TECHNOLOGY
AI is Everything, continued from page 7
Toro, but what should I do? I have all this data exhaust that gets really granular about this exact problem. It just gets smarter and smarter.
OPE +: Are these things a dealer can do right now? Without a Flyntlok DMS account? They can start to use ChatGPT or Gemini and do some work? McLaughlin: So the easiest thing to do, the organic thing we see is people building their own AI chatbots. They go to ChatGPT, they build their own bot, they give it a purpose, and then they try to use it to solve some problem in their organization.
Here’ s one I’ ve seen. This is actually a pretty good one. You work in the front counter and you’ re a brand-new employee. You sell Toro, Kubota, and Grasshopper. The customer comes in and asks,‘ Tell me what’ s different about these mowers?’
A lot of them will put up Chat GPT on the right and they’ ve got their pointof-sale on the left. If a customer comes in and they’ re just like blank stare, I have no idea what to say, you know, for the new employee, they’ ll go ask Chat GPT which will give them a voluminous answer about what the differences are. Then they can even do follow-ups. Every session it gets smarter
and smarter. You can say,‘ The customer has one acre of grass and it’ s hilly.’ You can get answers that make you sound, at point of sale, like you know what you’ re doing when you really don’ t.
OPE +: I’ m less optimistic about AI, mainly because I’ ve seen far too many marketing people use generative AI as only a time saver. You’ re a unique case as both a dealer and software expert. McLaughlin: The velocity of that change in our world is astounding. It’ s absolutely astounding. At the end of the day, it’ s going to help this industry. Humans still have to fix everything. But if AI can pull minutes and hours out of your day, it does add up. And it’ s not going away. It’ s changed how every executive looks at what they’ re doing next in their business.
This is a brief and edited story from a longer interview with McLaughlin and his teammate Mike Wasserman, chief revenue officer for Flyntlok.
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