“We Built an AI Department” - Why Dealers Need a Real AI Strategy Anyway | Jeff Swickard, President/CEO of Swickard Auto Group

About this episode

Jeff Swickard discusses the importance of building an AI department within a dealership group and the strategies involved in operationalizing AI.

Most dealers are talking about AI. Jeff Swickard is building an AI department inside his auto group. In this special episode of The Dealer Playbook, Michael Cerullo sits down with Jeff Swickard, President & CEO of Swickard Auto Group , to unpack what it actually takes to operationalize AI inside a dealership group—without breaking culture, customer experience, or your tech stack. Jeff shares how they built an enterprise data warehouse in Microsoft Azure, why integration is the real battle, and how they’re using agentic AI + sentiment analysis to protect and improve the guest experience—especially in service. What you’ll learn: Why Swickard Auto Group created an internal AI department How an enterprise data warehouse solves “nothing integrates” chaos The role of APIs + bidirectional data feeds with the DMS and vendors Using AI to measure call quality + customer sentiment in a high-volume service contact center Why hospitality is the long-term differentiator (and how tech should support it) How to drive buy-in from employees and avoid “here we go again” resistance The real leadership skill: prioritization, iteration, and pivoting “Buy vs. build” in automotive tech—and how to…

People in this episode

Host: Michael Cirillo

Guest: Jeff Swickard

Topics covered

• AI strategy
• automotive technology
• customer experience
• data integration
• leadership skills

Keywords

• AI
• automotive
• data warehouse
• customer sentiment
• integration
• leadership
• technology

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Swickard Auto Group, Microsoft Azure

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