Welcome to the fifth installment of STELLA Solves It, where we dig into the real challenges dealerships face every day and how AI is helping solve them. This article focuses on the challenge of effective AI recall outreach.
Read the previous installment about staffing shortages.
Many dealers struggle to reach recall customers efficiently and fully, meaning a large portion of recalled vehicles never get repaired. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Recall Completion Rates Report released in January 2025, for major car manufacturers, “the combined weighted average annual completion rate is 62.1%, meaning more than 62% of all light vehicles recalled were remedied.” Other reports put the figure much lower.
For dealerships, effective outreach is not just about compliance or safety. It’s also a significant business opportunity. Improving completion rates drives service traffic, builds trust and helps retention.
Outbound campaigns powered by AI (like those by STELLA Catalyst) can help close that completion gap, turning recalls from a compliance and call handling burden into a retention and revenue generator.
Why recall completion rates are lower than they should be
Several factors impact recall completion rates:
Vehicle age and owner contact difficulties
Older cars are less likely to complete recalls. Vehicles from older model years (2003–2007) often see much lower recall completion than newer vehicles, according to the NHTSA report.
Owners of these older vehicles may have changed contact information, moved or sold the vehicle. Dealers also may simply not be conducting enough outreach to these existing vehicle owners to entice them to come back to the service drive.
Complexity of recall campaigns and volume challenges
Large recall campaigns — especially those affecting many vehicles — tend to have lower compliance and completion rates than smaller, more targeted ones. Dealerships with limited staffing struggle to conduct the necessary outbound calls to remind vehicle owners to come in for their recall work. Dealers may also simply not be leveraging their customer lists.
Lost service revenue and customer loyalty
For dealers, recalls represent a latent pool of potential service business if they can overcome their call handling, staffing and outbound struggles to reach those owners. When recalls go unaddressed, dealers lose potential service jobs, maintenance work and follow-up visits. Owners who don’t act on recalls may also perceive the dealership as unresponsive, which can harm long-term trust and retention. On the other hand, dealers who reach out and inform vehicle owners about recalls are seen as more dependable and trustworthy.
What makes recall outreach difficult
Recall outreach comes with a unique set of hurdles that impede effective communication. Among them:
- Recall notices via mail tend to get ignored or lost, especially for older vehicles whose owners may have relocated.
- Relying on mass mail or email lacks immediacy and the personal touch compared to direct outreach.
- Dealers may lack staffing or resources to follow up with every recalled vehicle, especially for widespread recall campaigns. A recent STELLA Automotive AI survey found that a whopping 86% of dealers found call handling to be a challenge at their dealerships, making outbound calls especially challenging.
How AI recall outreach closes the completion gap
According to a 2025 Data Axle survey, 68% of consumers reported that dealership communications are inconsistent or lacking personalization. There’s a solution to this lack of personalized engagement: conversational AI.
Enter STELLA Catalyst, an AI-powered engagement engine that now delivers outbound proactive outreach to customers. Built specifically for automotive dealerships and designed to help dealers stay connected with customers beyond inbound calls, Catalyst automates proactive outreach across voice, SMS and email, transforming everyday opportunities into measurable revenue.
Catalyst combines conversational AI with data-driven intelligence to deliver what every dealer needs most: more engagement, more revenue, more personalization and more loyalty, without more staff.
This AI integration offers several key benefits:
Speed and scale
AI outbound dialers and voice assistants like STELLA can automatically call large opted-in lists of recalled vehicles, ensuring no owner falls through the cracks. This overcomes limitations of manual outreach, leading to fewer human hours required, fewer missed calls and consistent follow-up.
Plus, the AI works quickly: A typical human books an appointment in between 5 to 9 minutes, depending on the phone system, but STELLA books in under 2 minutes.
Personalization and smarter routing
With STELLA AI as their digital assistant, dealers can set a tailored message and greeting, making communications feel more direct and relevant. This AI platform detects when the vehicle owner answers, accesses vehicle information and schedules appointments quickly, all with no latency, which reduces friction. STELLA can easily transfer the call to a human when needed, reducing frustration for customers.
Convenience and customer-friendly reception
Many vehicle owners may procrastinate or ignore mailed recall notices, but a call that directly offers a convenient service appointment lowers this barrier. For busy owners or older vehicles, a single phone call may prompt action more effectively than multiple reminder mailers or emails that wind up in the trash or deleted.
Consistency, tracking and analytics
STELLA offers a consistent experience for all customers. It then logs call results and provides analytics for dealers to review. Dealers can then use these analytics to refine their outreach strategy and measure their ROI. This data is safeguarded on STELLA’s platform, which is controllable, safe and compliant.
Potential impact: Improved completion rates, retention, CSI and revenue
By reaching more owners, an AI outbound campaign leveraging STELLA Catalyst can substantially raise recall completion rates and overall service center revenue.
Each completed recall represents not only repair revenue, but also an opportunity to re-engage the customer, upsell maintenance or schedule future service.
Even for owners who don’t convert, proactive outreach shows dealership commitment to safety and customer care, improving overall brand reputation and trust, which supports long-term loyalty. Dealers that have integrated STELLA AI in their operations have seen a boost in CSI in 2025, with some rising from 8.1 to 8.9 in just a few months, with more improvement on the way, according to CEO Rich Sands.
AI as a retention and revenue tool
In addition to safety compliance, recalls are opportunities to reconnect with existing dealership customers and bring them into the service lane. For dealers with large older-vehicle portfolios, AI outreach with STELLA Catalyst dramatically reduces manual effort while maximizing reach, improving both safety outcomes and business outcomes. An additional benefit is happier employees who don’t need to worry about how to juggle calls with their more valuable work tasks.
Over time, higher recall completion and improved customer experience strengthen brand loyalty, leading to higher retention, upsells and long-term value per customer.
Traditional outreach methods are often insufficient, and dealers need faster, scalable, personalized and convenient ways to contact owners. AI-powered outbound campaigns offer a compelling solution, bridging the gap between recall outreach and actual repair completion, while boosting retention and service revenue.
For dealers serious about service drive growth, customer safety and long-term loyalty, adopting AI outbound outreach isn’t just smart but necessary.
