Casa Auto Group, a dealership group with 14 new car rooftops, is utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) across its organization to enhance the customer experience and increase employee productivity. According to Jarrod Kilway, the group’s vice president of digital operations, AI is viewed as an accelerator, eliminating repetition and helping employees make faster decisions.
Kilway noted that the goal of internal AI usage should be to make employees more productive and enhance the customer experience. The group has been testing ways to use AI in its operations and has found viable use cases across sales, marketing, and fixed operations.
Success Stories
One success story is the use of AI to assess data from Urban Science, which provides actionable insights to dealers, manufacturers, and automotive marketers. By analyzing this data, Kilway can discover how many customers Casa is winning, which customers defected, and whether the defection was to a brand represented in the group’s rooftop count.
For example, if a customer came into Casa’s Ford store but did not buy a vehicle and instead bought a Nissan from a non-Casa store, AI can help identify that pattern. This information can be used to assess what could have been done better on the Ford sales side to potentially shift that customer to a Casa Nissan customer.
Kilway plans to use this knowledge to develop targeted coaching tools with micro-training module firm RockED. Another use case is the reduction of time to create compliant marketing material. Casa Auto Group creates many of its own marketing materials for sales events, which can be onerous and time-consuming.
Using AI, the process that usually takes four or five days can now be done in a few hours. Additionally, AI can help business development centers use time more productively. Casa uses Numa software as a backstop for after-hours service, which has provided data on the percentage of calls where people are trying to schedule a service appointment.
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It was found that up to 67% of calls are just seeking a status update. With this AI-generated data, Casa began routing the status updates to service advisors, leading the group to acquire additional service advisors to provide better status updates.
Fixed Operations
The business development center was able to focus more on outreach and awareness of service product offerings, special order arrivals, and applicable recall warranty components. Kilway noted that the business development center became more focused on awareness and nurturing relationships with customers who have made purchases or used services from Casa.
Kilway also observed that AI may be contributing to a rise in customer defections for vehicle maintenance, as customers seek out more transparent pricing than dealerships always provide. He noted that customers are using AI to seek out information before they make a service visit, and AI offers more pricing information than is revealed on many dealership websites.
According to Kilway, fewer than 5% of franchised dealers in the U.S. have a transparent price for an oil change on their website, compared to 92% of independents. This lack of transparency is a significant issue, and Kilway believes it is already happening, with Cox Automotive’s November 2025 Automotive Service Industry Study finding that dealers’ share of service visits in 2025 fell to 29% from 33% in 2018.
The lack of transparent pricing on dealership websites is a significant concern for Kilway, as it can lead to customer defections to independent service providers. He notes that customers are using AI to research and compare prices before making a service visit, and dealerships that do not provide clear pricing information may be at a disadvantage. This trend is already evident in the data, with Cox Automotive’s study showing a decline in dealerships’ share of service visits.
Future Developments
As Casa Auto Group continues to deploy AI across its operations, Kilway is exploring new ways to utilize the technology to enhance the customer experience and improve employee productivity. One area of focus is the development of targeted coaching tools using micro-training modules from RockED. By analyzing data on customer defections and sales patterns, Kilway can identify areas where employees need additional training and support to improve their performance.
