Vaughan Automotive’s team generated over 1,200 additional service appointments and $225K in repair orders in a single month across four dealerships with STELLA.
Building a Strong Foundation
Vaughan Automotive is a growing dealership group supported by a centralized BDC that manages service appointment demand across multiple rooftops. As the group expanded, maintaining consistent service performance across stores became increasingly complex.
The leadership team overseeing service, parts, collision, and reconditioning operations guided the organization through this growth. Shortly after taking on an expanded operational focus, the group acquired another dealership, creating additional demand for the centralized BDC.
To support continued growth, the organization rebuilt the operation with stronger accountability, clearer standards, improved compensation structures for the BDC team, and a partnership with STELLA Automotive AI.
As a people first organization, the leadership team believes successful operations are built on strong people, clear processes, and accountability first, with technology serving as a tool to enhance and scale the effectiveness of the team once that foundation is established.
The Challenge: Capturing Every Service Opportunity
Before implementing STELLA, Vaughan Automotive’s BDC handled inbound and outbound service calls and appointment scheduling for multiple dealerships. While the team was effective, inbound call volume created a bottleneck, preventing outbound calling which is the real revenue driver.
Many calls were service scheduling requests, status checks, or transfer calls that required agent time but didn’t require deep expertise. As the dealership group grew, it became harder for the team to capture every inbound opportunity.
They needed help answering the high volume of calls coming in, because they understood that missed calls equals missed service revenue.
Implementing STELLA to Support the Process
After strengthening the BDC structure and processes, the team introduced STELLA Service.
STELLA is an AI-powered revenue platform built by dealers for dealers. It automates inbound and outbound customer engagement across sales and service and sits deeply integrated into the DMS, CRM, scheduler to convert more demand into measurable revenue without adding headcount.
Vaughn Automotive positioned STELLA as a tool to support the team, not to replace them. To ensure the rollout was successful, they focused on transparency with their BDC team. Some agents initially worried that an AI voice assistant would take away the easiest appointments and reduce their earnings.
The Fixed Ops team told their BDC that they would try the AI for two months. If it started causing more complaints than scheduling appointments, they would get rid of it. After two months, they still had it running and realized it had become an integral part of their system.
The Results: More Appointments and Revenue
The impact was immediate. In one month alone, STELLA booked an additional 1,201 service appointments across Vaughan Automotive’s dealerships. With a 64% show rate from STELLA set appointments, hundreds of those appointments converted into customers arriving for service.
Those additional visits generated $225,000 in total repair order revenue, including $110,000 in labor gross and $36,000 in parts gross.
When they saw more appointments being booked and a higher show rate, they realized the immediate impact STELLA had.
For Vaughn Automotive, the key takeaway is that success comes from the combination of strong leadership, clear processes, and the right technology.
“AI isn’t a replacement for your team,” Bui said. “If you have the right people and process, tools like STELLA just bring everything together.”
They acknowledged that AI is not a replacement for their team, but when they combined STELLA with the right people and processes, it brought everything together.
