Dyer Automotive Group's customers didn't change. The AI answering them did.

Customer snapshot

• Jay Holmes is VP of Fixed Operations at Dyer Automotive Group in Florida, Numa's Dealership of the Month for October 2026.

• About six months into a phone system from another AI company, Dyer's CSI and customer service scores had fallen hard.

• When the team pulled its own calls, 63% came from customers checking on their cars, and more than 40% of callers were angry.

• The phones were a symptom of customers waiting to hear back, so Dyer chose Numa for its second try at AI.

• Numa trainers worked with the team in the store, and advisors and managers asked Holmes why they hadn't had it before.

• Advisors now have a record to show a customer who says nobody called, and Holmes says they can now concentrate on selling.

• BDC Manager Sofia Gonzalez's advice when a first try goes wrong: "take a different leap."

Jay Holmes is VP of Fixed Operations at Dyer Automotive Group, Numa's Dealership of the Month for October 2026. Dyer came to Numa after a first try with AI went wrong, and the turnaround started when the team studied its own phone calls.

Holmes helps shape how Dyer's stores in Florida operate. The biggest change Holmes has seen in fixed operations is speed. Customers who once waited for a phone call now expect an answer right away.

Another Product Didn't Solve It

At Dyer, the demand for fast answers landed on the phones. Answering them was the biggest problem in Dyer's service departments, Holmes says, so Dyer brought in AI answering from an AI product.

Holmes remembers the pitch as "nice, bright, and shiny." About six months later, Dyer's CSI and customer service scores had "dropped like a rock."

Holmes now calls the system "one of the worst things we did." The team had lost touch with its customers, Holmes says, and the system gave Dyer no read on how callers were feeling. Retention was slipping, and advisors were overwhelmed.

What Dyer Found in Its Own Calls

By then, CSI had been falling for four or five months, Holmes says. The team pulled the calls the old system had answered and sorted them by what each caller wanted and how each caller felt.

By Dyer's own count, 63% of those calls came from customers checking on their cars. More than 40% of callers were angry, and the top complaint, Holmes says, was that nobody had called them back.

Reading those results took some humility. "It took a lot just to honestly look at it and humble yourself a little bit and say, what did we do that broke it?" Holmes says. The answer, which Holmes calls a shock, was the system Dyer had added about six months earlier.

A Callback Problem

The phones were a symptom. Customers called because they hadn't heard back about their cars.

Dyer needed to see which customers had heard from the store, Holmes says, and to make reaching the rest easier for its people.

"We need a solution that says, have we called them back? We want to be able to look, and to make it easier for our people to call people back and communicate back to our customers. Right? Which we didn't have."

— Jay Holmes, VP of Fixed Operations, Dyer Automotive Group

The Numa Difference

Dyer took another look at Numa, an AI system built for car dealerships. Holmes remembers Numa describing itself as a way to help Dyer's people communicate with customers, which matched the everyday life in a dealership.

Holmes also puts the first failure down to fit. The people who built the first system "weren't car people," Holmes says, while Numa's team had "already been through all the headaches."

Sofia Gonzalez, who manages the BDC that Dyer calls its customer care department, saw the same gap. Gonzalez suspects the first provider didn't account for who Dyer's customers are: people who like a personal touch.

Trainers in the Store

After the first AI product, the team was wary of another new program. A lot of the advisors, service managers, and BDC agents had the same reaction, Gonzalez says: "here we go again."

Numa sent trainers to work with people one-on-one in the store, and Holmes counts that among the biggest reasons the second try took hold. The first provider had handed over the system with no training. "Boom. Hope it works for you," in Holmes's words. "I think we got more training from Numa than we did when we installed a new CRM," Holmes says.

Gonzalez credits the on-site training, along with a better product, with turning the team's reaction around. The rollout went much the same way in all the stores, Holmes says.

Holmes had expected advisors to see Numa as one more process to fit into the day. Advisors and managers came back with a different question, Holmes says: "why didn't we have this before?"

A Record That Backs Advisors Up

In Numa, advisors and managers see open repair orders with queues for callbacks, text-backs, and status updates, plus the time of each one's last update. Calls and texts made through Numa keep it current.

One reason advisors like the record, Holmes says, is that it backs them up: "If it's not in Numa, it didn't happen." If a customer says nobody called, the advisor can pull up the history and show it.

Gonzalez's BDC agents see the same record. If a status call comes in and an agent sees the customer in Numa, the agent offers to help the advisor, Gonzalez says: "do you want me to call them? Do you want me to give them the update?"

Numa also comes up in Dyer's daily reports and weekly meetings. Holmes says the team reviews its Numa number there, alongside gross profit and the other metrics Dyer tracks.

Back to Selling

Dyer hires service advisors for "that tenacity to sell," Holmes says, but before Numa those advisors were "spending 30, 40% of their time on the phones." Holmes put the problem as a question: "Why do we have someone with that personality, the made-to-sell, spending all their time answering phones?"

Holmes says call volume has come down since the team could see who had heard back. Advisors can concentrate on selling. Some of the time that went to the phones now goes to multi-point videos, and Dyer sends more of them to customers.

In the BDC, agents have appointments back in their hands, Gonzalez says. Some callers used to reach them minutes after a bad experience with the old system, already upset. That has stopped, and Gonzalez has seen the agents' attitudes shift.

Holmes credits Numa with more than lower call volume.

"It's increased CSI, it's increased NPS, it's increased customer satisfaction, increased gross profit, and employee retention."

— Jay Holmes, VP of Fixed Operations, Dyer Automotive Group

"Take a Different Leap"

Asked what a dealership should do first, Holmes says to find the biggest obstruction in the business and take an honest look at it. In most dealerships, Holmes thinks, that's communication and the phone.

Holmes's advice is still to embrace AI, "even with your customers. And help them use it."

Gonzalez has seen both tries from the BDC.

"Change is very hard for people sometimes, and change is hard for businesses, right? ... You just have to take a leap. And sometimes, like we did, we take a leap, and then it's not a good leap, and then we have to go back, so go back to the drawing board and take a different leap."

— Sofia Gonzalez, BDC Manager, Dyer Automotive Group