Podium’s New “Operator” Agent Does the Work of 3 People for This Buick GMC GM

John Keohane, GM of Temecula Valley Buick GMC, joined Sam D'Arc on the Car Dealership Guy podcast to talk about Operator, his new secret weapon which is transforming his day-to-day operations.

John Keohane knew he could drive more ROs. 

Keohane calls the OEM telematics portal, "a treasure trove of information about a customer." The most important piece, he says, is simple: “We know their vehicle needs service.” 

In response to this, he built a scraper, handed the output to his BDC, and had them start texting 45 to 60 messages a day. The replies started coming back, but there was a problem.

"We sent messages to customers to come solve their telematics issue, but their response was 'yeah, I did that already.'”

His systems just couldn't work out which customers still needed to come in, so his BDC efforts were fruitless while the right opportunities sat in the database. 

Keohane came up through a large dealer group, and he still thinks like one as he runs his store in Southern California, moving 150 to 160 units a month. He knew customers sitting in his dealership's own database should be the cheapest, easiest opportunities to convert. He wanted a tool that takes action, not just another report to read.

Hiring more people to sort that out wasn't an option. As Keohane says, "You can't afford to hire everybody, right? That takes time, training, developing and teaching how to deal with it." At a single rooftop, that math doesn't work. 

Whatever was going to fix the list had to fit inside the team he already had.

Why is my dealership's CRM data wrong?

His BDC wasn't the problem

"We’re dependent on the BDC person to go in and fill out the notes, create the status, follow up, and write down an outcome. And then, again, because we live in a world of different portals, that information that lives with the OEM may or may not make it to my CRM, may or may not make it to Podium."

The record of what happened depended on someone remembering to write it down in a system that doesn't talk to the other systems holding the rest of the necessary information.

Podium's Operator is the fix

Keohane didn't go shopping for another vendor. He already had a great relationship with Podium, so he presented the problem instead.

"I liked Podium as a partner, so I thought we could talk about it."

He asked for something that could act on what the reports had already been telling him for years.

"Your AI agent, for lack of a better term, is a fantastic conversational starter. You can give it a set of outcomes that you want to have achieved, and it will do it."

That spark became “Operator,” the agent built to act, not just scrape. It reads conversations, finds the next best action, and sends the outreach without waiting for someone to find the time.

How Operator changes the GM's day-to-day

Operator works for John, while his Sales & Service AI Agent, “Jerry,” communicates with customers. 

Keohane used to start his morning sifting through reports, but now he starts it with a text. Every morning, Operator texts him a rundown of the day before: what happened and what still needs a follow-up.

When the perfect vehicle lands on his lot, he doesn't have to look for a note buried in the CRM. He can just ask Operator, and it surfaces every customer with an active conversation in the last 60 days who wanted exactly that vehicle.

Keohane used to run bulk SMS, which meant scraping a list then sending everyone the same message. 

Now he gives Operator one prompt and calls it a revival campaign. Every week, it finds unworked leads sitting in his dealership's CRM, not new ones to buy. He tells the agent to look back at recent opportunities and sales, and reach back out with something of value: a new incentive, inventory, or a better trade offer.

The agent analyzes the right timing and context before outreach. 

"It really is like talking to a genuinely engaged BDC super user."

The clearest proof is the ROI Operator has generated: service center revenue is up 12% since implementation. 

They’ve also gotten time back in fixed ops. Customer-pay repair orders had been sliding for three straight months, and his fixed ops director couldn't explain why. Keohane asked the agent, laughing a little at himself as he did it. Six seconds later, he had his answer: a large fleet account had switched to a mobile service provider.

"It identified that for me very quickly without me having to go run a CSV table or something to figure out why the ROs dropped."

Three months of not knowing, solved in the time it takes to read a text.

How Operator raised the bar for his BDC and sales team

Operator didn't just change Keohane's workload. It gave his whole team a clearer view of their own work.

Every outreach gets checked against four things Keohane wants on every message: a warm greeting, real vehicle detail, an invitation to the store, and a live incentive. His reps know exactly what the bar is, and they're hitting it more consistently because of it.

"You actually end up more pleased with your team."

Most of the gaps the agent catches trace back to missing information: an advisor who never got the shipping alert or a note nobody read.

The effect reaches past sales and service too. Keohane's leadership team can see campaigns go out and watch the results in real time, which builds confidence that the whole store is pulling in the same direction.

The GM still leads the dealership

The agent surfaces what's happening. John and his team still decide what matters.

"Now, should the advisor have said something to somebody? Yes, there's a good coaching opportunity."

That's the part Operator hands back to him. He can read a room, coach an advisor, and catch what a customer hasn’t said out loud.

What Operator gave him back was the week he used to spend chasing a report that had already told him the answer three months ago. What he does with that week (coaching his team, walking the floor, staying close to customers) is still entirely his.

Book a demo to see what Operator surfaces in your own data

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