaller repair. And then later on, you have someone who really does have a higher need for a loaner. Does that situation ever come up and kinda jam you guys up? Yes. That's that's quite common. There was a lot of times the cars are out on a long haul, and either somebody comes in and, let's say, they need a a part that's on the back order, I can't get it for a month. And I may have to wait a few days to get a car available. Meanwhile, that car went out to somebody that I could have given a ride home to. So that happens, even on a, you know, prospective cost factor. We've got jobs to be sold and somebody needs a, you know, a high dollar repair, and it's contingent on them getting wheels. Well, if I don't have one because it went out to somebody that, again, could have gotten an Uber, then I I I lost that sale for the ability to provide that loaner. So having them available is is tying up the ability to sell as well. Cool. Cool. And and now so what was what was the rollout like when you guys did decide to go with Uber? How how did the team get trained? How did you guys kind of learn that this would be a a better option for you? Well, we had this really awesome rep from Uber. He's Justin. And he, he walked into my store and brought donuts. So that was all I needed, really, was a couple of couple of Dunkin' Donuts. But, no. We we we were using a competitor. I certainly don't remember their name, but, they weren't anywhere near as as efficient and as, centralized as Uber is. So by by what Uber offered made it a a no brainer to to swap. Additionally, I will say it was cheaper. Is every ride cheaper? It's probably not. But as a whole, it is. Being that it's cost effective and it's user friendly and it's additionally, I should add, the response we get from the customers has been rave reviews. I will say that Uber vets their drivers and cares more than the the other competitors do. We had we had a few issues where we had customers upset with the other services and come in and say, you know, your your driver's terrible. I'll never go there again. Like, and we realized it wasn't our driver. It was, you know, who we contracted. And I I will say, knock on wood, but I've not had one with Uber. So, you know, even personally, I use Uber over the ride services for my own my own usages just because of the good experience. So your name means something. So when it was presented here, it it really made sense. It it'll save me money. It'll make me money. It'll keep customers happier. It's easier to use. It makes my advisers happier. It reduces staff, reduces liability. So, obviously, we we did a quick train and, you know, gave us everything we needed to know. I know each of my advisors instantly gravitated towards it, and, originally, I said, I'll give you a shot. And I I kept both platforms. And I said, well, we'll compare them and and do what what, you know, what really makes sense in practicality. It was hands down Uber, and I realized all my advisors just stopped using everybody else, and it was just Uber. And I finally said, I will we'll make the official switch then. That's that's all we're going to use now. So, that was the natural progression of of Uber to becoming our our our sole provider for Rideshare. That's great. Yeah. Thank you for walking me through that. And then can you can you speak a little bit more to, like, what the training process was like and and how like, getting set up specifically? Just because I know I know a lot of, you know, organizations, not just, you know, car dealerships, but when you're onboarding a new software or a new a new system, it can sound like a a daunting burdensome process. And so we try to make sure that it's not that for you guys, but I wanted to know what your experience was like in terms of, you know, how long it took and how involved and how much effort it took on your end to get everyone set up and get everyone trained. Was that a a good process? Yeah. No. Listen. It it it took about fifteen minutes and 12 donuts. You know? That was pretty all all of us. Now it's, you're you're right. We do deal with a lot in in the business, and a lot of vendors and subcontractors and third parties don't really care about what we have to do to use it. They just build to to suit their own needs. The Uber platform is 100% user friendly. I am definitely old school, and I want things on paper. I wanna write things. I wanna hold them, and I don't want spreadsheets. I don't want emails, and I don't want Zoom calls. I just, you know, I I I I'm I'm I'm old. I I wanna hold it. So when I get new new technology, it better be easy or I'm not gonna adopt it. Uber was literally minutes, your your tutorials. There's there's anything you had a question for is answerable on the on the platform you're using. And if not, I know your email or phone call away, and it's not but a second to get a response. But I've never had a question to ask. Everything has been so straightforward. The the onboarding for myself and the advisers is literally minutes of time. It's not, you know, days and days of in the trenches, you know, training. It's you could you could go to the site, pull it up, and you know where you're at. I've never even had a problem, like, looking backwards for old records or trying to fold pull a a report from a ride from, you know, prior months or or even as far as billing, you know, everything's been so user friendly that, you know, even an old crusty guy like me could figure it out pretty quickly. That that's that's awesome to hear. And we, you know, we pride ourselves on that over here at Uber. We really wanna make sure that we're not just leaving people in the dust after we set them up. We really we really think that it should be more of a strategic partnership. And so, you know, whether that's a support issue with getting logged in, whether that's a cancellation fee that you didn't think was justified, maybe you do have an Uber driver that you get a complaint about. Not something that we hear very often, but, you know, that's something that we can do in terms of expediting up to our business support channels, and making sure that we take care of these issues right away without you having to feel like, you know, you're on your own. So that's great to hear. Partnership's keyword, and you've always you've always, you know, asked us what what can we do for you, and it's never just me calling with the problem. It's always proactive. And, again, it's it's rare to find a a an independent company that truly wants to partner with the dealer. It seems they just wanna get your account and get your monthly payment, and Uber has been 100% proactive and and personable. And to be honest with you, it's the reason I took this call because I feel very strongly towards this. A lot of a lot of people we deal with, again, that don't seem to care about what we have to go through. They just want you to sign that check every month. And with with you guys, your your entire company, yourself, you know, everybody everybody I've dealt with included has been very dealer friendly and genuinely empathetic. And just like I try to pitch to my advisers, we wanna give that true experience to the customers. We wanna get a a 10 on our survey because not because they were asked to, because they felt we deserved it. And that's why I'm here happy to share the same. Obviously, I wanna see you guys succeed at any business or other dealership or any other entity, whether it's automotive or not, that chooses to use your platform. I want them to know that's gonna benefit them too. So just empathetically out there and anybody that can take my experience for, what it's worth, and I 100% vouch for Uber, and I'm happy to to to pass that along to anybody else that could use it. We appreciate that, John. That's that's that's really nice of you. And, you know, you've been really awesome to work with too. So, the appreciation is mutual. Thanks, John. Another question I'd have for you here, what advice would you give a service manager who maybe hasn't audited their program yet or hasn't taken a deeper look at their customer transportation situation in a while? Yeah. The, it's it's it's interesting. We we, as departmental managers, we always have a certain cadence of things we have to check and monitor and we're we answer to. And sometimes looking outside of the box or finding a different, you know, KPI or different different numbers to look at is a little weird. You know, know, we're we're directed to go and look at our hours per ROI, look at our total gross, look at our absorption, look at our retention. But are we looking at costs of of everything, you know, from a net perspective? Are we looking at, you know, the the loaner vehicle cost? Sure. But we're getting reimbursed. Probably looking at the loss of potential, you know, sales for a customer or loss of CSI or loss of a customer. It's tough to quantify, so you have to look at a bigger picture. So sometimes it means step back. So my advice to a a manager or anybody else in the departments, owners, GMs, DPs, If you look at the bigger picture of what the the platform could bring, it's not just a a dollar for dollar conversation. I even even I was asked, you're spending x amount per month on Uber. Is that a is that a wise move? And then the answer is, well, yes, and here's why. So if you just look at it as a cost, you know, there's a cost of doing business, of course, but everything has a cost. But it isn't truly a cost in the accounting aspect of the word. So there there's a huge benefit. Your Uber statement, again, costs something, but it it's relieving a whole lot of other costs in lieu of it. And if that other number is higher, then you guys aren't a cost to me. You're you're you're asset. So I would tell everybody to look at the bigger picture, not just the dollars and cents of the the monthly bill, but but look at what you're getting out of it, what you can save, what you can improve, what your customers are gaining from it. You know, we again, in the automotive field, we spend a lot of money to to attract and retain customers. Every tool that we can use to benefit that experience that doesn't truly cost us when being reimbursed by the manufacturer is kind of a freebie towards gaining more customers and does more market share. So, big picture. Big picture is the answer. You know, how do you eat an elephant? It's one bite at a time. So, you know, how do you run a profitable department? There's a lot of answers to that. But finding, small wins in in the daily operation is one of the biggest aspects of of running a profitable department, and Uber is a big win in the daily operation. Gotcha. Yeah. That's some great advice. And I think also, you know, kinda like you mentioned, things you know, these things can kinda change over time, these different costs, and they can they can be a little bit hard to quantify. And I think kind of, you know, going back to the strategic partnership side of things, we see a lot of car dealerships and and dealership groups, and their their needs, their challenges, their priorities, they evolve over time. And so, you know, doing this type of audit, once you kind of once a a dealership kinda switches over to Uber and starts using us, this is you know, we wanna be a trusted resource for cross customer transportation overall. And so, you know, if you, you know, a couple months from now, a GM might come down and say, hey. We need to get this Uber bill lowered. We work with dealerships creatively on how to get that bill lowered. They might say, hey. We need to do a little bit more for our customers, and we need to boost our CSI scores. And so, you know, we do a lot of different things to help creatively boost CSI scores and do a little bit more for customers as well. And so I think I think that's a really important piece to all of this is that you're not you're not on your own when you're with Uber. We we're here to kind of be a trusted resource and and guide you guys along and and also take feedback because we're always learning as well. So so yeah. I really appreciate you taking the time to to speak with us, John. Thanks again to John for joining us on that segment. Now let's take a closer look at how we were able to help CDJR and can help you take care of some of those problems that we mentioned earlier. Reduced wait times. With Uber for Business, rides are on demand, so there are no wait times for a shuttle driver who might be already occupied taking another customer, maybe a shuttle driver called out sick. Whatever it might be, you can be sure that when you call and arrive at Uber, it's gonna be on demand, and the customer is not gonna be waiting a long time at the service department. Decrease in untracked spend. The Uber for Business dashboard provides full visibility and oversight to anyone who might need it. That way, they can see how much the transportation program is costing, what the activity is looking like, and they can even look at some more granular data, that can really be helpful in a directional sense to know where to pivot, in a pinch. Streamline transportation coverage. So Uber Central and Uber for Business allows the flexibility to scale up and scale down when needed. So that means that when it's not as busy, you don't have shuttle vans sitting in the lot, costing you money, drivers on payroll who might not have much to do that day given that maybe there's not a lot of traffic at the service department. And then in times where it does get very busy, Uber has a large, large driver supply that really is able to handle a big influx of customers and higher demand times. Increased reimbursement claims for relevant OEMs. So we have the ability to set it up so that any time a ride is coordinated, the ride coordinator will have to select whether this is a warranty or a non warranty ride. That information all shows up in our reporting, making it very easy for warranty administrators and and anyone else who might be, working on reimbursements to go in, know which rides are reimbursable, and be able to grab those receipts and submit those to get reimbursed. More efficient use of staff time. Calling an Uber ride is super easy. It's super quick. It doesn't require multiple employees to be involved. So no longer will you have to do the adviser, porter, and sales rep shuffle. Only requires one person to set up a ride, freeing up employees to be able to continue what they're doing, whether it's a customer conversation or a task that they might be working intently on. They can be sure that one person will only be required to call an Uber ride, and everyone else can continue doing what they're doing, reducing friction in the department as a whole. So now let's take a closer look at what the platform looks like. So to set up a ride is very simple. You click create new, single ride, and all that's required is the customer's first name, last name, and cell phone number. And as you can see, once a customer has received a ride, their information will be saved within the platform, making it really easy to give them a ride the next time they come to the dealership just by clicking that name right there. Let's do an example of a round trip. Alright. So the first leg of the trip is going from the dealership to Walmart. This ride's being picked up now, and you'd have the option to give a message to the driver if you'd like. Sometimes dealerships like to say, hey. Please come to the service center entrance. Call this number if you're having trouble finding us. Totally optional, but you do have that capability. Now for the return leg of the trip, as you can see here, it automatically reverses those addresses for you, so you don't have to retype them in. We're going from Walmart back to the dealership. Now by default, for a future ride, it's always gonna have future ride selected as well as our make it flexible option. What this means is that when we get down to the end here and we click set up ride, the customer's gonna receive text communication with their ride details for their first ride from dealership to Walmart. When it's time for them to come back to the dealership, rather than having to go back into the platform and set up that second ride, you simply call the customer and you say, hey. Your car is ready for pickup. Go back to your text from your first ride. Click the link, and it'll dispatch your ride back to the dealership. This is where we can make sure that we're selecting non warranty or warranty, or if there's another department that might be using rides, they can select sales, for example. So for this example, we'll just do non warranty. And as you can see here, we have a $25 spend cap that's built in to the program. As you can see here, the $25 spend cap is actually what we call a soft spend cap. So this is going to still allow the coordinator to book the ride. However, it's going to flash this yellow warning banner as a way to proactively keep costs top of mind. We also have the ability to do a hard cap, which will prevent the coordinator from booking the ride entirely if it's over a certain dollar amount or distance from the dealership. Now jumping back into the ride setup flow, you will come in here and you will select your ride type for the first vehicle. UberX is normally what dealerships will go with. We also have a wait and save option that can really be, a really nice affordable option where you can save a few bucks for for normally a little bit longer of a wait time. In this case, it looks like wait and save is actually the same exact wait time as Uber X, but over $5 cheaper. So in this case, we'll do a wait and save. And for the second leg of the trip, because it's in the future, wait and save is only available in real time. So we'll stick with Uber, and it'll show a range of prices. Because it's in the future, the price of the ride will fall within that range. You could even customize the language preferences, as well for the text communications that customers receive. So if you have any Spanish speaking customers or customers who speak in a different language, this can be a really nice touch to be a little bit more personalized with them and make things a little bit easier on their end. Very important here is including the repair order number. That way, we have every single ride tracked back to an RO number, you know, who that ride was for, who it's associated with. And then you click setup ride. Easy as that. Customer will receive their text communications with their ride details and then they're good to go. And then from here, you have the ability to track this ride in real time And as rides continue to happen, they'll funnel into these different categories so you can come in here and take a look at which rides might be awaiting pickup, which rides are in progress, which have been completed, or any rides that might have been scheduled in the future and might be upcoming. Thank you again to John for sharing his experience, and thanks to everyone who joined us today. You'll get a link to the full recording after the session if you wanna revisit anything that we covered. If you'd like to run this diagnostic on your own program or just wanna talk through what you're seeing at your store, visit our website or reach out to our team for a custom demo.