dealers · 2026-09-15 · 24m36s
09-15 Lecture: Virtual Contact Assistant Training for Sales and Managers
VCA staff training (VinSolutions) — Michael Pratt
Tue Sep 15 lecture for sales + managers on Virtual Contact Assistant (“Vanessa”).
What it is: Behind-the-scenes AI that engages customers, books appointments, gathers info. When she can’t handle a request (discount, trade, credit, etc.), she creates a needs-help task for the salesperson.
Sales play:
- Live on the task page; find the Vanessa banner
- Open customer profile → review Vanessa thread (don’t rely on generic “needs help” alone)
- Contact the customer, then Complete the task — never Dismiss (reads as ignored)
- Sentiment colors are keyword-ish; always read the thread
- Pause 1–30 days when customer asks no AI / vacation / negative thread; managers resume from profile or pause list
Managers: Live view of VA emails/texts; Insight Virtual Assistant Dashboard; Settings → Dealer Settings → Virtual Assistant Settings (pause list).
Config notes from room: VA often has its own text line vs dealership SMS (confirmed pattern on Harris Porsche in-session). Appointments follow store hours.
Dest: dealers (BH group VCA path). Disposition: park — training reference for Sep 21 cutover; no new build WO.
No device highlights on this take.
0:04
Hey, Lance. How are you, bud?
0:06
Man, I'm good.
0:06
How about you? Doing pretty good, man. So I'm assuming today's crew is what we have in front of us. We're not missing anyone that needs to join for today.
0:18
Man, not that I know of. You might have a few people pop in here from. What was I thinking? Like the Porsche store. They were mentioning maybe we can do it, but.
0:31
Do you want me to give it just a couple minutes, just in case, then, Lance?
0:35
Yeah,
0:35
Give it a couple minutes. Okay. Looks like we just got Jeffrey to join.
0:41
ASAP. The training is starting here now in the next two minutes. Okay, but then you can't send her. She's got to watch the door. All right, Dave. Thank you. All right, we're good. Unless somebody's joining from Porsche, you want me to call next up?
1:00
Well, Jeffrey's on.
1:01
Yeah, looks like Jeffrey joined. Didn't know if you think there may be a couple more joining or not. I can hang out for a couple minutes before we start too, if needed.
1:09
No, we don't need it.
1:10
We can just start. Jeffrey just said two more joining, so I'll give it a moment to let them join. Also.
1:27
Is this going to be just sales again, or is there going to be any managers jumping on today,
1:31
Lance? We have one manager in here today, Jeffrey. Okay, perfect. And then just want to make sure Jeffrey at Porsche is also a manager. Look at that, this cocksucker.
2:21
Once Jeffrey lets me know if his two people are good, it looks like we got a manual that just joined, so we should be getting one more person based on what Jeffrey said.
2:53
Is this.
2:57
Transformers Sidekick? No. Dragon Ball Z. Dragon Ball Z. Nice. I watch Sidekick.
3:05
Man, I haven't heard Dragon Ball Z in forever.
3:08
It's coming back, I guess.
3:11
That's it. All right. Looks like we got Seth to join. A Jeffrey. Was it Emmanuel and Seth the two that you were talking about joining? Perfect. Are we good to go and start, guys? Yep. Awesome. All right, guys. So, where are we? We're afternoon, right? All right. You're Central Time, so you're still afternoon too. So, good afternoon, everyone. My name is Michael Pratt. I'm going to be your Vend Solutions trainer today, and I'm going to be reviewing one of your new products that you guys have purchased for your three store group, called your Virtual Contact Assistant.
3:50
What your virtual assistant is going to be doing is working behind the scenes with some of your customers, and her objective is to get the customer in on an appointment and gather as much info for you as possible. Any time that she is gathering info and something comes up that she is not able to help out her customer with, she is going to create a task for you guys, letting you know your virtual assistant needs help. What I'm going to do today is teach you guys how to review that. And also, how to make sure you can complete those tasks in a timely manner. I'm going to review two different things. First, I'm going to review something with the managers, letting you guys know where you all can see the everyday task from your virtual assistant, and then we'll jump right into the sales side, showing the salespeople how to review the task. Also, so managers that are on this call, I do want to let you know, just like a regular user, when they're sending out emails and text.
4:48
You guys would be able to see that email and text communication right here and live, on top of being able to see the physical user for your virtual assistant, and you can see her emails and texts that are going out and any tasks that are on her page. The other part that you can see is right here. If there was ever a Vanessa task created under an individual's task page, you as managers could click on this number one. You guys would be able to scroll down, and you could see what was needing help for your individual users. Also, salespeople, the way you guys are going to do it is you're always going to be on your task page, and all you would have to do is scroll down until you see the banner for Vanessa to see if you have any task. Now, if you do have a task, fair warning, it's not going to go over many details right here. It's going to say your virtual assistant needs help.
5:44
What you can do is click into your customer's profile, and based on the tasks that are here, you may see an area where it talks about exactly what your customer was needing help with. This not always there, so if this not there, you can also scroll down to your Vanessa banner, and you can click on this, and you can look back at the back and forth communication with your virtual assistant. Now, keep in mind, guys, if you have sent emails or text. Those will be in here also. This is only emails and text. However, if you scroll down, your notes and history will decipher it between if it was you or your virtual assistant here. But it will also do that same piece within here too. I'm just giving you guys that heads up. Now, when you're in here, what you're going to look for is you're going to scroll up until you see the most recent conversations.
6:38
And somewhere within that customer's conversations, they asked your virtual assistant something that she was not able to help out with, such as, "Hey, I want a discount on that car. Can you give me more for your trade? Can I fill out a credit app and you tell me what that credit is?" There are specific items that your virtual assistant cannot do, and that's when she'll create that "I need help." The other part that you're looking for on top of the conversation is where does she mark? Specifying that she's flagging someone to review their request. The reason you're looking for that is the very first conversation right behind that is usually the reason why she's asking for help. So once you know the reasoning, whether you looked at it here, or up at the top, you found that notification that told you about it. It is now your responsibility to look into that info and decide to call, email, or text your customer.
7:37
And as soon as you do, and you've completed that task, I want you guys to make sure you're back on the task, and you guys are completing it here. Please do not hit dismiss because this is telling your managers you did not care about that virtual assistant task, and that you most likely did not do anything. If you have read the alert and you have completed that alert, please make sure you're letting your managers know by clicking on it here, or here. But then also, don't forget to complete the task if it did tell you exactly why she was needing help. Click here. Do not hit dismiss. On top of being able to click into the banner to find out why she needs help and allowing you guys to call, email, and text your customer within this banner, you can also see what kind of sentiment that your customer is having a conversation with your virtual assistant.
8:28
What I mean by that is, when you scroll up next to all of the communications that have been back from your customer, you can see a color on the side of it, letting you know: is there a potential positive conversation? Is there a potential neutral conversation, which is in gray? Or if any of these were ever marked red, that is a potential negative. But please keep this in mind, even if this has potential negative sentiment. Please go find the communication that's negative because it may not be negative. The reason I say that is it is an AI system. It is pulling up key words. So if the customer said something such as "no, thank you," it could put that as a potential negative because of the keyword "no." So, if you ever find that your customer is having that negative conversation,
9:22
We do have a section in here where you could pause the assistant. Now, that's just one reason you could pause it. Maybe your customer asks you to have no more communication with your virtual assistant. Maybe your customer tells you they're going on vacation for a couple of weeks and does not want to be bothered. You guys have the capability of clicking on the pause assistant, and it will allow you to pause it for one, up to thirty days. When you guys select it and you pause that customer, it will tell you how long will that customer be paused. And just so you all are aware, if you pause this, or if your manager set up to where it will auto pause due to live human contact, your managers that have admin access have the ability to go into their settings, dealer settings, virtual assistant settings, and they have what's called a pause list.
10:19
This pause list will let them know who the customer is, who it was paused by, whether it was you as an individual or your virtual assistant. Will tell you how long it's paused. If it's your virtual assistant that paused it, it will give you a reason. However, if you paused, you can see there's no individual reason. It just tells you how long. Now, managers that are on this call, if you are utilizing this piece, you are not wanting to hit remove. If you ever wanted to unpause this customer sooner, you would want to click into your customer's profile, bring it up to their customer dashboard, and now that word that said pause will now say the word resume. And either you, as individual salespeople, and or your manager, can click into here at any time, and they can automatically resume her. And now she is no longer paused. It gives you the capability of being able to restart that pause.
11:17
And managers, if you refresh this screen, go back to your pause list. You'll see there is no longer any pause. Any questions from managers or sales on how you all are able to utilize the pause assistant button.
11:31
So, for when there's an alert on there, as soon as you complete the email, text, or call task, when the alert is there, does it complete the task?
11:46
Nope. If you call, email, and text, you still have to be the one to complete it by clicking on the icon itself, and then it would complete that task. Because if you remember, like if it was a call task and you completed it that way, yes. But because these are alerts, there's a call, email, and text does not complete alerts. You would just click on the icon itself.
12:07
A quick. This might be jumping ahead. Go ahead. With podium that we have right now, we have certain phone numbers. Are those phone numbers going to transfer over to the new CRM ability?
12:22
Oh, not that I'm aware of. Unless you guys update it and purchase like your call tracking. Yeah. If you're talking about actual phone numbers themselves,
12:31
He's talking about like the like the active the outgoing number that the system is messaging. Yeah.
12:36
No. Because so so now all those customers are going to be cut off at a certain.
12:40
Well, they're not gonna be cut off. You still message them through here. They're all they're all in Vend. I understand this. One of the things that I'm gonna do is export all of this shit out of Podium. I don't know how much it'll help, but I think most of that shit's in Vend anyway. But I'm gonna export it so I have literally like every customer we talked to in Podium.
13:01
Can you do a group text saying, " Hey, this is the text number that you should be communicating through now."
13:09
No, it won't be a group message. You just have to have to do it. Message only from the new one. Okay. Wait, you mean like us going out to everyone?
13:17
Yeah,
13:17
Just like. I could look into it.
13:20
You're doing, you know what I'm saying?
13:21
Because I think that that's easier if you guys, when you're interacting with someone, say, " Hey, this is our new number. We'll be messaging from here from now on." Yeah.
13:28
So we like a.
13:28
Treat it like an individual case, a template or something. Okay. Yeah. Will there will there be a template system in there that they can manage their own little text templates inside of Vend?
13:42
Not on here. Only managers have access to text templates. So we could, you guys would, they could use them. Yeah. Okay. Correct. And I'll show you real quick. If you guys, I know I'm on the virtual, but it was the same way of getting to it. When you go to settings, ILM CRM settings and templates. You guys can update and create email templates, and you can update and create text message templates. But this is admin only access, so keep that part in mind.
14:09
Cool. I guess ah any another question? Sorry. Yeah, go ahead. So, is this a part of Vend Solutions,
14:17
Correct? Yep. Yes. So, virtual assistant is all in Vend now.
14:21
So, if we start this text communication. Where it was with Podium before, and now we start. Can we just go ahead and start telling people and texting people through our system now? Yes. Okay.
14:34
Yeah. If so, we have it set up right now, and I'm just trying to avoid double billing for the stores. But we have it set to where she's not going to be actively engaging until the 21st, because that's when Podium turns off. But I think, as far as I know. Michael, right? I mean, it's live, and they can message from.
14:53
Yeah, you just start. Everything's live. It just comes down to your virtual assistant portion. The processes you guys haven't turned them on yet, so she just won't be engaged herself until you guys activate her.
15:07
But when she does engage, it'll be the same number that they would be messaging from.
15:11
So that depends. Usually, they'll create a dealership text line for all of you individuals, and then usually your virtual assistant has her own text line. It depends on if they set it up as normal. That is usually how it's created, where it would be two separate texts. So if you all text the customer, it will come from one line. If your virtual assistant texts, it will come from another. That way, it can help your customers kind of decipher between the two. That is usually how it is set up. Now, here, just instead of guessing, hold on. Let's just do this. Let me go into one of the locations and see how they set it up for you guys. I'm gonna go into Harris Porsche real quick and let's see.
15:59
Okay. Yep. So, like I thought, your virtual assistant has one text line that your customer is seeing. And then you guys have your dealership SMS number, where that would be what would reflect. Now, keep in mind, this is Harris Porsche. This is not Audi or BMW. This is just looking at it here. So I'm assuming that's how they probably set it up for the other two locations, so that it is separated from your standard text to your virtual assistant text.
16:31
So is it? So let's say virtual assistant starts, and we respond to communication. It's going to be a separate number that we're responding to the community.
16:39
It would be. It will be. So, is there an option because that that's retarded?
16:44
Yeah,
16:44
That's kind of crazy.
16:46
That is just how they've always set it up to have the two lines. I will tell you, if the customer's already opted in with their phone number, which let me double check to see how you guys set it up real quick.
16:57
Yeah, I haven't set up.
16:58
So you guys did the manual opt in. So as long as you guys had her. The customer already opted in. It would not cause any issues. It would just allow you to start texting. So my recommendation for that is, if you are texting at this time, to still call yourself out that hey, my name is so and so. I'm reaching out due to Vanessa bringing up that blah, whatever the reasoning is, because it will always show a different line, and that's usually to keep her separated so that if she gets a text message back.
17:31
It's not going into your communication saying unresponded. It's going strictly to her saying it was unresponded for her customer. That way, it allows and triggers the fact that it's her reply, not if you text the customer and they reply to you. She's not going to go behind your text and try to reply back to that same customer. That is the reason they usually separate the line. Now, don't know if you can combine them. That would be a question you could ask Gage, your PM andor and/or support. I have not been informed that they do it that way, but doesn't mean that it can't. Gage could tell you a yes or no answer, though, on that part.
18:12
We can get fully off that topic. We can just like okay wrap up wrap up the train.
18:18
Not a problem, because we'll just get back over here. Oh, hey, trust me, I'm used to it. It don't bother me. I I don't mind answering questions.
18:28
I'm not a fan of it. It's not your fault. No,
18:33
No, hey, don't bother me. Hey, this is your trading. You tell me what you want. I'm golden. All right, guys. So on top of completing the task and being able to click into the banner and see the sentiment plus all conversations, the last part you get in here is the show details. This will let you know if it's still the active lead, if she's got any vehicle of interest andor and/or trade info. Has she created any tasks or created any appointments? Now, one major call out that I want to bring up is if she makes appointments for you all, she is not making appointments based on your individual schedule as a salesperson. She is making appointments based on your dealer's hours of operation. So please, guys, if she makes an appointment, please verify that that appointment makes sense. That she didn't accidentally double book you because she is not looking at that.
19:25
So if you get a task that she's created an appointment, please look into that appointment. Go into your appointment section and make sure if that appointment makes sense to you. And if it does, perfect. If not, I highly recommend reaching out and trying to reschedule just in case. Now that's all depending on how Lance set it up. To where if he did set it up to where she is making appointments, that will come into effect. If Lance turns off the making an appointment in your customer ask. She'll create a " I need help " task for you to create and finalize that appointment. That will all come down to you, Lance. Okay?
20:01
Yeah, and that'll and that's something that we purposely just are kind of. I have it set the way we have it set. I think she's allowed to make appointments, but we're going to definitely leave that up to, you know, the Porsche store, the BMW store, the Audi store. They can kind of individually decide how they want it to operate. Definitely. Yep.
20:19
Now, based off the individual virtual assistant, when it comes down to your task page, when it comes down to how you read your task and your banner and/or pausing her, is there any questions, comments, concerns on the salespeople side before I jump into the last thing for managers? All right, guys. So I do want to let managers know that you do have what's called an Insight Virtual Assistant Dashboard report. So if you guys go into your Insights, select all, come in here and just type in the word virtual, and it's going to be the only one that populates. And go ahead and save it as a favorite, so it just auto saves. And when you go in here.
21:07
This is giving you a 360 overview of how your virtual assistant is actually handling at your individual store. Now it's automatically going to be month to date. So if you want to see more than month to date, you can click into your gear icon, click Edit, go down to your date range, and you can change it by these filters. Once you are updated and you hit Done, it will reflect those updates. Now this going to tell managers how well she's performing, all the way from actual contact all the way down to the sale. It's going to let you know what kind of activity she's done today, how well she's pacing on appointments from last month to this month. But salespeople, this one of the reasons why I let you guys stay in this. Is I like to call this out. If you remember, I brought up when you have an active task and you mark it complete.
21:58
Managers see that you completed it, but if you hit dismiss, managers see you dismissed it. Also, if they see you've completed 50 but you've dismissed 50, they're gonna wonder why you guys aren't completing tasks. They may not look into the dismiss to see that you dismissed it for a specific reason. So please, guys, it's as easy as clicking on that little icon to complete that task, letting your managers know you looked into it and you completed it rather than killing that task. The other things managers will get to see is how well she's communicating based on her in and outbound text and emails, how many of those customers are unique, and if there's any unanswered communication out there via text or email for her. You can also see her as a full individual, how well she's confirming text messages and emails based on that sentiment. It will break it down from here. You can see her actual communication all in one place, and then.
22:55
You can also see how well she's doing appointments, what she's set, all the way down to what's been sold, any of her future appointments, any unsold and missed appointments, all in this report. Fair warning: this is only a manager-only and admin-plus access. Unless your managers gave you specific access as a salesperson, salespeople would not see this. Other than that, guys, that does conclude everything that we need to know about our virtual assistant. I want to leave the floor open just in case. Is there any questions, comments, or concerns on how the virtual assistant will be working? And would you guys like to see the settings so you guys got an idea of what processes she would be in if wanted? I'm only calling that out so salespeople knew where she would be involved or not involved if wanted.
23:49
I don't think we need to get involved in it. Yeah.
23:52
No, not a problem. I just wanted to ask again, like I did yesterday. All right, guys. Then that concludes this training. If there is nothing else, Lance, remember we have our last training tomorrow at the exact same time. Are we still good for that one?
24:06
Yep. Perfect. Then I will see you guys tomorrow. And then Lance, if wanted, if you want to review any of those settings at the end of that class, let me know, and I can review some more of the settings if needed.
24:19
But remember, Gage will be your finalization on those processes and settings for her. Okay.
24:24
Sounds perfect, man.
24:25
Thank you. Not a problem, guys. Appreciate you for jumping on, and I'll see you again tomorrow, Lance. Bye, bye. Bye, guys.
24:33
Bye.