The Text Disconnect

I'm going to describe a person, and I want you to think about whether they're your customer. They're in their 30s or 40s. They have a professional job. They're busy—meetings, kids, errands, life. When they need to communicate with a business, their strong preference is text. Not because they're antisocial. Because text is efficient.

This person is absolutely your customer. They're buying cars at the peak of their earning years. They're servicing vehicles that carry their families. They represent your most valuable demographic.

And when this person tries to interact with your dealership via text, what happens? "Please call us at your earliest convenience." "A representative will call you to discuss." Your customer preference is text. Your dealership preference is phone. This isn't a minor friction—it's a fundamental disconnect that's costing you business every single day.

Let's talk about how dramatically communication preferences have shifted. Twenty years ago, text messaging was something teenagers did. Business communication happened via phone and email. Texting a business? Weird.

That world is gone. Texting is now the dominant communication mode for anyone under 50, and it's rapidly becoming preferred for those older too. People text their doctors. They text their lawyers. They text their banks. They text their kids' teachers. The expectation that real business happens by phone is a relic that persists mainly in industries that haven't bothered to update.

Automotive retail is one of those industries. Walk into most dealerships and you'll find phone systems from 2010, email processes from 2005, and text capabilities that are either nonexistent or so clunky that they might as well be.

Text messaging has an enormous advantage over phone calls: it's asynchronous. Both parties don't have to be available simultaneously. The customer can send a message during a meeting and receive the response after. The dealership can respond immediately or within minutes without requiring the customer to wait on hold.

The async advantage matters enormously to busy people. A phone call requires blocking out time, finding a quiet place, and giving full attention. A text requires seconds of thumb activity and can happen anywhere. The parent who can't take a phone call while managing kids can easily text. The professional who can't step out of meetings can text under the table.

When you force customers to call, you're asking them to find time they don't have. Some will do it anyway. Many won't. They'll put it off, then forget, then drift to the competitor who made it easy.

Something magical happens with text communication that never happens with phone calls: everything is documented. Every message, every promise, every detail—captured in writing, searchable, reviewable.

For customers, this documentation is reassurance. They have a record of what was discussed, what was promised, what was agreed. No more "I thought you said..." disputes. No more forgotten details. The conversation history is right there.

For dealerships, documentation is protection and insight. Every customer interaction is logged automatically. Managers can review conversations for quality. Disputes have clear records. Training becomes easier when you can show real examples. The documentation dream is a win for everyone.

Here's where AI transforms the text equation entirely. Human text conversations, while preferred by customers, create capacity problems for dealerships. One person can handle one phone call at a time, but they can handle maybe three or four text conversations simultaneously. That's better, but it's still limited.

AI removes the limit. An AI system can handle hundreds of simultaneous text conversations, each one personalized, each one responsive, each one moving toward resolution. The customer who texts at 11 PM gets a response in seconds. The customer who texts during the Saturday rush doesn't wait.

AI text isn't just automation—it's the communication experience customers actually want, delivered at scale they couldn't otherwise receive.