Welcome to the Daily 5 report for Monday, July 7.
Thousands of words are published daily about artificial intelligence's potential greatness, and indeed its potential dangers.
One way that AI is helping: the effectiveness of dealership service calls.
The 2025 Pied Piper Auto Dealer Group Service Telephone Effectiveness Study showed improvements across a majority of dealerships. Industrywide, average telephone service performance was up 6 points since 2023 with an average score of 64 this year. It was 60 in 2024.
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The study also looked at how dealerships are using AI to change how they handle service calls.
Pied Piper conducted the study by calling 2,105 stores representing 26 of the largest U.S. auto dealership groups. They also called 200 independent service centers for comparison.
The study found dealerships using AI to answer service calls handled them successfully 91 percent of the time without assistance from a human. When AI successfully handled an entire service call, the score was 72 — 8 points higher than this year's national dealership group average.
AI does have its weaknesses. For example, when the technology was unable to handle a customer service request — in about 9 percent of cases — transferring to a human associate failed 56 percent of the time.
"AI now often outperforms human staff on service calls, but handoffs to people frequently fall apart," said Cameron O'Hagan, Pied Piper's vice president of metrics and analytics. "Dealers must use AI as a tool — not a crutch — and stay committed to staffing and smooth transitions."
Group 1 Automotive was the top dealership group for performance with a score of 76 in the Pied Piper study.
Other stories you'll want to check out today include Nissan suspending production of three models for the Canadian market at two U.S. assembly plants, General Motors' China sales rebounding for the second quarter, Jaguar-Land Rover's U.S. sales falling 11 percent and Roger Penske's latest dealership purchase.
That's it for now.
Have a great rest of your day.
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— Wes Raynal, assistant web editor
