Both during an in-person event as well as an online setting, Spyne recently has had the opportunity to explain how artificial intelligence is impacting the ways potential car buyers and service customers find and interact with dealerships.

Beginning first while speaking at NCM Clients & Friends 2026, Spyne’s head of U.S. business acknowledged automotive retail has spent three decades making it easier for consumers to find and research vehicles.

Dave Purgason argued the problem surfaces when shoppers raise their hands.

In a keynote session titled, “The AI Follow-Up Gap: Why Dealers Are Losing Customers Between the Lead and the Appointment,” Purgason opened by tracing the industry’s technology arc, recapping newspaper classifieds in the 1990s, print magazines on the rack in the 2000s, third-party marketplaces in the 2010s, digital retail in the 2020s, and AI now.

Purgason said each advancement made vehicles easier to find, but none of them fixed the handoff between a customer’s first inquiry and a scheduled appointment.

Spyne sees dealerships investing heavily to create demand, then lose momentum “in the quiet gap” before the appointment.

How many times has your dealership seen these scenarios?

A customer calls while the BDC is occupied.

An inquiry arrives at 11 p.m.

A shopper gets an instant reply that does not answer what they asked.

Purgason framed the first minute as decisive.

“Respond fast enough and you are part of the shopping experience. Respond later, and you are trying to interrupt it,” Purgason said.

He described the mismatch as the five-minute customer meeting the 9-to-5 dealership.

“Missed calls and after-hours inquiries are not tomorrow’s work. They are today’s buying moments.” Pugason added.

Purgason explained that conversational AI can give dealerships coverage when staff are busy or the store is closed, without asking the team to be permanently on call.

His reasoning is that around-the-clock response does not replace the team, but it makes sure the dealership never goes silent.

Purgason then turned on a standard practice in his own category: the automated “just checking in” cadence.

“Automation without context is just faster irrelevance,” he said.

Purgason illustrated the alternative with a single exchange.

A shopper asks whether a vehicle has a good maintenance history. A typical bot replies that it will email the Carfax vehicle history report.

A context-aware system answers the question. This vehicle has 14 service records, the most recent oil changes were completed at this dealership, the wipers were replaced at the last service, and the maintenance history is above average.

That, Purguson said, is the difference between automation and assistance.

“The customer should not have to become the project manager of their own car purchase.” Purgason said.

Purguson extended the point to channel-switching: a conversation may start in website chat, move to SMS, continue by phone, and finish over email.

The Spyne executive said the customer can switch channels; the conversation should not lose its memory or momentum.

Later in the presentation, Purgason rejected the human-versus-AI framing outright.

“Think relay team, not cage match. Let AI run the repetitive laps. Let your people take the baton when human judgment matters,” he said.

Purgason suggested that AI can handle immediate response, missed-call recovery, after-hours coverage, persistent follow-up, qualification, scheduling, and consistent multi-channel touches.

Meanwhile, Purgason said people can handle trust, emotion, complex trade and finance conversations, negotiation, exceptions, and closing.

“AI doesn’t replace the BDC; it makes sure the BDC never has to start with a missed opportunity,” Purgason said. “Maybe AI is the first technology wave that doesn’t just make cars easier to find but makes dealers easier to buy from.”

Why dealerships need to track AI recommendations

Purgason continued the conversation about AI and the dealership during a webinar Spyne hosted after NCM’s in-person event.

Here’s why, according to Spyne.

Dealerships can track a form fill, phone call, or lead once it enters the CRM. What they cannot easily see is the customer who asks an AI assistant where to buy or service a vehicle and chooses another store before making contact.

That was a central takeaway from the webinar titled, “The Dealership Growth Playbook: Get Found, Capture More, Sell More,” which featured a discussion with Purgason and Adrian Marin, founder of Storefront Audit.

Marin, who spent 18 years in automotive retail, said AI assistants are becoming part of the research customers conduct before visiting a dealership website.

Marin pointed out that buyers can ask which dealership they should visit, where to service a particular brand, or which store offers the best experience. A dealership that is missing from those answers may never know the customer was in the market, according to Marin, who works with businesses to understand how they appear in AI-generated recommendations and the information sources used in those responses.

“You cannot track what you do not know,” Marin said. “You do not know how many people never put that inquiry in because you were never found or recommended by the AI engines.”

Marin demonstrated the gap using 15 questions like those a buyer could ask before choosing a dealership.

One store appeared in 13 of the 15 responses but was the top recommendation in none.

When he repeated the test 10 days later, the results had changed again. Marin said this is why dealerships should avoid treating one AI search as a fixed measure of visibility.

“If you have one reading, that is just a snapshot,” Marin said. “When you have multiple readings, this becomes a trajectory.”

The webinar also examined the information AI assistants use to form their answers.

Across one set of 30 responses, Marin found 83 cited sources, but the dealership’s own website was not among them.

Marin also found examples of an incorrect phone number on a third-party listing, a service department carrying the brand name without the dealership name, and review profiles that had not been claimed by the store.

In one test, an AI assistant continued to recommend a brand service center but no longer identified the dealership operating it.

“Customers are using these tools to get what they believe are qualified recommendations,” Purgason said. “Dealers need to understand what the customer is seeing before that customer ever reaches the store.”