Gearbox Podcast

All right, rolling.

This is it.

Exciting.

Texas, Houston, Texas.

I've never been here.

You haven't either?

No, no.

Flew in.

Fourth largest city, I heard.

I was doing a little culture

review on the way in here,

but it's kind of a slept on city,

I feel like.

The only thing I know about

it is like space, Houston.

I guess, oh, Houston, we have a problem,

huh?

That's true.

Something's wrong.

Houston, we definitely have a problem.

That's what's going on right now.

That's the only thing I know

about Houston.

It's like I asked a lot of

guys that would come here like, oh,

you're from Texas.

Like, oh,

you're like right around the corner then.

But you forget like how big

Texas is like you're not

right around the corner.

I mean, I'm from Fargo, North Dakota.

So I'm like somewhere in Canada.

This is,

this is foreign country to me down

here and down here in Texas.

You're like way away.

Yeah.

I'm California.

So four hour drive, three hour flight,

two hour time difference.

So we're in California, uh, past Robles.

So right.

California coast.

Okay.

Right in the middle.

About ten, fifteen minutes inland.

I spent pretty much the past year in LA.

Pretty comfortable.

I moved there right for those fires.

Oh, perfect.

That's not a good time to be there.

No, it was terrible timing for sure.

Well, tell me about yourself.

Yeah.

Name's Josh Oberlander.

Just have an AI company here

in the automotive space and

we're just getting the ball rolling.

So we have only been around

for about nine months now.

Wow.

And so it's gone super exciting.

Been in the industry for about three years,

but really been only doing

this company called Detect Auto.

I'm one of the co-founders

with two other boys.

We've been doing that for

about nine months and been loving it.

Yeah.

I guess in the world of AI, that's what,

ten years?

Yeah, a long time.

We're already behind the power curve.

Yeah, it evolves so fast.

So there's a lot of AI stuff

popping up right now,

especially in the auto industry.

A lot of negative feedback,

a lot of negative

connotation when it comes to AI.

I think not just in our industry,

but in general, in the whole world.

Everyone's like, oh,

they're going to take our jobs.

It's what everyone's so worried about.

I don't know if the touch

points are ever going to go away,

but what is exactly that

you're establishing in that industry?

So, I mean, I would agree.

First of all, I do think it's scary.

Even me, somebody who's building AI,

I'm like half the time

worried about my own job.

Yeah.

Where my own job will be in five years.

And I'm the one,

we're the ones creating

some of this stuff.

So.

Um, I would say, you know, it's,

it all comes down to just

making somebody more efficient, right.

And, and whatever process.

And so one thing that we do is, um,

we make you more efficient

on your software.

So, uh, when it comes to typing,

when it comes to manually

researching vehicles,

when it comes to like some

monotonous task that you

have to do all day,

every day over and over and over again,

um, that's really where we shine through.

And, um,

We have tools, we call tools,

but we don't do exactly one thing.

We find areas that are

problematic and and people

spend way too much time on

and that's kind of so we're

trying to just not

obviously it sounds to me

like there's a lot more of

a human element that's

involved to make it work is

that a fair assumption it's

because without knowing

where the inefficiencies so

the greatest thing about ai

is it makes processes

easier when you can put in

exactly what you want it to

do right um if you wanted

ai to go look out and say

on a vehicle intake

see that there's a car seat and there's a,

um, what's, what's your football team,

right?

Like whatever that,

whatever the football

team's on the back bumper, right?

Yeah.

Um, American football, not soccer, right?

Yeah.

But anyway, Vikings, I guess would be our,

okay.

So, so they have a green basic or not.

I mean, to do that.

Yeah.

So they had a big cheese

head sticker on the back.

Whatever it is,

that's not something AI is

ever going to be able to do.

They're never going to be

able to pick up on nuances

of the customer interaction,

in my opinion.

There's always going to be something.

You can call,

and we've all seen these AI

videos on social media.

They call you at three in the morning,

right?

And they answer all the

customers' questions, right?

Mm-hmm.

but they don't build a relationship.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

And it's just, it's so close,

but it's missing that.

And I was like, what is it missing?

Like you see all these videos.

It's like, well,

it's missing the human element.

Like it's missing the fact

that it can bond with you.

Make it, make a, you know, Hey,

you're from up in Canada.

Hey, I got,

I got some buddies up in Canada.

You ever heard of Jeff Compton?

He does a Jada mechanic podcast.

He's up by Canada, right?

Like it's never going to

make those kinds of

connections to see if we

have something we can relate to.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

So I guess my point to get

off my tangent was, um,

With your software that you're creating,

it sounds like you're going

to need someone to direct

that AI to then improve the process.

I guess I got to start from square one.

What does it do?

How does someone get your program,

your process, and stay one in the shop?

What does that look like?

Yeah, but I would totally agree.

AI, especially right now, building trust,

that human factor,

it's what it's incapable of doing.

But one of the tools that we have is...

let's say for example, a car comes in,

what we do is we research

that car and tell you

exactly what maintenance is

due on that vehicle.

So typically the monotonous

task would be you pull up

all of your history,

anything you guys have done in the shop,

and you're looking through

all of the history that you

guys have done,

you look through the Carfax,

you compare it to the

maintenance interval,

you try and do the math back and forth of,

hey, this was done there, is it due now?

And you're doing this on fifteen items.

you know, that you want to look for.

So our,

one of our tools just does that

automatically.

So as soon as the RO is created,

you just click a button.

There's a full report on

exactly what is due on that

vehicle in terms of time

and mileage for that

customer based on its history.

So super simple tool.

So is that pulling the

history from prior reports

or from Carfax or from all of the above?

From all the above.

Yep.

Yep.

So there would have to be a

database for it to pull from.

In order for it to be effective,

obviously.

Yeah.

So that's why we integrate

with other shop management softwares.

So right now we're working

with Techmetric and Shopware.

So you still have to have

that shop management

software for us to be

pulling that information

from all that history that

you guys have previously or

the shop has previously done.

And that's what we're looking for.

Yeah.

I feel like that is kind of

a missing link.

as a vehicle comes into the shop, you know,

one of our protocols is to

have the service advisors

or the technicians look in

to see what the prior

service history was that's

in the reports or,

simply go through the

vehicle and see if there's

anything that's been fixed recently,

right?

So it is a pain point.

I could see needing that.

I could see a lot of friction saying, well,

that's what the advisors are paid for,

right?

Like that's what they're there for, right?

Why are you having this new

software when you already

have a body that can just

simply pull on reports and

being familiar with shopware,

it is quite an easy report to pull up.

Does it take thirty seconds?

Yeah.

Yeah.

But what's what's what's

your thought on on on that

kind of comment?

Yeah.

I mean, yeah.

obviously somebody can do it.

Like it's, uh, it's,

it would be part of their role,

but if it's that the shop gets super busy,

um,

and it's chaotic and you didn't have

time to do it before the

customers in there.

Now,

now your front of house is all chaos

with five people in there.

And, um,

it seems to always be one of the

first tasks that gets pushed to the side.

They sell the,

the easier work to sell is

the safety concern.

Hey, my technician saw this.

This is a problem.

You need to do this.

Um, and yeah,

That other maintenance work

sometimes is a little bit harder to sell.

It just it seems to be one

of the tasks that falls off.

Yeah, I can see.

I can see that you being

useful so that during the

inspection process, you're not.

you know,

recommending something that's

already been done or maybe

does cause it's under warranty or,

or what have you, right?

Like there's plenty of parts that fail.

And so you want to be proactive and say,

Hey, we noticed your whatever's leaking.

And we just did that about a year ago.

So we're going to go ahead

and warranty that for you.

And it takes a lot of that,

that pain or that pressure, that,

that uncomfortable phone

call where you're like, Hey, Mrs. Jones,

we valve cover gas is really good.

Well, you guys just did that a year ago.

Like, Oh,

that's just putting your foot in

your mouth.

Yeah,

and especially if you have a fluid

warranty or something like that,

it's pretty difficult

sometimes to keep people on track.

Maybe, you know,

they actually went over

their thirty K warranty.

Sure.

Our system would be very

good at just making sure

you catch it before that goes over.

Yeah, that makes sense.

I could I could see that being useful.

I guess what my question was

targeting is who the shops

that you're looking to to get into.

Right.

So I feel like someone like one technician,

no advisors, just the owner in tech.

I feel like maybe that's not

your target market, right?

And you're kind of looking

for the multi-shop or maybe

something in between.

What's,

do you have like a client avatar

that you have created?

Yeah, I would say, um,

definitely most of our

tools target the service

advisor and helping them

make their day to day a lot easier.

So, um,

And it would also be good

for getting a team.

I would say a lot of our tools,

if you have a super

experienced front of house,

they're already going to know what to do.

You have the procedure in there.

They, they're probably, you know,

can do everything our tool does.

But it's really good for a newer team.

So somebody who, you know,

is getting comfortable or

doesn't know the process already,

we could just completely do it for them.

So for example, just for example,

another one of our tools

helps them get more

information out of the

customer and by asking good questions.

So basically customer walks

in the door and they say, hey,

I have this weird noise

coming from my car.

If the technician just got

that and they didn't do

like a little research and

asking good questions to

the customer and the technician just got,

hey, there's a random noise here.

They could die out the wrong

noise or they could spend a

lot more time dying.

What our system does is it

gives them technical, not technical.

It gives them easy questions

to ask the customer to get

more information out of

them so that the technician

spend less time dying.

So it's really just good for

a newer team member,

somebody that isn't technical,

that doesn't have that experience,

but maybe they're a great salesperson.

So it could open up the door

to you being able to hire more people,

a more diverse group.

And that's what,

I think that's what a lot of our tools do.

They just empower people and

give it a wider range is

able to take on that role.

I feel like you're kind of

dumbing down AI in a sense.

If that resonates.

Whereas, you know,

we have open AI and chat GBT and sure,

you can add stuff in there, right?

Like you can use it to your

advantage if you know how

to script or you know how

to prompt it correctly, right?

And it sounds like what

you're doing is designing

something that makes it a little bit more

palatable right and you're

designing it so like don't

worry about the prompts we

got all that taken care of

here just use this and this

will it gives you all the

power of that without going

outside of your lane or

like outside of your bounds

yeah does that sound kind

of like what's going on

I think that's a perfect

explanation of it.

That's what it sounds like.

So two things.

We try and make it super easy,

as easy as possible.

There's only one path

forward for you to go.

And number two,

we build it in the place

they're most comfortable,

the shop management

software that they use every day.

They don't have to go to another site.

It works directly inside

where their team is used to

working all the time.

So they don't have to leave,

waste time going somewhere.

They don't have to copy and paste.

It interacts all natively right inside

And this sounds like

something that's going to

evolve with that shop, correct?

So you don't have a fresh, I mean,

the chat,

like the chat for O is good

where you can keep different groups,

right?

So you have different,

what do they call them?

Bots,

different bots for different subjects.

So this sounds like it's

probably going to keep

integrating with the shop.

So you're not having to start fresh,

right?

So you can say,

this is our branding package, right?

This is how we communicate.

This is what we say.

These are our taglines, right?

Um, I like to say we're,

we're shifting gears, auto repair.

So we're shifting expectations.

So I feel like that's

something I can incorporate.

And then it would always use that as a,

as a plug, I guess.

Yeah.

You can definitely build out

your own formats.

You can build out your own questions.

I mean, most people have, you know, good,

especially experienced front of house.

They have questions.

They know that work every

time somebody comes in with

a check engine light.

Right.

So you can train it,

you can teach it or you'll just learn.

So yes.

Okay.

Sounds like there's a lot going on,

a lot more than the surface

level stuff we're talking

with when it comes to this program.

Because it kind of sounded

like a little bit of just

helping take on the smaller tasks,

but it definitely sounds

like you can get it a lot

deeper into your shop as well.

Yeah.

Now,

what about the fear base where they're

like, oh,

now your whole shop just ran by AI,

right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, um, I,

I personally think there

still needs to be,

there's going to be a

person in the loop no matter what this,

the AI stuff, at least my knowledge,

I use it every day, all the time.

It needs to be checked.

It hallucinates information.

It comes up with stuff that they're like,

I, I even prompted you not to say that.

And you're still,

it's going like further

down a rabbit hole.

And so I think, um,

I think that there's still

going to be a person there in the loop.

And it's just maybe you

won't need three service advisors.

It'll just be two.

I see.

Yeah,

there's a lot of that where advisors

are going to be fired or

advisors are going to be

replaced by AI in a sense.

And the way I look at it is

what's it been about?

Ten years now?

Twelve years?

Remote advising?

Yeah.

Right.

I don't know if you if

you're familiar with that, but yeah,

there's call centers that

you can hire for your shop.

So all your all your calls

are then forwarded to a

third party out in

Indonesia or somewhere along those lines.

Like that's where those call centers are.

Right.

People are getting paid two bucks an hour.

Right.

So you have someone that

answers a phone there and

then redirects it once they

go through the script.

Right.

And that's been going on for a long time.

And I just don't know where

this whole freaking out

about chat GBT coming in.

Like, have you not been paying attention?

Do you know what a lot of

these MSOs are doing right

now with call centers?

Like, it's kind of crazy, right?

Like,

I'd rather have chat than pay someone,

you know, in a third world country.

Like, that's wild, man.

That's the last thing I wanted.

Like,

we all have help from Verizon or

somebody like that.

We've all had those conversations, right?

And you can tell pretty quick.

Yeah.

You can tell pretty quickly.

These companies are like,

that ain't working anymore.

Cause now you call and you

actually talk to someone in

the U S you're like, Oh, there we go.

Yeah.

Someone that understands my

freaking language.

All of the above though.

Again, it goes back to losing trust.

I think without having that

person in person

communication and building

a relationship with them overall,

all of it just lose trust.

So I don't know exactly

where that will head, but it,

that doesn't seem like a good thing.

I think the point here is

it's not black or white.

And I think everyone likes

those two colors so much, right?

Like it's either that or it's that, right?

And they forget about all

the gray in between, right?

I think here, seeing this,

the auto shop answers and

the coaching and seeing

that there's a lot of shades of gray,

right?

Like everyone wants to

standardize and an SOP.

And I feel like the secret kind of is...

in between there right is

being able to do the the

broad strokes of gray and

being able to run your

business based on that

right um it's it's

difficult because it's so

easy to put someone in a

box right or like say this

is exactly how it's going

to be every single time and

then you can walk away and

it's supposed to run like

that forever but we're in

the like we're in the

customer relation business

right like yeah you just

can't yeah no I totally

agree with that yeah

And I don't know if AI is

ever going to get to that

point where it's going to

differentiate between the two, you know,

and I've used and I'm sure you have to.

And sometimes you'll get a

little bit different

response on the same exact question.

And that's kind of strange.

And it's like, is that better or worse?

Right.

Is it is it trying to like

paint between the lines or

like what's what's the deal with that?

And I've seen a lot of prompts, too,

where you put something in that says,

let me get back to you.

And then you're like,

is this thing thinking right now?

I don't know if you had a,

have you had a problem like that yet?

I mean, I have it all the time.

I mean, we, I could,

a customer could come in and they have,

again,

like that noise complaint and it

could give me five perfect questions.

And the next time it's like

five other questions.

Right.

Like what,

what was wrong with the five

questions that I perfectly

liked last time?

That's true.

You know, I, I do think it's,

doesn't like to give the same information,

which is very weird.

It does like to push out new

stuff every time.

What about the thinking model?

Have you...

Witness that or do you know

anything about like the

thinking model when it comes?

Sometimes you add something

in there and it says,

give me twenty four hours

and I'll get back to you.

I have not seen it.

You haven't seen that?

No.

That's like the newest

iteration I've seen is that

you put something.

Let me get back to twenty

four hours and then you

wait twenty four hours and then it's like,

wait a second.

Like, is this thinking right now?

Like, is it coming up with an answer?

Yeah.

What kind of questions are

you asking that?

Oh, I don't remember.

I don't remember.

that thing normally solves

anything I have in two seconds.

Let me give you some, let me,

let me think about this or not think,

but it says,

let me get back to the twenty four.

Like what the hell?

I've never seen that before.

Yeah.

And I did some research and it was like,

is there, is there a thinking bot?

Right.

I'm like,

is this thing evolving to the

point where it's thinking?

I don't think so.

I don't,

I don't know if you knew anything

about that.

So I wanted to ask you, I did not,

I did not.

You probably work a lot

closer with it than I do.

And I'm, I just,

there's been a few times

where I've kind of broke it.

And part of it's with the podcast,

you know,

I'll transcript the product podcast.

And then it's like,

error, you know,

like a one hour transcript and it's like,

nope.

I'm like, oh, really?

I think what that is,

how crazy good it's gotten

with all the like videos,

all the pictures.

So basically in the past like year,

like last year,

it couldn't look at a PDF

and like properly analyze it very well.

That's true.

And now this year you can

have it make whatever image you want.

Yeah.

And it still is pretty goofy sometimes,

but like compared to like

Two years ago.

What's with the words?

Like you say like, Hey, I want this.

And then it's like,

it doesn't spell the words

in like banners and stuff.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Like, how do you, what?

You don't see that?

Like it's, it's, it's bizarre.

It is.

It is weird.

Right.

Why it doesn't get that.

But like the,

one of our tools it's able to

do is it can analyze photos

that the technicians take.

That's what I was going to ask next.

Yeah.

During their DVI.

So they can just go through,

snap some photos, you know,

I'm taking photos of, you know,

I don't know.

their brakes or their filters or, uh,

their cracked windshield or

dents on the outside.

And they don't even need to

give it anything.

It can analyze the photo,

which it does has been

doing like really good.

We just launched this

product about a month ago and, uh,

can write up a finding for them.

It saves them time.

So I think, you know, one of our,

at least for me,

I hate typing and I know a

lot of technicians, um, they don't know,

they don't know how they

don't spell good.

No, I'm just kidding.

Or they use like the voice to text,

which is super efficient.

I love that.

But it comes up with a lot of mistakes.

And so like one of our tools

cleans up all that and just

makes it super professional

and cleans up your grammar

and your spelling,

like simple things like that.

They leave the talk to text

on and then you get this

whole conversation about

something you definitely

didn't want to know about.

Like, hey, bud,

you left your talk to text

on for like about five minutes.

Yeah, under your brain inspection.

It's like a huge paragraph.

Yeah.

So but I mean, it's pretty cool.

Like you could just like give a color.

Let's say you're like you're

doing the inspection.

You mark your brakes as

yellow and that they're

five millimeter and it can

write up a whole statement

looking super professional saying like,

hey, you need to monitor these.

They're coming to like, you know,

just a type of or the

thickness that you need to

start monitoring.

Sure.

Sure.

And that sounds like you

could probably put can a can summaries.

So that way it's not a

different thing for every, you know,

you want the same

experience for the customer every time.

So once it does the one time,

it's just going to use that every time.

Yeah.

You know, that makes sense.

I can see that being super helpful with,

with the inspections and

trying to stay on top of that.

So yeah.

What's your biggest feedback

that you've gotten this

year with implementing it?

with specifically the like

photos and stuff?

Just in general, have you had any,

like what's your,

any hopefully positive feedback,

but any feedback in general

that you want to share

about shops that have

implemented this and what

they've seen the difference in?

Yeah, I mean,

definitely selling more gravy work.

That's our overall goal.

I think people have been super excited.

I think somebody who wasn't

in the industry, me,

I initially came in and

heard how hiring is one of

the biggest problems.

I know technicians and even

service advisors,

finding good people to work up front.

And I think our tools have

been able to make

you know, uh,

give you a more diverse crowd

that you can hire from.

So I think people have been super excited.

Uh, I have,

we have almost had no negative feedback,

um, over the past couple of months.

And, um, yeah,

I think it's all been pretty good.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

What's the, um, how does, so with the,

with the program,

you have to have a certain

management program, obviously to, to,

to integrate.

Um,

what does that process look like to set

up and to get someone on

board if they're interested

in wanting to do it?

Yeah, it's super simple.

You download a simple

extension that goes onto

your Google Chrome browser

or your Edge browser or

whatever internet browser you're using.

And it works in about two seconds.

Okay.

So super simple setup.

No onboarding process.

I mean, if you want to do maintenance,

we can onboard.

You track which items you want,

get those intervals in there.

Are you using OEM stuff?

There's a lot of specifications,

but in order to actually

just start using software

with some of these tools

like the asking good

questions and the text

write-up and cleanups,

it works right away.

Okay, nice.

So super simple.

And is the program slowly evolving?

So as it goes on,

are you going to be able to

use that AI model to...

be more established for new

shops or is every

integration going to kind

of start from square one?

Does that make sense?

Yeah, I think, um,

so we're kind of learning

from everybody and, uh,

I think the baseline model

is adequate for, you know, like you can,

you can,

it can learn and get better from there,

but, uh,

Is the plan to roll out more

advanced versions as they

learn from the other shops

and then you can sell the

advanced version at a different rate?

Like, hey,

this has already got all this

learning capability already done.

It's, you know, and then you could say,

here's your, here's your, your assistant.

I mean, yeah, I would say, uh,

Definitely,

especially when it comes to

writing up ROs, looking at your notes,

how you write things.

I would say the customer

concerns and asking

technical questions up front,

that's pretty simple.

But when it comes to helping

diag a situation or things like that,

that's kind of where I

think it needs a lot of learning.

Oh, yeah, I can see that.

I mean,

as far as having shops run it in

their shop for a certain amount of time,

and it's going to learn their process,

right?

Is that like a proprietary bot now?

Or is that software still

going to be technically

yours where you can use

that to then implement it

into another shop?

Does that make sense?

Kind of.

I would say... And like a learning model,

you'll have a certain DVI

that you want to share.

So let's say there's like

DVI programs out there, right?

And so over time,

they'll build a DVI and then they can say,

hey,

do you want to make this inspection

shareable or non-shareable, right?

And other shops say, oh,

that's a perfect inspection model.

I'll use that so I don't build my own.

Yes.

Is that something that

you're going to develop or

you're going to be able to...

Yes, I see what you're saying.

Yes.

Yeah, it's super easy to as soon as we,

you know, build that out.

And or if you have formats,

it would be very easy to

share or not share.

I guess my fear is like you have a chat,

you know,

bought with your shop for four

or five years.

It learns and perfects everything.

And then all of a sudden it's like, oh,

we'll just share that AI

model with with every other shop.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I can see some people being

pretty upset about

something like that happening.

Yeah.

We definitely don't want to

be giving out everybody's, uh, you know,

secret sauce.

Yeah.

I mean, not that there really is,

but some people really think there is.

So, you know, for sure.

Everybody kind of stinks.

Everyone's like,

What you do at your shop

doesn't work at your neighbor's shop,

right?

So it's not going to work

across the country.

It's not going to work in the same state.

It's everyone's got to do it.

But for some reason, everyone thinks, oh,

you're going to steal my stuff.

Yeah.

You could have the perfect

DBI process built out that

works insanely well in your shop.

But that doesn't mean a

different shop that

implements that is going to

have the process.

The shop down the road, right?

It's still not going to do it.

Yeah.

That makes sense.

Yeah.

Well, right on.

Anybody wants to get in touch with you.

How do they, what do they, how do we,

all that good stuff.

Yeah.

We're called detect auto and

you could just detect.

Yeah.

Detect auto.

There it is.

Two words right here.

So, um, yeah, just check out our website,

www.detectauto.com.

Um, we got a free trial, all of our stuff.

You can try it out for free,

see which products you like.

We've got four cool tools, um,

that anybody can use.

Is it contract month to month?

Just month to month.

So that thirty day free free

trial and then it's no contract.

No set up fees.

No set up fees.

You just roll.

Yeah.

So we really we I mean,

we're a new company just

trying to get people see

how they like all these these new tools.

So we're trying to get as

many people on the platform

to you and give us feedback.

Really been just trying to

grow over the past couple of months.

We just started with one tool, like I said,

eight months ago.

We're up to four now.

built solely based on feedback from,

from customers.

So it's a good, good spot to get in and,

and, uh, help,

help you grow and help all

shops grow and be on the

ground floor or something.

Uh,

you're still working with the

co-founders.

So like I'm one of the ones

that are on boards, everybody.

So, um,

and then I turn around and my

roommate is the CTO who's

building everything in the

next room over.

So it's a pretty short cycle there.

The customer service is a

lot better than calling Indonesia.

Yes, I hope so.

Or else I'm doing something wrong,

for sure.

Well, right on.

Well, thanks for coming on and sharing,

man.

Pleasure.

Yeah, it was a fun time.

Yeah.