I can sort of immediately tell that the people at Uber were just built differently. There was this opportunity to streamline and improve the operations at dealerships. We didn't invent this concept of transportation for customers or employees, but we believe we're enhancing it and improving it. Auto makers are actually subsidizing pickup and delivery for dealerships now because it becomes such an integral part of the customer experience. This episode is brought to you by Autofy. Autofy helps dealers like you sell smarter, not harder on your dealership website and now in your showroom too. Autofy solves the everyday problems dealers actually face like bottlenecks at a sales desk, customer distrust and decision overload. Their all new showroom solution includes deal estimation, desking, lender routing, and an F&I menu all in one powerful platform. Dealerships with Autofy saw cars faster with higher satisfaction and more profit. In fact, dealers make an average of $641 higher back-end PVR on Autofy deals versus their non-autofy deals. To learn more and start selling smarter today, go to autofy.com slash CDG or click the link in the show notes below.
Lastly, this episode is brought to you by Uber. I'd like to thank Uber for business for coming on as a guest and also supporting his podcast. Charlie Mizrahi on the CDG podcast. Charlie, welcome. Thanks for having me, I'll see you excited to be here. I've been following along, you know, car dealership guy for since the beginning really. And then saw you at NADA. When I know that. Yeah, when you finally went live, so excited to get to meet you in person or virtually. What platforms out of curiosity, what platforms were you following on? Mostly Twitter. I'm a big Twitter guy. Good, well, I like to always ask. I'm gonna tell you a really funny story. I thought about this as I was preparing for the podcast. So it was, I think it was 2016 and we, it was 2016. This was, I wanna say it was a Saturday because I was at the car lot and it was super busy. And one of our, one of our porters, our lot of tenants called out that day. And I just won't forget this, we were like, super busy showroom. My GM looks at me, we're like, what are we gonna do? Like we don't know what to do with customers. Like they all have to, like some customers need to, you go pick up a trade-in. I mean, long story short. And my GM pulls out his phone and he's like, here, just let's just do something. He starts ordering Uber's. Now mind you, you can correct me for wrong here, but there's no such thing as Uber for business back then. Maybe there was, we didn't know about it. And I just, well, I won't forget that story because I remember how we were just like, we became like a shuttle service that exact day. And we had like Uber's pulling up left and right and the whole show was super confused. But it was just funny thinking back to those moments because number one, like, you know, war story. It's a Saturday at the dealership. Things are bananas. And you're just saying like, okay, like how do I make this work? Plus you're, you know, you're not fully staffed. And anyways, that was sort of our introduction to like, you know, being a bit more creative with Uber and all these types of things. But first thing I thought of when I was preparing for this was, I was just thinking about you and the conversation we're gonna have and that experience we had. So, you know, funny times and really how we got introduced to what you do today. So I'll leave you with that.
最后,这一期节目由Uber赞助。我想感谢Uber for Business的参与以及对这档播客的支持。CDG播客的嘉宾Charlie Mizrahi,欢迎你。谢谢你邀请我,我很高兴来到这里。从一开始我就一直在关注“Car Dealership Guy”(车行伙计)。当时我还在NADA看到你。是的,当我知道你终于上线时,特别激动,迫不及待想见到你,无论是现实生活中还是线上。出于好奇,你主要在哪些平台关注我们?主要是在Twitter。我是Twitter的忠实粉丝。好的,我喜欢问这个问题。
我要告诉你一个有趣的故事。准备这期播客时我想到的,就发生在2016年。我记得那是个星期六,因为我在车行,当时特别忙。有一位清洁工那天没来,我不会忘记那天,我们真是人满为患。我记得我的经理看着我说,我们该怎么办?不知道该怎么应对客户,有些客户需要我们去接他们的旧车。总之,长话短说,我经理掏出手机,说,让我们试试这个。他开始叫Uber。请纠正我,如果我说错了的话,当时还没有Uber for Business,或者有,只是我们不知道。我不会忘记那场景,那天我们成了接送服务,Uber车接二连三地抵达,整个展厅都陷入困惑。但回想起那一刻还是挺有趣的,因为首先,那是一个周六,车行的日子总是忙乱不堪,你只能想着怎么让一切运转起来,而又没有足够的人手。这就是我们第一次尝试更有创意地使用Uber的经历。
准备这期节目时,我想到的第一个事情就是,我们要聊到这段经历。真是有趣的日子,这也让我们了解了你现在在做的事情。就先说到这里。
I would love to hear about a little bit about your background. Today you run automotive here in Uber and which we'll get into, we'll talk about what that even means. But can you just get us started? You've been on this rocket ship company and for quite a while. So can you give us a little bit of your story?
Yeah, I'm actually really glad you brought that up because we've heard stories like this many times before Uber was even in the dealership business. Dealership was in a bind, needed a ride for an employer, a customer, and you know, called in Uber to help out. I'm excited to dig into that as, you know, as we get into this a little later. But as far as my background, I started in sales at Yahoo, right at a college and then I went on to work at GrubHub. So I've always really been in the tech sales world. Then in 2016, I was presented with the opportunity to join Uber for business. It was, it's Uber's, you know, enterprise B2B arm. There were really a lot of synergies between my previous experience and the opportunity to help build up Uber's B2B business. And it was really a no brainer for me to join the team. I was actually one of the first sales team hires and it's been a really exciting ride over the last eight years, you know, pun intended there. I've seen the business expand and evolve. We've expanded into building new products to support the automotive and dealership industry, which is the team I lead today.
What was it like being part of the team in those days, right? Before we even get into how you ideated, the team had ideated the concept of getting into the auto business, right? Even like today, like we mentioned, you have an entire automotive division in the company, right? What was problem solving there like? As you're looking at the industry and you're looking at different opportunities, right? So just take us through a little bit of like behind the scenes of ideating these solutions for different divisions, different verticals. What was that like?
Sure. Yeah, when I first joined Uber for business in 2016, it was still the early days. We had one, maybe two products in our product suite and we were pretty laser focused just on streamlining and improving corporate travel. You know, at the time, organizations were still primarily using taxis and Black Car Services when their employees were on the road for business and we really recognized this immense opportunity to transform the business travel experience. We quickly gained traction, especially in industries like tech and law, consulting, finance. They had employees on the road all the time, but then we soon realized we could really leverage Uber's technology and scale to help transform transportation across other industries as well. So, you know, with that lens, we really started to deep dive into industry specific use cases and we built products that sort of seamlessly integrate with industry and business daily needs and operations. Out of that came a new product called Ubers Central, which enabled companies to coordinate transportation on behalf of their employees, guests or customers across a wide range of industries, auto being one of them, of course, but hospitality, logistics, healthcare and others. And, you know, fast forward to today, we work with more than 200,000 organizations. We're providing rides and meals for not only their employees, but guests and customers through a whole product suite.
当然。嗯,当我在2016年刚加入Uber for Business时,还属于初期阶段。我们的产品系列可能只有一个或两个产品,我们非常专注于优化和改进企业差旅。当时,各大公司还主要使用出租车和高档车服务来满足员工出差需求,我们意识到有巨大的机会可以改变商务旅行体验。我们迅速获得了吸引力,特别是在科技、法律、咨询和金融等行业,这些行业的员工出差频繁。但很快我们意识到,可以利用Uber的技术和规模来改进其他行业的交通运输。
基于这一视角,我们深入探讨了各行业的具体使用案例,开发了能够无缝整合到行业和企业日常需求与运营中的产品。由此,我们推出了一款新产品,名为Uber Central,这使得公司能够为员工、客人或客户协调交通服务,覆盖多个行业,当然包括汽车业,但也涉及酒店、物流、医疗等领域。快进到今天,我们与超过20万家组织合作,不仅为他们的员工提供出行服务和餐饮服务,还服务他们的客人和客户,通过整个产品系列来实现这些服务。
So I talk a lot about there's a dealership in New York, PowerGone Honda and I love, I see you nodding, well, I love Brian Benstalk, Dr. GM. I love how he talks about pickup and delivery, right? It's a big thing for them. It's just part of their ethos and, you know, they've generated millions in revenue from offering, you know, service like that. I'm curious to know at what point, at what point in your growth, right, that automotive come into the picture, right? What was that thought process like, you know, what did you set out to solve? Give us a little bit of, you know, insight into that. Yeah, and I'm familiar with PowerGone Honda being a native New Yorker. You know, when we started thinking about the auto industry years ago, you alluded to this in your story a few minutes ago, but we felt that there was a very natural alignment between our strengths as a business and many of the auto industries pain points. And so across the board, right, like dealerships require efficient, flexible transportation solutions, whether it's to provide a ride to a customer or all their cars in the shop or, you know, send an employee out to pick up a car or move parts from one shop to another. We really believe that Uber for Business had the technology and scale to integrate into dealerships workflows and help solve many of these challenges and deliver a premium customer experience, right? And so I would say this opportunity became even more clear during the pandemic. Shuddled programs, as you know, became obsolete, right? People weren't able to be in small spaces together. Many people were uncomfortable waiting at the lobbies and dealerships really needed to find new solutions to meet the needs of the moment. That's where we were really able to help and decided to go all in. It sort of validated our fit in the industry. You know, the early adopters had such positive feedback that we knew we were on to something that could really help. And after dealerships saw the response from customers who, as you'd imagine, tend to prefer a faster, private ride to a shuttle and also the cost savings of only paying when, you know, when they needed a ride, there was really no going back.
所以,我经常谈到纽约的一家经销商,PowerGone本田。我非常喜欢Brian Benstock博士,他是这家店的总经理。我喜欢他谈论的取送服务,这对他们来说非常重要,已经成为他们经营理念的一部分,他们通过提供这种服务赚了数百万美元的收入。
我想知道你们在发展过程中,汽车行业在什么时候开始进入你的视野?当时的想法是怎样的?你们打算解决什么问题?给我们一些见解吧。
嗯,身为纽约人,我对PowerGone本田很熟悉。当我们几年前开始考虑汽车行业时,正如你几分钟前提到的,我们觉得我们的业务优势与汽车行业的许多痛点之间有一个非常自然的契合。从各方面来看,经销商都需要高效、灵活的交通解决方案,不管是为客户提供便车,还是维修车,或者派员工去取车,或者在不同维修店之间运送零件。
我们真的相信Uber for Business有技术和规模可以融入经销商的工作流程,帮助解决这些挑战,并提供优质的客户体验。而我认为,这个机会在疫情期间变得更加明显。你知道,班车服务变得不可行,人们不能待在小空间里,许多人不愿意在经销商的大厅里等待,所以经销商迫切需要找到符合当下需求的新解决方案。我们在这方面能够有所帮助,并决定全力投入。这验证了我们在这个行业的契合度。
早期采用者的积极反馈让我们知道我们找到了一个非常有帮助的解决方案。经销商看到客户的反应之后,客户明显更倾向于快速、私密的交通方式而不是班车,而只有在需要时才支付费用的成本节约也非常显著,因此他们再也不会回到以前的方式了。
You know, it's been an exciting couple of years since then. We've built up the automotive team, dedicated to supporting both dealers and our OEM partners, by the way. And the team now consists of sales, account managers, as well as integration leads and some other supporting functions, all worship specific to auto. They know the ins and outs of the industry. We've learned the lingo, we follow the trends. Every single day, the team is speaking to dealerships to really better support their businesses. And we know that adding yet another technology to sign into, at these dealerships, can be a bit tedious, right? So in the last few years, we've really built out our integrations and partnerships with DMSSes, within the industry, just so we could really live within, you know, the dealerships existing technology suites.
We've spent a ton of time working closely with dealerships to explore how Uber for Business can help. We want to improve their internal workflows. We want to improve their customers' experiences. And it's really helped us inform our roadmap. So I just say it's been really cool to see the transformation from when dealerships integrate Uber for Business into their workflows, and, you know, for many of them, it's a game changer. Mm-hmm. So what was that like, right? The pandemic hits, and you've been scaling this solution, this product. What do you actually do at that point? And how are you able to infiltrate the car business so well, and within dealerships? How did you do that? Well, there was some organic adoption, right? So it wasn't just this, you know, outbound effort of our team calling dealerships and trying to get them to adopt the solution. It sort of happened organically. And then we were able to leverage a lot of those existing dealerships to get referrals, to get case studies, to understand exactly how it was, you know, solving some of their pain points to then expand.
我们花了大量时间与经销商密切合作,探索Uber for Business如何能提供帮助。我们希望改进他们的内部工作流程,也希望提升他们顾客的体验。这一过程对我们制定规划非常有帮助。看到经销商将Uber for Business整合到他们的工作流程中的转变,真的非常令人激动,对许多经销商来说,这是一场变革。那么,疫情来袭的时候,这个解决方案和产品是如何扩展的?当时你们具体做了什么?你们又是如何如此成功地渗透到汽车行业和经销商中的?其实有一些是自然发生的,不完全是我们的团队主动联系经销商,努力让他们接受这个解决方案。这个过程有点自然进行的。然后我们利用了许多已有的经销商,通过推荐、案例研究,了解这个解决方案是如何解决他们的一些痛点,然后进一步扩大应用。
But really, you know, we've tried to just embed ourselves in the out of community and industry as much as we can. So we've been attending events and conferences and trade shows, both nationally and locally. We've been participating in some local and state dealerships associations. And so it's really just a matter of having conversations with dealerships every single day, learning what they're doing, and identifying areas where we could sort of provide them solutions that make sense for both their employees and their customers.
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So what are you working on today, right? Like what is, what are you working on at Uber for Business? How are you even involved in the auto industry and what are your products? Give us sort of a lay of the land. Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, there are really three main products that dealerships utilize when working with Uber. And what we're really trying to do is just fit within dealerships existing workflows, right? So we didn't invent this concept of transportation for customers or employees. But we believe we're enhancing it and improving it. And so we're giving dealerships the ability to leverage a tool called Uber Central, which essentially allows them to dispatch a new bar on behalf of a customer or employee.
那么你今天在做什么工作,对吧?我是说,你在 Uber for Business 从事什么工作?你是如何参与到汽车工业中的?你们的产品是什么?能给我们介绍一下整体情况吗?
好的,当然可以。我这里主要有三个产品是汽车经销商在与 Uber 合作中常用的。我们真正想做的是融入经销商现有的工作流程。我们并没有发明顾客或员工的交通运输这个概念,但我们相信我们在提升和改进它。因此,我们为经销商提供了一个名为 Uber Central 的工具,这个工具基本上允许经销商代表顾客或员工调度 Uber 用车。
So the customer employee actually just receives a text message to their phone. They don't even need the Uber app. And then payments handled directly by the dealership. They could capture their own number and they could easily reconcile that. We also have a product called Uber Vouchers, where this works a little bit better for those longer service appointments where they could actually just drop Uber credits into the customer's Uber app. And the customer can sort of use that to get around town while their car is being serviced. And then the third thing is a product called Uber Direct, where it's really an on-demand parts delivery tool.
So what we've seen is that dealerships are actually we're hacking Uber for a while to transport parts. And so obviously, that's a big part of the daily operation, right? Especially when there's sort of this critical part that they need to complete a job.
And so we actually built out a product specifically for that where now you could actually leverage Uber to get on-demand parts delivery to the dealership and to customers to get that customer out the door. So all this is then managed on the back end through an administrative dashboard where they could sort of manage user access, policy controls, access detailed reports, and also have streamlined billing.
So when are you introducing Uber with car seats? That product actually exists today. I know it's not in my market. I know, I know. That's the product we all need, Uber with car seats. Talk about a media product market fit. It's actually gonna come in handy for me too, although it's not in my market, but I have my first child being born in August.
Oh yeah, I love it. You know, I think one thing about our industry that's interesting is like there's been a proliferation of just like new technologies and stuff, all that, but a lot of it's been overhyped. Or maybe overhyped is not the right word. You know, maybe a better word, which is be saying that, you know, we spoke, the industry spoke about digital retailing. And obviously now AI is the big thing.
And there's many different use cases, but a lot of it is not yet solving, you know, a huge issue for dealers. I'm curious to know from your perspective, how do you view something that it's like, it feels like so simple, right? This is not AI, this is not some road. I mean, this is simply, let's make life a little bit easier for our customers and for the dealer by offering, you know, pickup delivery, shuttle, whatever reason you use, you know, transportation.
How do you view that as something that, you know, obviously it's embedded into the dealerships process, but how do you view just something that is so simple yet, you know, many dealerships across the country don't offer it? What's your take on that? I'm sure you have a bunch of case studies and kind of metrics and stuff like that on the back end that show the value of offering such a simple service. Curious to know what that really looks like behind the scenes and the value that a product like this has really driven for dealerships.
Yeah, look, I think that's the magic of Uber, right? It we sort of sit at this intersection of the physical and the digital world. So, you know, with a press of a button, a car shows up, like that's pretty cool. There aren't too many other on demand type of solutions that exist, right? And so the way that we usually have these conversations with dealerships is to not necessarily think of Uber as a replacement per se, although that does happen at many dealerships where they ultimately decide, hey, this is the best solution for us and we're gonna move away from, you know, owners and shuttles to some extent.
But really as just another tool in their arsenal, right? So, both of them, what they realize is providing that flexibility for them and the convenience for the customer to say, hey, when we're in a bind or we don't have an extra loan or vehicle or shuttle's already out and we can't have our customers waiting around for an hour until the shuttle gets back to be able to call a car on demand and get their customer out is pretty amazing.
But I have to imagine that you maybe approach some older school GMs or stuff like that that are pretty apprehensive. And not for, I'm not saying for a good reason, but just, you know, people don't like change. How do you handle that or like, you know, how do you have those conversations?
Yeah, I mean, it's a great question. And of course, you know, we come up against that from time to time. You know, just getting these dealerships just to think a little bit more tech-forward and think a little bit more about new innovative ways that they could provide convenience and great experience to their customers. I think ultimately, you know, we all know that CSI scores are what drives, you know, a lot of these dealerships business.
And when CSGuys scores are high, everybody's happy and everybody wins. And so, you know, by sort of walking them through this concept of and storytelling really and creating this narrative of, hey, like in this situation, when you have this customer waiting and there is no other way to get them out and by the way, your service line is backed up and you can't bring in any other customers because you don't have enough vehicles available to get them through. Here's how you can get these folks out the door and increase that throughput as well.
So that's when it starts to kind of click. Have you seen, on that note, have you seen any like non-standard use cases with dealerships across the country? Anything other than the traditional like pickup drop off a customer?
Yeah, so I think, you know, the primary use case is that courtesy ride use case for, you know, service rides. But we do see a lot of dealerships also leveraging Uber for vehicle pickup and drop off for parts delivery. Beyond that, we also have dealerships and dealership groups that are using Uber for employee and executive business travel, especially at the group level. And then more recently, actually, Uber Eats has come up a lot. So dealerships are trying to feed their employees and even customers at times while they're waiting. But a lot of dealerships have been leveraging Uber Eats for team lunches on the weekends and things.
So, you know, one thing that comes to mind as like we've been talking about pickup, delivery and customer experience, I think, if we look at the broader industry, right, the net profits are receding right now. They peaked about two years ago, they've been falling pretty consistently since then. And that's across the board, right, public dealerships, private groups. I, so I think one theme that I could see someone like yourself riding really well in this environment, it's just dealers are looking to be more efficient. And I think, you know, if you, like, seeing a service like this, right, and substantiating it to the industry, right, that it's not just about customer experience, it's also about being more efficient, saving costs. To me, that feels like a winning strategy. Is that something that you've adopted internally or you're leveraging?
Yeah, I think the benefit of, you know, using Uber in, you know, as a replacement alternative or supplement even to shuttles and loaners is, you don't have the fixed costs, right? So there's really zero operational costs beyond just paying for the cost of the rides, right? So we actually have a customer Honda of Bellevue who recently did a case study with us. They replaced their shuttles with Uber completely a few years ago and they have told us they save upwards of $45,000 a year now, just by moving away from shuttles. Beyond that, just being able to sort of optimize and control costs, even when you're using the solutions together is definitely something we've heard as well.
是的,我认为使用优步作为班车和代用车的替代方案或补充有很多好处。首先,它没有固定成本,对吧?所以除了支付车费外,几乎没有其他运营成本。我们有一个客户——贝尔维尤本田(Honda of Bellevue),他们最近和我们做了一个案例研究。他们几年前完全用优步取代了班车,现在他们每年节省超过4.5万美元。除此之外,我们还听说,即使是将这些解决方案结合使用,也能够有效优化和控制成本。
We recently did a survey and, you know, 67% of dealerships had told us that Uber helped control the cost of their currency rides as well. So I definitely think that we're helping provide some of those cost savings and moving them away from just this mindset of having fixed costs, fixed assets and starting to outsource that to Uber. So Charlie, what's the future here? Like give us your outlook, right? You are a massive company with lots of resources. I'm sure you do lots of research and you're intimately involved in this segment. What's the future here with respect to, you know, dealerships, rides, this, you know, transportation? What are you, what are you, what bet are you making and how do you view the future?
I think it's going to come down to, you know, dealerships having this healthy balance and a mix of just different transportation options that they're able to provide to their customers for that convenience and flexibility. So I think there's certainly a shift towards moving away from some of these legacy type of transportation options, especially as it comes to, as it comes to courtesy rides. But I'm not sure and I can't say that, you know, we'll ever be able to replace that 100% of the time. There's always going to be a need for owner vehicles. There's likely a need for, for shuttles to some extent as well. But I do believe that the dealerships that are able to find that healthy balance between the two will end up coming out on top and being able to ultimately provide the best customer experience.
We do have dealerships that have told us that 80% of these dealerships, by the way, have told us that, providing courtesy rides, whether it has helped retain customers and helped increase their CSS course. Well, you're doing great things for the industry. You're pushing forward the customer experience. And, you know, it's really a win-win for dealers and consumers. So it's really great to see, you know, the impact you're having.
You know, one closing question I want to ask you is, what's next, right? So you've kind of methodically solved different problems for the industry, when it may be service, parts, right? These different sort of pain points are, like you said, even food, which makes total sense, right? That's a, that's a layup. And so, you know, what's next on the roadmap? Is there like a new line that you're thinking of and other way to, you know, bring innovation to the industry, anything like that?
We're always looking to innovate. I think one of the benefits of speaking to dealerships every single day is we're taking a lot of that feedback and insights to continue evolving our platform, building new features, building new functionality, and our product roadmap is ever evolving. So I'm really excited for the future. I think we have the foundation that we need today. And I'm looking forward to seeing how we continue to evolve.
Charlie, Ms. Rahi, thanks for coming on. If anyone wants to learn more about Uber for Business, we're going to put a link down in the show notes so they can visit that. And it was great having you all. Thanks for coming on. Thanks, Yossi. It's been a pleasure.
All right. Hope you enjoyed that episode. Please give the podcast a rating. Consider subscribing to the show and check the show notes for links to what we talked about. Thanks for tuning in. I'll see you guys next time.