AI Search Visibility: How Customers Find Your Auto Repair Shop [THA 492]

0:00This is the Automotive Repair Podcast Network. Hey everybody, Carm Capriato. Welcome to another Town Hall Academy, uh, nothing like the greatest episodic education for the professional automotive repair industry. Carm Capriato here. Deep thanks to you for hanging out with us, just partaking in all this great content, and to our wonderful sponsors. Hey, for over 30 years, NAPA TRACS has made selecting the right shop management system easy by offering the best, most comprehensive SMS in the industry.

0:38We'll prove to you that TRACS is the single best shop management system in the business. Find NAPA TRACS on the web at napatracs.com. Hey, how well does your team know their stuff? Test their automotive skills with the Today's Class basic, advanced, or service advisor quizzes. It's a quick, effective way to spot gaps and grow stronger teams. Take the quizzes now at today'sclass.com/tcquiz.

1:07Shop owners, stop juggling multiple marketing tools. Kukui's integrated platform— they deliver 4 times better website conversions, automated follow-up, and real-time ROI tracking. Get industry-leading customer support with Kukui. That's K-U-K-U-I.com. You're probably tired of chasing new customers who never return. We understand. Pit Crew Loyalty ends the one-and-done cycle, turning first visits into lasting, reliable revenue. On the web at pitcrewloyalty.com. Hey, don't forget everyone, we've got that podcast listening app out there.

1:45I want you to make sure you get to arpn.app and download it. It's a blast. There's so many great things. All the shows that we produce, there they are right in front of you if you're watching on video, are there. You can have your favorites. You can share. We love this app and I know that you will too. It's the place to be.

2:13Okay, I've got this very interesting episode for you. It's another episode on AI. I get it, we've done a lot of stuff on AI, but Listen, there's this shifting behavior that's going on, and we want to talk to you, the shop owner, and all the people that work in it, what we need to do to be visible using AI. I'd like to introduce two of my great guests that are here today.

2:36Heather Myers, the Chief Technology Officer of Kukui. Hello, Heather. Hello, Carm. Hello, everybody. Thank you for having me. Glad you are here. Connor Tracy, Director of Partner Development at Kukui Corp. Hey, bud. I'm doing great, buddy. How are you? Good. Got the Kakui beads on, man. Got my electric shirt on. One day I gotta get a set of those Kakui beads. I, I came so close, and I'm not sure I knew the, the password or something in order to get them.

3:03I just don't remember. It's a secret handshake, but we'll get it to you. Yeah, I know, I know it is. Look, my curious questions to the industry about AI— I want you to stick around and listen to this stuff because this is not going to be the typical AI. We're not talking about how the technicians patients are going to use it, you know, what are we going to use at our counter?

3:23We've done a lot of shows on that, and that is such an intense and growing portion of what's going on with AI in our shops. But you're going to want to learn about this. I'm going to ask these tough questions to Heather and, and Connor. I've got Google, so I'm okay. What do our guests see from AI? Should I keep relying on the Google Business Profile since AI is God now?

3:50Have the rules of reviews changed? And are we as an industry still learning what AI can do for us? And these are the questions that I'm gonna ask. So Q1 for you both, the shift is happening now, but do I need to pay attention and get on board or can I just hang out and wait and some magical thing will happen one day and I'm in?

4:14Magic's probably not gonna happen. There should not be waiting. You know, it's actually similar to what happened when Google Business Profile first came out, right? It was just there. Everyone started filling it out, but a lot of people just kind of sat back with, what's this going to do? I don't know what this means. You know, fast forward 10 years later and it's the single most important thing you can do from a local search perspective.

4:40This is where we are now with AI. The good news is Part of AI is Gemini, which is Google. They kind of went all in on Google Business Profile. So the good news is if you went all in on Google Business Profile, you're already pretty much set up for a big portion of what's required for Gemini. So that's really the main focus on a Gemini perspective today.

5:05You know, get ready. If you haven't jumped on the Google Business Profile bandwagon, you really should. For a few reasons, not just AI, because local search, you want to be there too. And then it keeps building on top of it. So that's really one of the big— today the shift isn't totally there. People are still using organic, they're still doing local search.

5:28You still have people who don't trust AI, a lot of people who don't trust AI, so they'll exit out of it. So, but Google Business Profile is still critical. As is some organic business. Connor, just got more complicated because we have to worry about two things now. Yes and no. So, you know, the reality is, is that by and large, a lot of the methodology that has been preached and should be opted— you know, in our industry, we have this thing where things are not a problem until they're a problem.

5:57You know, things like Heather mentioned, like updating and maintaining a Google Business Profile. Another huge aspect when it comes to local search, when it comes to AI visibility, and not just talking about Gemini or ChatGPT, it's pretty universal, is having clean and updated business listings. There's over 200 listing agencies that list your name, address, and phone number information. Now, that's always been really mission critical when it comes to increasing map visibility when it came to, you know, for instance, Google Maps and, and other map programs as well.

6:31But now with AI, you know, when we do a little thought exercise with it, you don't have a Google Business Profile on Apple Intelligence. You don't have that in all these other platforms, right? So how do these platforms— and I'll use my wife's example because, um, she uses her favorite little AI platform and it's now turned into one of her best friends in the world— but she'll search up recipes.

6:56And what a lot of folks are doing is, hey, my vehicle's doing this, Hey, it's shaking on the highway, right? Hey, great, you know, it could be a tire out of balance, you could have loose front end parts. Next question is, what's the shop near me that can help me fix that problem? How do these software platforms understand geographically where you're at?

7:17And the reality is, is they're using those same listings that Google has always used to gain that NAP, which is name, address, and phone number consistency. They are using those to an even greater level because you don't not have a business profile to tell them where you're at. So it's really a lot of the same methodology that we use to leverage Google visibility.

7:37It's now just expanded out. You know what I'm loving about what I'm hearing from both of you? We're going under the covers on this stuff. I think this discussion is not going to be superficial. You must do this and here's why. You're really helping us understand what it is that the consumer is doing, because we still got to capture those opportunities. And as a marketing company, that's what you guys are passionate about.

8:00You've gotta look at it from all these angles. When you work with clients on this stuff, are you getting pushback? Are they buying in? Are they saying, ah, it's too soon? So here's a good thing about Heather that I'll share with you is generally not a lot of asking when it's the best thing for them. And putting that in a polite way, but a lot of it is stuff.

8:19I mean, I'll use as a really good example of that, and I'm being a little cheeky here, but like when we found out, and this was going into last year, that there was a search volume shift. There are some strategic differences with the coding of a website that is required to be visible on AI platforms that is different from search engines. And I gotta give our development team a ton of credit.

8:44Heather and her teams were able to do that across all of our sites. So there's a lot of stuff that may or may not be happening in the background that you're not aware of. If you're a Kuku user, we're already helping you get there.. But also then, you know, there's other things that have had limited importance, like social media posting, that now has gained in importance, right?

9:06Social media has been a relevance tool. You can't rev up Facebook or Instagram and search auto repair near me. And that still is the case. But now these platforms are using the data from your social media feeds to understand who you are. It's actually easier for them to crawl data from a social media platform because it's uniform, right? Every Facebook post from a software standpoint is posted using the same kind of coding, right?

9:31Every website is essentially a little nuanced and different, so it can find data from social media platforms about who you are, what you do, the information about your business easier. Well, I mean, let's also call it what it is. Who owns these AI platforms? It's the social media platforms, right? Social media is a shift. So credit again to our teams here at Kukui, but posting on social media, we've made that extremely easy for our users.

9:56We've got some new tools that we put in place, but posting on social media is incredibly important. Helping have clean business listings and all these things are all fundamentally more important before, but just more important now. I got a question. Percentage of people that use AI. Now I know you can go into Google search, I get that. And they're using Gemini to support that.

10:18Are other people going to like ChatGPT in order to do the same research? Auto repair near me. Are people sophisticated enough to want to get there and do that? Is that on their phone or is it more desktopy? Unfortunately, yes. And I'm saying unfortunate because depending on the license, for instance, ChatGPT, depending on which level you have, it doesn't necessarily have web search.

10:46There are different things that you have access to based on which AI tool you're using. And the problem is the best way to think of these AI chats are as people pleasers. When they respond, their responses are what they think you want to hear, not necessarily what is actually true. So if you're asking for a certain, you know, maybe it is Auto Repair Near Me, It may not even totally know where you are.

11:12For instance, maybe your geolocation didn't update. It may make some assumptions about what you're looking for based on pre-context from your previous search. It may not necessarily recommend a shop that is aligned better. It may not even have access to everything. So it's a combination of factors that, yes, people are starting to do it. It is somewhat generational, right, based on adoption, but people are certainly starting to use these tools.

11:42Definitely hasn't been a full shift, right? The shift's just really starting with it, but there has to be that be careful because unfortunately they are using it and don't necessarily know they're not getting everything. And the other thing to call it too is the integration. There's two names that I won't say very loudly because a lot of people might be having their cell phone in, in reach and we don't want it to rev up a new search, but Apple has one that's named and Android has one that's named as well, and those are AI platforms.

12:10And the reason why these companies have invested so heavily is those are being integrated into those platforms. Apple just did a huge software announcement on Tuesday, and it talked about how much more deeply within Apple's infrastructure that Apple's AI is going to be integrated. So those tools, when we've asked, you know, old Lexi and old, not Sarah, for years, these questions, what you're doing is you're adding to your own internal algorithm, right?

12:42So people may not even know that they're searching using AI when they are. You know, in the past it would use much different data. Now it's using these AI algorithms to push this out. And really the advent of the newest versions of these AI tools has become so much more natural language. People are feeling more comfortable. Like I said, I'll use my wife as an example.

13:04She has ChatGPT in her phone. And she will have a full-on conversation doing problem solving or learning about something using ChatGPT. And we did an exercise with her. I said, hey, tell it that the car is doing this and see if it can help you figure out potentially what's wrong with your car and see if it then can help recommend who can help you fix it.

13:27And it had a whole conversation. Hey, we think that the Audi might have these potential symptoms based on information that we have. And she's like, "Cool, is there a shop that can help me fix it?" And the results kind of varied, but that is the reality of what folks are doing. And they may not even realize that they're using AI because they may not be wholesale using like a ChatGPT app or a Gemini app, or you name it, your AI tool.

13:50But, you know, our social media devices in our pocket, our cell phones, they have those embedded in them more deeply than they ever have. And even in the last few weeks, Both Android as well as Apple have announced those are even tighter. So you mean overnight when I get a little sign on my phone that says there has just been an update, and if I refuse to find out what it was all about, buyer beware?

14:15Oh, if you're lucky, not every app alerts you. That's just for your operating system on your phone. If you think about every website that you go to, they don't always tell you something's been updated and With AI and the rapid coding now, odds are everything's getting updated lots faster than it used to be. And you're not always told, sometimes you just stumble over it and go, okay, what just happened?

14:42That's new. Let's see how to use this. That's another thing you're seeing. And they don't, I mean, if you think about Google SEO, right? They never released that, right? They never announced, hey, this is all the things in our latest update. You might know there's an update. Most of the time you didn't know there was an update until after your site stopped ranking and the ranking factors changed.

15:06Same thing's happening with every LLM and all the various tools as they're doing crawls. They're changing the ranking factors rapidly. Hey, let's face it, your shop management system is the single most important tool in your shop, period. NapaTrax has made selecting the right shop management system easy by offering the industry's best, most comprehensive SMS. Now it all starts when a local representative meets with you to learn about your business and how you need to run it.

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17:33Stop working harder, start working smarter. Get industry-leading customer support and book a demo with Kukui. That's K-U-K-U-I.com. You know, most shop owners feel trapped spending on ads while half their first-time customers never come back. It's frustrating. It's exhausting. And it's not your fault. The industry average is 54% one-and-dones. We understand how discouraging that can be. Well, Pit Crew Loyalty changes the story.

18:01Our clients cut that rate by up to 38%, raising lifetime value by more than 50%. Loyalty members visit nearly 3 times more often, creating predictable revenue without extra ad spend. Pit Crew Loyalty, where customers stay and shops thrive. On the web at pitcrewloyalty.com. This is mind-blowing to me that I wake up tomorrow, it's a different world. The next 2 days later, it's a different world of me having how I run my business, how I do search, how I do marketing.

18:34It's like, are you kidding me? It's why should business be so hard? So Heather, I know you were telling me you guys are doing testing on this kind of stuff. Walk us through why and how. Constantly changing, right? We're testing a lot. We're monitoring sites, we're making changes, and then we're testing, testing and checking again, right? Because there's new things that come out rapidly.

18:58But the good news is it seems daunting, right? It seems scary. It's, and almost how do I even keep up with this? I give up. The core is still the same and this hasn't changed months and months of this. You still have quality content, right? That's always been the thing with your sites, having a website, even Google Business Profile, have quality content.

19:23Some people are trying to mass produce hundreds of pages of content because, ooh, AI writes it and they write it good. Or good enough, but it's still not quality, right? It's got to be written for the end user, not for AI, not for Google. Write it for who's going to the website. And you get that, that's your core, that's your base. And the text does matter.

19:46And then what's increasingly more and more is reviews. Uh, reviews have always been important, but now— and there was actually just a release from Google, an update on how they're reviewing reviews on Google Business Profile, and that was just done in April. They're now using AI in order to eliminate what they suspect are false reviews or spam reviews, or they removed something like 292 million reviews last year alone, and they're ramping that up.

20:16They've also gone back to enforcing review gating, which is a huge, huge thing. Just while we're on the topic of reviews, Karm, you and I have talked about that before where you might be using a platform that sends out a notice and says, hey, give us a thumbs up or thumbs down. And if they give you a thumbs up, then it's like, hey, leave us a review.

20:36The reality is, is that really since reviews have come around, Google's had in their terms of service, no bueno. You can't incentivize to leave a review and you cannot gate these reviews as they come in in any way. Honestly, it hasn't really been enforced probably since just before COVID Now, we did see some people get enforced just before COVID and oh boy, it was bad.

21:00Like, we had clients of ours that actually had like a year's worth of reviews get taken away. We had one that had their Google Business Profile actually shut down for a period of time. But why a year? How come a whole year? It's whatever Google decides, and you have no appeal. They just, hey, this is what we're doing. But what if they were all absolutely 100% legitimate?

21:19Yeah, I mean, there is an appeal process that they've released. You know, if you find your Google Business Profile has been put into Google jail, there is an appeal process that you can go through to actually appeal it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it's an AI bot that's actually reviewing your appeal and doesn't like being told they can't. Are they making a technology mistake, not a human mistake?

21:42I mean, that something is just trashing this stuff for no reason? In this instance that I'm speaking about, it's specifically doing any sort of filtering prior to the review coming in. So a couple really important things for the views: you can never incentivize anybody to leave your review. So if you have a card on your account— and literally, you remember, like, right after COVID, everybody, it was like a big thing where people got those 360 camera views inside of their shops.

22:08It was like a big thing. We actually heard from a couple shops that they had had a counter card that said, hey, leave us a review and you get $10 off your next oil change. Seems extremely innocuous, right? Seems like a nothing burger. Well, they got this 360 view, they posted it to their Google Business Profile, and now Google knows that you're giving people $10 for leaving me a good review.

22:27Whoa, I see. It's enforced, but it is in there. So just a couple things with reviews that are just really, really critically important: cannot incentivize them. We can ask to leave a review. We cannot give you a benefit for leaving it, full stop. And there shouldn't be anything that keeps the consumer from going to the review. Basically, they need to have the opportunity to leave the review without any sort of gating, filtering prior to that happening.

22:57That's in their terms of service. They have been very lax about enforcing that. So there's many platforms out there, there's many businesses out there that have said, hey, based on that, Hey, we're going to do this, but also a couple things. Consumers know that you have a 5-star review rating. It's BS. They know that. And now Heather can speak to that a little bit more, but Google is actually viewing that and like, hey, big problem if that's who you are.

23:23Yes. And, you know, tying that in, you know, they're using it and, you know, we're not going totally down the fearmonger, you know, they're not going to catch every possible one that's doing it. There might be some false flags. There is an appeal process, but ultimately, as Tanya was saying, you know, don't incentivize, don't try to direct them to one page to submit if it's a good review, which is Google, you know, the complaint department.

23:52If it's not a 4 or 5 star, don't send them straight to the complaint department, because if they do find the gating, your Google Business Profile could end up in Google jail. And what What that means is it's anywhere from your site's not ranked, meaning you don't appear in results, or just suspending the profile entirely. I appreciate this. This is a great piece of content right here to appreciate and understand how reviews work for both Google and AI.

24:21Let's go back to the whole AI premise. Is there anything in AI like Google that I can get on the top of the list? Anything right now that we know of? No, I mean, but the same question, there really isn't anything in Google that can guarantee top of the list either, right? Unless you pay for it. Even then you're bidding, right? When it's ads, you're bidding to get up there.

24:46And then they introduced local service ads, which then you go through a background process and then you also have to pay per lead. You know, I would be very surprised as a business person if there is not a way to monetize ads within the AI results very, very soon. In fact, well, there's already beta stuff happening with that, so of course that's going to happen.

25:11But the best way to compare it is with organic, right? So when you think organic results, it's similar as in you can't control the ranking factors. And if you try to beat the system, you might get away with it short term, but the long-term game You're not going to stay on top of organic anymore than you'll stay— and you're not going to stay on top of the AI search results.

25:36In fact, it's even less likely because now there are AI bots specifically looking for black hat techniques that you're trying to circumvent to get ahead. What is consistently working is really the same things that worked for organic and local search. And as long as those are being followed consistently, that's the long game. That will actually show results. And then once ads are supported and released at scale, it's going to be also pay your way to the top, which is always true.

26:06Pay your way to the top. So the methodology there though is making sure that you're consistently sharing unique content. That's always been important to organic. Talking about some of those shifts and what is a little bit different. You know, I talked about the importance of these different social media platforms. So in past where maybe you had a blog post on your website, Now you also want to share that content across social media platforms.

26:32So make sure you post it to your Google Business Profile, put it on Facebook. You know, we've built a platform that allows you to do these wholesale one posts and it'll post it across multiple platforms, creating efficiency. But post it on Facebook, post it on LinkedIn, post it on Instagram, post it wherever you can, because you're increasing the odds that whatever data you're putting out there can get found by the software and then in turn hopefully present that as a search result.

26:59The methodology is the same, it's just how far you need to cast that net is just a little bit further, to be honest with you. But the methodology is the same. Share unique content that separates your business from your competitors. Make sure that as much of that is human written as possible. And that content being shared now across multiple platforms where before it was like, make sure it's organic on your website, you know, post your Google Business Profile.

27:24Social media was just kind of there to be relevant. Well, now, yes, it is still there for that relevance, but then it's gonna get crawled and could potentially result in a search result for you. I can't tell you how much I keep thinking of Big Brother here. I don't know why. And I'm not saying Big Brother as the government, I'm saying Big Brother as the red eye of HAL.

27:44Yeah. And I keep thinking about, How does the human stay in control? I do believe that we gotta pay attention. We gotta go to class. We have to be learned. We have to offer responsibility to people inside of our business, even if it's maybe not you and you're not good at this stuff, but you can't ignore everything you've talked about here today.

28:04It's some people, it's scary. For some people, it's just piece of cake. For some people saying something else I gotta do. So how does the human stay in control with this? Nebulous moving thing called AI, the internet, search, and SEO. Both of your jobs 5 years ago, I bet you are 100% different today. Carm, the real thing that I'll share with shop owners is in the effort to keep it simple, to have an eye on your revenue.

28:32You know, that's core to what we do. But if you see changes in your revenue stream, have the ability to then deep dive where that's changing. You know, that's a core tenet to our platform. You know, some of the value we bring is tying these marketing efforts to your ROAS, right? If I see that new customer search volume is going down, what does that mean?

28:55Does it have an effect on my revenue? And being able to look at short and long-term trends. So having a platform, whatever platform that may be, where I can see, okay, Here's what my impact was last month. Here's where I'm looking at over a series of months. So I have this data in front of me to understand where I'm trending, because when you can see where you're trending, now you've got a baseline to understand either I'm trending the way I want to be or I'm not trending the way I want to be.

29:28And if I'm not, now, okay, do I have the partners in place where I can then correct that? Is it an organic search thing? If I'm not generating new customers, that's going to be that I don't have new people finding me digitally to come into my business. Okay. What do I need to do to get visible? And where do I need to get visible?

29:46Or what aspect of the marketing that I'm doing is not performing from a revenue standpoint the way it is? It has to be revenue. Clicks and impressions are vanity metrics. And frankly, they can be extremely dubious. We talked about this before, like when we talked about Google Ads a few months ago, I can get a click, I can get an impression, but if it's from two states away, that cannot be a success metric.

30:11So the success metric in our business is, did it develop a car showing up in my business that I was able to diagnose, I was able to repair, and send somebody happily down the road safely? At the end of the day, that is the success metric. When we look at that and work it backwards, then that's where we can understand it simply.

30:32And do I have the ability at my counter to convert those opportunities into revenue? And so I get what you're saying, Heather. It's, there's this nebulous big brother, SEO, AI, you know, Google My Business ads. And then there's the real human factor in being able to do something with all of that and make revenue happen when the opportunity comes in. It's To everyone's point, you got to pay deeper attention to your entire business than you ever have before.

31:06Correct. Yeah. And it's trust but verify too, right? Not just— I mean, across everything. I mean, if you're asking AI, trust but verify, ask the source because the hallucinations can be funny at first and then they get to frustrating real quick, much like parenting a preteen of sorts. Trust but verify. And it's really— it's never a replacement for the human. It should be— it's your researcher.

31:35It's a tool. It helps the job go faster, but it's not going to replace human decisions and shouldn't. It shouldn't. I am in love with what you just said. In fact, this could be the title of our episode. It could say AI colon trust but verify. Yeah, I mean, that's powerful because this is not generating unique information, full stop. We have to call this out.

32:01Nothing that AI is going to tell you, it is creating on its own, okay? It's taking information and it is restating it to you. But at the stage where it's at, we have to understand that this is not a Nobel laureate that's speaking to you. It's somewhere with like a middle schooler. So we'll use examples. You know, a few months ago we had some folks and there was some information that was shared and they were given some chat prompts and like, hey, use this to analyze your website.

32:30And that's all they were given. They weren't given any understanding of how these tools can give you misinformation. And what these tools will never do is go, you know, Carm, I don't know, I'm not a good source of information here. They'll never do that. Why? Because then you're never going back. So what it'll do is it'll spit out a result. We actually did an exercise.

32:48We're like, hey, can you analyze this site? Yep. And then we had to ask it a follow-up question. So it's these extra follow-up questions. We said, hey, did you actually access this URL to get this answer? And it went, no, we just grabbed some information that we found commonly online, and that's how we came up with this. So that's the type of verification we're talking about, is just like you would do when talking to a middle schooler and they're giving you something that's a matter of fact is, hey, is that really the case?

33:17It very well may be. And that's one thing we don't want you to assume, that it is just lying, because it's generally not. Now, is it filling in spots where it doesn't have information? Darn near every time. And it's how much is filled in is what you need to ask those follow-up questions to understand. Did you access my URL to get this data?

33:39Where did you find this information? It's the same reason why papers have to have citations. It's understanding exactly where the data is coming from, because that's all it's telling you is data that it's found other places. Everything I just heard from Connor was all about this middle school, you know, grilling— not grilling, but asking questions of a middle schooler. It's a dad of 6 talking here.

34:02Yes. And wonder if you're getting the right answer. I know. Wow. That summarizes how much we have to pay attention. And every time we get something back, it may not necessarily from AI. It may not necessarily be the whole, you know, yes, your honor, I prefer to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. You can't ask AI to put their hand on the Bible.

34:26The great analogy is like, I was on vacation. My son was supposed to mow the lawn. And I'll, this is a perfect analogy. Called up my son and said, hey dude, did you mow the lawn? Yeah, Dad, I mowed the lawn. He knows that I looked at the doorbell camera and I could see that the front lawn was mowed. Got home from vacation and I'm gonna need a machete and a pack mule to get through my backyard.

34:47Now technically, was my son correct? He did mow the lawn. I didn't ask, did you mow all of the lawn? It's the same thing here, right? Like, it's going to give you an answer that maybe based in factual correctness, but is it a complete answer and what information was filled in or extrapolated? So great analogy there. Yes. And that actually, it's one, as you were describing that, that's where the prompt matters, right?

35:13So if you had said, did you mow the front and the back lawn, then the answer could be different. It's the same when you're asking any of these AI chats. In fact, pretty much all of my conversations when I start is, do not fabricate, do not try to please me, be blunt, tell me if something is inaccurate, tell me if there's data missing.

35:36And I actually preload my conversations with this. And for instance, in Claude, you can actually have an MD file that it reads in that has all these parameters, which it's long, but in essence it's starting, all right, no lies, don't fabricate anything, and don't try to please me, tell me the blunt truth. And if you don't have access, Don't try. So you dump that in every time?

36:00Yeah. Okay. Everything except for you have to make eye contact. Again, it's like talking to your kids. Exactly. I have another thought about the lawn. Son, did you just cut the lawn in front of the doorbell camera? Yeah. I mean, that's damn near like— the reality is though, is it really is the same thing though. It's the more data you give it.

36:20I'll use another example. So I was kind of tinkering with this. I create some of the artwork for our social media and for some of our visual stuff that I do here at Kukui. And we were going to Superconference and I basically, I was making a poster of a guy golfing and we were in Florida. So I was like, hey, will you create a visual of somebody on a putting green with crocs, meaning crocodiles and flamingos?

36:45It spits out a picture of a guy on a putting green with flamingos wearing Croc shoes. And I literally, I sat back and laughed, but I can't be mad at the tool because I didn't say the animal crocodile. It did what I asked it to do. And it goes to this people pleasing, right? So we need to tell it, hey, don't please me.

37:05I want you to be blunt. I want you to treat me like Heather treats me whenever I ask her about software development. I can't do that because it doesn't quite understand, but it gets close when I do that. Oh my God, I got to tell this to Tracy because she's out there with Sarah teaching this class on communication. And when you stop to think about the power of Ask AI, the interpretation, you said this, they heard that.

37:28You said this to AI, AI took it literally. Oh, wow. This has been a very fun but yet very powerful episode. I know what we intended to talk about. But like always in all my shows, it goes in a million different directions. Final words in us trying to stay in control, what works, that AI, because it's like I'm at this point in all the episodes that we've done on AI in different areas of the business that it's here, it's real, it's gonna stay, but we have to almost bring it on as an individual who works for us.

38:09That is brand new, even though it may be really smart, we have to teach it us. And we can't ignore this. We have to be inside. We gotta be on it. And don't get distracted by the convenient widgets. There's a lot of stuff out there. This has really replaced SEO as the kind of new byword, and it's here to get your attention.

38:29Like really focus on the stuff that has traditionally been important. Getting visible online, handling the phones well, you know. Yeah, there's going to be AI widgets that do this and that, and you know, like AI is going to answer your phone. I'm sorry, but if somebody is going to bypass every digital means in the world, they are making a human effort to talk to a human.

38:50Don't have a robot answering the phone. Look through all of that noise, okay, and just focus on the things that are core and important. Am I building revenue? Am I aware that these tools are impacting my business and how are they impacting my business and what can I do to leverage the power of them? Because that power is absolutely there. That's the biggest things that I would say that, that mean the most right now.

39:13Thank you, Connor. Heather, final word. Not just auto repair shops, right? It's the small businesses. The businesses that come out ahead aren't going to be the ones that find a hack, right? Find that easy way to get to the top of no matter which search tool there is out, it's the ones that have been doing it all along. They've got that strong online presence.

39:34It works everywhere, right? Traditional search, AI search, whatever comes next, because it's going to keep evolving. As long as those fundamentals and the structure and foundation is there, it will continue to function and be built upon and ultimately keep the human in the loop. And then of course, as we said, you know, trust but verify. Be skeptical of anybody selling that magic elixir.

39:57Trust but verify. I mean, I took so many incredible major talking points out of this episode. That middle schooler thing was just very impactful to me. I love it. Thanks. Uh, it's been great to have you guys on the podcast. We appreciate your support as a sponsor and wow. We were here talking about the shifting AI behavior and I think exactly what it is that you need to know and learn about.

40:22Heather Myers, CTO, Chief Technology Officer of Kukui, and Connor Tracy, the Director of Partner Development at Kukui. Thank you both for being here. Yeah, we appreciate it. If anybody wants any further education too, just another kind of give some kudos to our team. Heather and her team has put together an amazing blog series and white paper. It's completely free to the industry.

40:46kukui.com, click on blogs. They're all in there for you. There's no cost. They're not cuckoo commercials. They actually even don't talk about product at all. But it's everything from how to understand if they're hallucinating to should you just put on one with all these changes and reviews. It's free education for you. So please leverage it. Great stuff. You can't learn enough. Get the resource.

41:09Appreciate it, Connor. Thanks, guys. Thanks for being on board to listen and learn from the premier automotive repair business podcast, Remarkable Results Radio. Get your episodic education on the ARPN listing app at automotiverepairpodcastnetwork.com. Also enjoy the podcast on our Carm Capriato YouTube channel. Carm is all for advancing the professional automotive service industry. Until next time.