We start with news that Ken Heron is now the CMO of Strolid. Ken has been part of TADSummit for many years, sharing innovations in chatbots, conversation intelligence, and AI. Similarly, Strolid has sponsored TADHack and TADSummit over the years. I’m really proud Ken has joined the Strolid tribe. They’re going to redefine automotive BDC (Business Development Center) beyond what has already been achieved, and will take their leadership into other verticals. Strolid is one to watch.
Vinnie Micciche, founder and CEO of Strolid, provides an excellent introduction. His career spans over thirty years in automotive retail. Against his dad’s advice Vinnie joined the industry and has worked through several technology revolutions including the rise of CRM (Customer Relationship Management), the internet as a channel including eCommerce across the whole customer lifecycle. From leads (inbound), though sales, service, and outbound (marketing).
The dominant factor throughout that experience is the critical importance of data. It enables BDC to be measured, hence improved, and demonstrates the contribution of BDC to dealers’ KPI (Key Performance Index).
Customer communication has become richer, it’s not just a telephone call, its internet leads, chat bots, email conversations, SMS chats, etc. Also voice communications as become data, recorded and made text with additional processing such as sentiment analysis.
Vinnie has worked with Thomas Howe over many years, after Thomas sold his last company he joined Vinnie to build out the vision of measuring and improving BDC performance. Underlying this vision is the concept of ‘papa in a box’. Vinnie’s dad is part of Strolid and brings vast experience in automotive sales. At some point he will retire, Strolid must to retain that unique font of knowledge and experience. Corporations in France are currently facing a 30k year knowledge deficit as baby boomers are now retiring. This is a real and present problem for all businesses across the world.
Using vCon, not only are customer conversations retained in compliance with personal data regulations, all papa’s conversations on what his experience tells him about those conversations can be also be retained. This enables the creation of ‘papa in a box’ the automation of listening with 50+ years of automotive retail experience. We are living in a unique time, though AI/LLMs (Large Language Models) in its current form is new, it can be applied directly to many existing businesses today.
Ken has created, sold, and launched award-winning conversational and generative AI use cases for customers and resellers globally. Ken will help Strolid, Inc. and resellers’ enterprise and government customers to connect with their customers and citizens. Strolid’s vCons technology manages the data for AI by securing and organizing conversational data to feed AI. Helping companies across all industry verticals, from automotive to retail and more, listen to people at scale securely and compliantly allows them to understand their customers and business to increase sales and delight stakeholders.
Ken then reviewed a number of use cases. Sentiment analysis is part of the platform. Questions can be asked about, what customers are unhappy, and a list of customers can be produced without having to listen to all the conversations. The ‘save a deal’ app delivers the top targets to call that morning. Ken gave an example in health care, feeding patient conversations into the platform, and asking a simple question of, ‘why are patient’s cancelling appointments.’ This simple question remains a challenge for most healthcare providers.
The dominant factor throughout Vinnie’s experience in automotive retail is the critical importance of data to successful BDC. With Thomas’ prescient insight in creating vCons, Strolid is able to bring the latest AI / LLM innovations to help dealer better gather leads, retain existing customers, communicate with lost customers, and ultimately sell more to more customers by delivering the best dealer experience in their region.
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Super interesting. Would very much like the opportunity to talk with Ken.
We are starting to look at automotive here in Australia, however and more importantly, with what we now know, we are seeking expansion into the US market.
Those of us old enough , probably still remember the success of the BMW Snow Tyres MMS campaign.
BMW in the winter of 2008 launched a $65k MMS snow tyre campaign, that is credited with driving additional revenues of $45 million.
Email’s growth and social platforms killed MMS for years, MMS went from being the Telco’s second highest platform margin earner in 2010 to a technology millstone.
With the flood of emails we are exposed to, open rates are struggling in many verticals. Email penetration and cut through is being questioned.
MMS is making a resurgence. Tipped to generate over $13.7 billion in revenue in the US by 2031.
Our company has developed a world leading curation and personalisation platform for SMS and MMS, as well as patented in the US and Australia our Smart MMS (Tm) capabilities.
A chat with the Strolid Team sounds like a great first step.
Thank you Alan and Johnny for the great discussion today! 🤓