today by Gary Lavin Gary how are you

today

I’m excellent thank you Andy how about

yourself I am excellent Stan warm here

in uh somewhat Sunny Western New York

Gary’s with CEO Juice where are you

today Gary

I am in Sunny San Diego Sunny San Diego

I have to say I’m a little bit jealous

uh early enough in the morning I guess

your son your son is up so tell us a

little bit about who is CEO Juice and uh

when when did you guys start and then

I’ve got some things we want to chat

about today

uh well CEO Juice provides business and

artificial intelligence for copier

dealers

and we have about 96 of the medium to

large

guys in in the US and Canada as clients

and uh we started in

2009. so been gone for a little while

now

yeah you passed the decade Point

um you’re all you’re always sort of

behind the scenes in a lot of stuff I

see you know I wouldn’t say lurking but

I’ve seen you at shows for years uh

always in conversations with dealers

I’ve seen a few of your presentations

over the years and and we’ve been

working with you now for a little while

and I understand a little bit better

about what you do and and and I think

it’s it’s it’s really neat you do um

quite a few things for for your

customers one of them

um we’ve been publicizing lately and

it’s got a great reaction obviously as

The NPS right the net promoter scores so

tell us your involvement with that and

uh you know what what is what is NPS for

the Dior Community uh just tell us about

that program

well so the goal is

make it easier for our clients to to

sell right

and the way you do that is you get a

bunch of Raving fans as customers

and the way you get a bunch of Raving

fans is you get feedback on what you do

well and what you could do better and

and that feedback has to be easy

and it automated and so that’s the piece

we do is we make it very easy

for our clients customers

um to give them feedback and then we

encourage our dealers to

uh really take care of their customers

um and you can see that in

uh than that promoter score which is

just telling you how well you are doing

in terms of having raving fans as

customers

and so

um

you know a net promoter score of 70 is

considered world-class by the company

that designed this system and our

average client has an upper motor score

if a 85 so

you know they’re they’re not going to

have a park they’re doing a great job

and

um

it’s making it easier for them to grow

and then

each year we publish a list of the

companies that

have had world-class service just to

allow them to put it on their website

and then

there is something called a a perfect

score which

is

you know almost impossible to do CEO

juices never come close

but it basically means that when you ask

for

a company to to rate you zero to ten How

likely they are to recommend you

where every single response is a 9 out

of 10. and so

you know just uh pretty much impossible

to do but this year we had three

companies to do that which uh

is impressive who are the three they’re

on your website you’re gonna tell us

they’re Rumble you know

they’re on the website I don’t know off

the top of my head all right well I will

put a link on the uh we’ll put you on

the spot but um but so this net pretty

underscore so this is not just some you

know made up program for our industry

that some somebody just created right

this is this is a a well-known program

that’s used by some of the biggest

companies I’m gonna you know take a few

spots off your your website uh Costco

Ritz Carlton uh Amazon so you’re talking

raving fans and by the way that’s been a

common theme in a lot of BTA meetings

I’ve been at we’ve seen a lot of

presentations about how you create

raving fans and I think that’s one of

the things that makes our dealer

Community

um you know pretty pretty unique in in

the in the B2B world right people you

know people tend to unless the dealer is

dropping the ball a lot of these

companies especially the ones growing

they’re they’re doing well um with their

with their customers their customers are

happy and and you gave a rating which

was in the 70s um you know you look at

somebody like Amazon is a 73 so it’s and

by the way I love Amazon everyone I know

loves Amazon So speaking of Raving fans

and and your average in our deal or do

our channel is higher than that from

from the people that you’re doing this

for so

um if you’re not using net promoter

scores you know I I would we’re going to

put contact information in here you guys

should be talking to Gary it’s it’s

definitely something I think that’s very

valuable uh for your dealership put it

on your website and and you know it’s

it’s something that your customers are

saying about you right it’s not

Gary’s saying it it’s not you’re saying

it me saying it it’s the customers are

are evaluating them and this is when you

send out something ongoing how do you

how do you get these ratings from the

customers

it’s automated so we have a few

different processes for example after a

service call

we

give the end user a day to make sure you

know to try to use the equipment to make

sure it’s working correctly and then we

send an email and and our emails are not

asking for a survey it goes something

like hey as far as we’re concerned this

equipment is fixed we want to check that

it’s working to your satisfaction and by

the way if something noteworthy but only

if something noteworthy good or bad we’d

love your feedback to help us get better

and and that’s always the theme it’s not

we have to have feedback it’s we want to

know if something good or bad happened

and you have a good participation from

the customers from the end users is this

something um you know I know when I get

these surveys a lot of times they’re

kind of long and I don’t I don’t always

do them right you seem to have a pretty

good response

yeah we we have it dialed in at this

stage I mean we get we’re not average

about 10 percent response rate okay

that’s definitely higher than the ones I

do for Delta when I when I’m on the

phone with them right so

um and so the net promoter score I I

love that program that’s not actually

everything I wanted to talk to you about

today so

um we’re gonna shift gears a little bit

and you know the buzz right now and

coming out of the gates uh with with the

new year has been chat GPT uh AI right

usable AI everybody’s uh having meetings

about it everybody you know in our our

world the Consortium that we’re all in

um the executive connection Summit I had

somebody talking about it you know so

it’s already peaked up and you know when

it gets to the attention at our level at

the dealer level you know it’s um you

know it’s it’s kind of a big deal so

what when you look at that it’s it’s a

form of AI it’s it’s one part of AI and

you know it occurred to me that you guys

have had AI on your website for as long

as I’ve known you and as long as I’ve

been covering you and you’ve been using

it to help dealers in in your own way

you’ve already found ways to even before

chat gbt before the first versions were

out you’ve been using it so I’d like to

know more you know could you tell us

about the the AI you guys

um the program that you’ve put together

how does it work and what does it how

does it benefit the dealers what does it

do

so

you know buzzwords are are evolving

um so you in the old days we used to

call a pattern recognition and now we

call it deep learning but it was the

concept of how does Google tell what’s a

cat versus what’s a dog

and the short answer is you just uh feed

it millions and millions of pictures of

both and eventually it’s able to figure

out the pattern you know and and

people are trying to make chat GPT seem

you know complicated but it’s it’s kind

of the same sort of thing you take

everything from the internet and you

feed it in to a model

and then you start

um

asking questions and it just looks for

that same series of words somewhere else

and what came after so it’s like today

you start writing an email

um

in in Outlook and it will predict the

next word and and that’s what GPT does

it’s just predicting the the next series

of words or sentences because it’s

getting better at that based on

everything that’s on the web

and so back in the day we used to call

it automated processes but now it’s AI

so it’s essentially how do I take a

process that we do manually and automate

it and perhaps at the same time

put some intelligence behind it

so in the old days you know somebody

would look at your accounts receivable

and you know try to

see who was more than 90 days late and

then start getting on the phone

and then you just say okay let’s put a

little intelligence behind it and we’ll

just start

emailing them you know when they get 30

days late but let’s put a little more

intelligence because we know that these

big customers we’re not going to put

those guys on it all we’re going to do

something different for that and and so

it’s really just thinking about all of

the different ways that a process

should flow

and and trying to automate it and that’s

what we’ve been doing I started

with this type of software in 2006.

um and then I had it implemented in my

last dealership before I sold it

I knew when I saw the dealership that I

was going to continue doing this sort of

stuff because I enjoyed it but but

that’s it it’s really just automated

processes with

you know as much intelligence

as possible now we’re getting very

sophisticated in in what we do today

compared to what we were doing 10 years

ago

um

and the beauty of software is

you know if you have a person doing

something uh it a it’s all in their head

and B they need vacations and they get

sick occasionally but if you have a

the system

automating it for you

and it just always works and it makes it

so much easier to scale the stuff

so let me ask you is this this is this a

turnkey solution or when you work with a

dealer are you are you literally

building this writing code are you

creating bots that do certain things for

them

um is it based on you know supplies and

service and and you know where where

does this fit in for the dealer

everything is code you know when you

talk to Alexa

somebody

as to code all the different ways you

might ask the same question

and then somebody else has to code for

all the different accents you might have

while you ask those questions and

somebody else has to code for all the

different languages that you’re going to

support so it’s all blocks of code and

and the goal is you build them and you

reuse them and so

in our world you know let’s say we’re

creating a sales order

um well we we might create a sales order

coming in from the CRM after the sales

guys have uh

got it approved uh quote or we might

create a sales order coming in from

an online ordering portal or we might

create a sales order coming in from a

DCA that says a new toners needed

um

and then we have a whole bunch of rules

around that sales order as to you know

is it is it going to be drop shipped uh

is it coming out of your inventory uh

what warehouses are coming from and and

if it’s coming from

connectwise you know do have a different

set of rules and you know what type of

shipping is used and so

it’s it’s the same blocks of code and

you just keep adding rules and giving

people more and more options around

how you want that to flow

and and what’s good for our our clients

is a lot of the times they they haven’t

even thought about how

a process should flow until we get them

you know to document it so the the most

complicated process

in our industry is the whole equipment

order workflow you know from when I

deal is approved

the way

through until it’s funded and the

contract’s created and everything else

and and so we you know we can automate

most of the steps uh in that deal and if

if you

have it uh kind of a Six Sigma approach

to

this is the way it should flow and we’re

always going to go back and revisit and

see if it could flow better but you know

that none of the steps will get missed

because the system is automating it I’m

not am I making sense yeah yeah

so

this is this is something that this is

what the company started as right I mean

you began as as um

basically Intel for dealers right

yeah say just where uh making use of

this data that’s out there

making use of the data that’s out there

and you know I remember one of the the

things I showed off in maybe 2007

um was a way to uh

keep the sales rep updated on lease and

equipment and a way to tell them when uh

the customer had placed a service call

and the lease was almost up which would

be an opportunity for the rep to say Hey

you know how about you just move on that

quote instead of spending money on this

um

and and it’s just

it’s getting the right data to the right

person at the right time you know the

data is there and somebody could go find

it but it’s it’s putting it in you need

to connect with it somebody needs to

take the time to connect all that

together and I I do remember you know

when I saw

um that that would have been that would

have been really helpful right if I was

you know signing into my CRM every

morning and then I had my 10 calls or 20

25 calls I was supposed to make and you

know maybe there was a little note that

popped in that said you know call number

three plays a service call yesterday on

their six-year-old machine yeah you know

maybe it’s time for another it’s just a

good conversation starter right and I

never got that kind of information we um

you know there was a little before this

this type of data was available and and

so so you’ve got dealers already when

somebody signs up for something like

this what’s the process like like how to

how do you get them onboarded and then

how long does it take them to get up and

going with it

um we basically hold our hand that’s

kind of the goal we hold our hand

through turning on the first say 20

processes and typically by then

um they kind of figure out okay well hey

this this is cool stuff

um

we our model is everything’s included so

uh you know none of our clients use more

than maybe 30 of our processes so we

have almost a thousand processes uh and

all are used to some extent but

um

and you have to be careful

you have to filter in and get the exact

information you need to the right people

and make sure they know what to do with

it otherwise it becomes information

overload

yeah but but as

as

technology improves too we can we’re

able to do

some newer cooler things so for example

on the DCA side that stuff’s been

changing quite a lot and and the devices

are getting more intelligent

um so today we’re starting to do stuff

like Buena Tech is dispatched

to a call

if the device is saying based on the

error codes Etc that it needs a certain

part

where you check and see does the tech

have that part in their stock before

they leave and if they don’t we say hey

get this part before you go out there

otherwise you’ll have a return visit

yeah so the whole predictive Parts you

know is becoming easier

to do

well just saving you know saving a few

trips a month per Tech right I mean add

that up across your whole service Fleet

and that’s that’s a lot of money you’re

saving right right out of the gate so

um very cool very cool so this has been

awesome I learned a ton from you guys

any um any last things you want to to

tell everybody before we wind up wind

that wind down

well so so most of uh the base out there

are clients about us and uh I would say

the owner needs to stay involved

so you know it’s the guy at the top who

who cares about how efficient the

company is running and so

we see uh the most engagement when the

guy at the top stays involved and

uh you know set a quarterly or at least

twice a year meeting with us just to

talk about

um what else could I be doing uh

we’re doing a lot at the moment with

dashboards and

you know each owner is different but

they can all have their own little

dashboard that they pull up in the

morning that shows them you know

unbilled deals or big AR collections or

whatever the the data is they want to

focus on so good job the dashboards are

the most useful thing right it’s the way

that you come in and you know you get to

basically put your thumb on the pulse of

every part of your business on one

screen you know you can see where

receivables your billable as you can see

you can you can pull up what your sales

team is doing you can see what your

service you know Fleet is doing and you

know where are you for the month and

where’s with respect to budget and you

know it just basically whatever you can

build into it I would imagine

right but but dashboards have their

place you can get lost in the weeds and

kind of uh dealing diving into

dashboards what what we want you to

think about when you look and something

catches your eye

you know what is that exception that

caught your eye and what are you going

to do with that information and could we

just automate that piece for you instead

of you having to remember to go look in

that case somebody

very cool well Gary thank you so much

for spending some time with me today

this has been awesome uh you guys are

used by most of the dealers out there

watching this in one respect or another

but I encourage everybody you know who

is using you for one thing go back and

look at the other things that uh CEO

Juice does because if you’re not in The

NPS program you know that’s that’s

something that end users that customers

recognize that’s that’s not just some

award that you know

um people haven’t heard of that’s that’s

something that is used across the board

that it’s used by you know big companies

Ritz Carlton’s on there and and our

dealer channel is up there you know with

with numbers comparable to somebody at

that level you should be bragging about

them if if you’ve got them so talk to

Gary about that talk to them about the

AI uh contact information in in uh the

description for this video below but

Gary thank you so much for spending time

with us today

happy June all right thanks Andy we’ll

catch up soon take care