About Austin Subaru

Austin Subaru, part of the Continental Automotive Group (CAG), is a top-performing dealership in Austin, Texas, known for its deep community roots and exceptional service and sales volume. With over 60 years of operation, the dealership has cultivated one of the most loyal customer bases in the region. Austin Subaru has over 100 employees, including 50 technicians, and sees 100+ cars per day in the service lane. Cody Penna is General Manager of Austin Subaru. Cody has 13 years of experience under his belt with CAG, first starting as a service technician for the Honda location, then became a master technician, eventually becoming the service director. Later Cody took over as fixed-operations director for parts and service, then oversaw all service and parts departments for the dealership group. In 2024, Cody accepted the job of general manager at Austin Subaru.

The Challenge

In 2020, as the pandemic suddenly disrupted dealership operations nationwide, CAG faced an unexpected crisis: dealership traffic dropped dramatically, including in the service department. Despite having a full staff, the customer volume wasn't there. Manual outreach processes and the lack of an automated service lifecycle program made retention nearly impossible.

"Imagine waking up one morning and the next day you have the literal complete opposite problem—‘I have all this staff, and there’s nobody coming in. What am I going to do?’"
— Cody Penna, GM, Austin Subaru

The Solution: Kenect AI

Kenect’s AI-driven platform arrived at a critical moment. Originally referred through a personal network, Cody was immediately impressed by the team’s responsiveness and partnership-first approach.
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"They didn’t come in with a one-size-fits-all pitch. They asked, ‘What’s going on at your store, and how can we help?’ That never happens with vendors.”
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CAG implemented Kenect’s cutting-edge AI solutions across their network of stores to automate business processes to accelerate customer engagement, appointment scheduling, and outreach campaigns to maximize opportunities within their customer base.

With the AI solutions in place, CAG quickly experienced significant growth across its service departments in terms of volume, retention, and staff efficiency, while maintaining high customer satisfaction. The results speak for themselves.

The Results

Service Retention for out-of-warranty vehicles: From 8.5% to 50%+ above warranty

"Obviously, it’s easy to retain customers that are in warranty, but if you look at our trends for out-of-warranty vehicles across model years, we have seen service retention growth go from 8.5% to more than 50% above the manufacturer’s expectation of units in our market that we would be serving. That equates to several hundred additional vehicles we service each year, for each model year, above the manufacturer’s estimates.”

Recalls Revenue: Hundreds of thousands in revenue

"We have cleaned recall lists across all stores multiple times, which is unheard of. That’s hundreds of thousands in revenue.”

Empowered Staff

"They used to work off of spreadsheet lists that were 3,000 or 4,000 rows long and wondered how they would get through it. Now, with AI, they see a customer list of 8,000 and they say, ‘Great—we’ll have 400 conversations!’ They’re excited about it."

Speed to Launch: 1-day onboarding new store

"We acquired another dealership location last year. The deal was done at close of business, so the previous owners vacated at 5:00 PM. By 11:00 AM the next day, we were up and running with Kenect and all our other systems."

Human-First AI

"Use humans to think of the awesome stuff and pick up the conversation—not to slog through sending a million messages. I’m excited because the great people I work with are finally having the opportunity to engage with real humans at a far higher rate.”

ROI

"It costs less than one agent, and we get exponentially more. One person doesn’t solve a problem—Kenect does. I recommend it all the time. If you’re not using this, you’re lighting money on fire.”